Pluriversality

Pluriversality; Where multiple ways of being, diverse worlds, can flourish and co-exist with one another. 

I take my definition of pluriversality from the Zapatistas, an Indigenous resistance movement in Chiapas, Mexico, who were able to defy neoliberalism and the Mexican government’s oppression in the 1990s by gaining control of their land and achieving autonomous rule, which continues to this day. 

The Zapatistas hold a vision of a world in which many worlds co-exist.

There’s a rainbow of ways to exist in this world, an array of colours, tones, gradients, textures. 

The Pluriverse invites and celebrates all of this. 

Pluriversality helps us step out of the current logic system of only one way of doing things and opens us up to other possibilities of being in the world that are relational, situated, autonomous and holistic. 

It is an exciting and whole pathway toward sustainable and decolonial transitions for fashion, textiles, design as well as other fields.  

A Pluriversal perspective changes how we perceive, understand and interact in the world.  

By decentering western ways of being, questioning and deconditioning from this status quo that many of us have been brought up in, we can reconnect to our authenticity in how we be, live and create in this world. 

Universality dictates that everything should be the same, look the same, feel the same. 

Yet, this homogeneity doesn’t consider the beauty, authenticity and heterogeneity of each place, community and individual, as well as their rich and diverse experiences and traditions.

Our authenticity is contextual and situated, both individually and communally. 

In this way, autonomous, sovereign and liberated ways forward begin to emerge. 

Pluriversality is a pathway toward liberation.

A Pluriverse further centres alternative worldviews, which include those rooted in relational, spiritual, ecological, animist, integrated and autonomous values, many of which have been hidden and erased through modern-colonial western universalisms. 

Just as nature requires diversity to thrive, so do we. We were never all meant to be the same, and one of the biggest dangers we see facing current social fabric is the ongoing attempt to universalise how we think and act.  

Pluriversality is about creating and redirecting toward other possibilities for being in the world, towards different ways of doing fashion, textiles and design, which are more compatible with sustainable and flourishing futures for all. 

As I continue to research pluriversal fashion-textiles, several questions are emerging throughout my research: 

How can we bring into view that which has been denied, erased, made invisible? 

How do we navigate these hidden parts from within and outside of modern-colonial influences? 

What must be released and remembered to re-establish a connection with these concealed dimensions? 

How might these parts become collaborators toward sustainable fashion-textile transitions? 

Creating radically different worlds means diverging from modern-colonial assurances toward living in ways open to multiple potentialities, both communally and individually. The prevailing universalising ideology in sustainable development is insufficient for its multifaceted and multidimensional nature. As such, sustainability transitions can no longer be reduced to a one-size-fits-all model and needs to encompass pluriversal expressions that enact worlds in diverse ways grounded in everyday small actions. A pluriverse represents a way of relating that demands meticulous care and attention, as it is not a linear pathway. Through collective and individual devotion, discipline, focus, openness, curiosity, emergence, flow, fierce grace, and creativity, other worlds will unfold.

*I am grateful to pluriversal scholars Arturo Escobar, Marisol De La Cadena, Walter Mignolo, Mario Blaser, Ashish Kothari, and others, well as Cameron Tonkinwise’s ‘Design’s for the Pluriverse UTS HDR Seminar 2021, for inspiring and guiding me.