Building the pluriverse with care

It is a great privilege to have this opportunity to dialogue about my book, Care and the Pluriverse: Rethinking Global Ethics (July 2022, Bristol University Press), in this forum. I began grappling seriously with the topics, themes, and questions in the book about 8 years ago, and it is wonderful be at this stage, and to have distinguished scholars like Kimberly Hutchings, Fiona Robinson, and Vivienne Jabri engage with my thoughts. Thank you all so very much for your time and generative commentaries. In what follows, I do my best to pick up on some of the themes and challenges posed by these commentators while also offering some of my recent reflections on the arguments in the book.

As noted in the preceding commentaries, the concept of the pluriverse comes largely from Latin American decolonial studies and critical anthropology literature which draws upon rich ethnographies (e.g. Blaser, 2018; de la Cadena, 2015) to point to the existence of multiple worlds that are partially connected but that exceed each other in complex ways (e.g. de la Cadena, 2015; Mignolo, 2013; Rojas, 2016). These ethnographies start from the idea that ‘ontologies perform themselves into worlds’ (Blaser, 2009: 877) through collective knowledges and practices; from this vantage point, different relations and practices are made visible as worlds, as collective relations that enact certain forms of life – forms of life which are, of course, very real. In this way, the idea of the pluriverse attests that instead of one world with different cultures, or social groups, or paradigms, there are, in fact, multiple unique worlds which are constantly enacted and brought into existence. At the same time, these different worlds are not independent units, existing in total separation from one another. Worlds are, rather, tied together in and through various relations of power and because of our shared material being. The pluriverse is a paradox of difference and sharedness, of excesses and ‘partial connections’, to use Strathern’s (2004) term.

When I came across the pluriversal literature, I was very taken by this concept, by this reframing of difference. For, to be certain, the challenge of navigating and considering difference in and through our shared existence and various connections has been an ongoing concern in moral philosophy and political thought more broadly. As both Hutchings and Robinson point out here, the field of Global Ethics has specifically been preoccupied by the moral import and significance of difference, although in a way that is dominated (and limited) by the binary framework of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘communitarianism’, and especially by moral theories and perspectives based in the Western academic tradition. What I found so compelling about the idea of the pluriverse, as a different way to think about difference, is that difference is carried to its full conclusion or extent in the context of multiple worlds, and thus urges us to move beyond these binaries and traditions. Difference, from the vantage point of pluriversality, carries an ontological weight (Holbraad et al., 2014) – it is not simply a matter of various traditions, cultures or viewpoints on some existing and shared world. Instead, the pluriverse, as a political decolonial project, affirms that unique worlds are produced and reproduced through complex relations, practices, collectives and the agents therein. In short, differences, here, are at their most deep and pervasive, and these differences, I believe, pose an even more robust challenge for researching, thinking about, and doing global ethics. My book is motivated by this challenge: ‘How can we rethink Global Ethics in the pluriverse, where differences are at their most deep and pervasive? How might we build a pluriversal ethics? How might we care for worlds that are not our own, and that are, therefore, to some degree unknowable to us?’ (FitzGerald, 2022: 3).

Before proceeding, the idea of ‘my world’ versus ‘other worlds’ merits some discussion. As Hutchings points out in her commentary, who is the ‘we’ I refer to in these questions, and what does it mean to speak of a ‘world’ (my world, or any other world)? There were many challenges for me in thinking with the pluriverse – but two of the most difficult were related: First, how do I talk about worlds, different forms of moral life, without ossifying them? For worlds are not free-floating entities; they are ongoing relational unfoldings, bundles of relations upon relations, which can interact and shift in complex and surprising ways. Yet, as Green (2013: 562) astutely observes, ‘[f]inding a grammar for emergence, in a language that is attuned to objects or subjects [like English], is indeed challenging’. While I was continually attuned to this difficulty while writing, I do not think I overcame it entirely, and I hope the reader generously bears with me as I attempt to think pluriversally with an imperfect language.

Second, where am I in this pluriversal landscape? In the book, and again as Hutchings highlights here, I landed on the language of modernity to describe my world. This world, as I define it, is premised on an ontological distinction between humans and nature (Rojas, 2016), binary logics, and a rationalist epistemology. This world has also, because of relations of power particularly related to colonialism and capitalism, been able to assert itself as the only world, the one and true legitimate world – a practice which both denies other forms of life and often actively and violently works to destroy and erase them. I want to be very transparent, then, about my political project here: I write first and foremost to those in and of my world, although I would, with humility and gratitude, invite those located elsewhere to consider what I offer for themselves, as another starting point for our continued experiments in living together (a point I return to more fully below).

Drawing upon a critical ethics of care (e.g. Robinson, 1999), in tandem with the pluriversal/decolonial commitment to make space for multiple worlds as worlds, one of my central claims in the book is that vulnerable worlds must be re-established in the face of one another, in the face of partial connections that tie them together, and we must therefore be accountable for the types of relations and connections we uphold. This is all the more pressing given that while I start from the understanding that all worlds are vulnerable (in so far as they are unfolding relations which can be alternatively reproduced or disrupted), some worlds are or have been rendered precarious – by which I mean, made more vulnerable – via relations of power that comprise our ‘universality as reality’ (Balibar, 2011). My conceptualization of the pluriverse, as a landscape of unequally precarious worlds, urges us to understand that all ethical dilemmas unfold against a backdrop in which whole forms of moral life are at stake. The ways in which we navigate ethical conflicts, in the context of the pluriverse, will have consequences that extend beyond the particulars of that dilemma: they will facilitate, or alternatively hinder, the very reproduction of the different worlds involved. More simply, I contend that a pluriversal ethics means that we must care about the consequences, the worlding effects, of the ways in which we think and do global ethics.

Clearly, the problem I grapple with in this text – of how to build a pluriversal ethics – is, in fact, enormous, and in pluriversal fashion, I suspect there will be a plurality of dispositions, capacities, and tools that might help us approach global ethics pluriversally (see also FitzGerald, 2023). I thus wish to present a few reflections about the argument of the book (what I hope it does, and what I am certain it cannot do), which will also speak to some of the important reflections offered by the commentators.

First, the pluriverse, as a world of many worlds, is extraordinarily complex in its paradox of interconnectedness and difference. In one way or another, I believe that Hutchings, Robinson, and Jabri all critically point to the implications of this complexity for the possibility of doing global ethics at all: Can there be a global ethics in/for the pluriverse? Or does the pluriverse entail a rejection of strategic universal common struggle altogether?

From my perspective, the claim that multiple worlds should be allowed to exist as worlds is not meant to propose that they are – or should be – independent units, in which differences co-exist without relation. I do not think this is possible (i.e. we share a material world), nor is it desirable. Elsewhere, Hutchings (2019: 116) uses the helpful term ‘subsumption’ to describe the predicament: the goal is not independent worlds, but rather that worlds that are outside one another can coexist and interact ‘without one subsuming the others’. And while I have found this framing to be immensely useful as a way to approach the pluriversal project, it is also true that, except for the most severe cases, ‘subsumption’ is nebulous terrain. Is some ‘subsumption’ tolerable or even, at times, beneficial? (I can think of many violent practices and norms in my own world that I would not be sad to leave behind.) If so, when and where and how? Does interaction between worlds always lead to negative, one-sided subsumption, or do hybridities emerge in which all involved are transformed (perhaps for the better)? Because worlds are connected through relations of power and our shared material being, I believe that hybridity is, at the very least, clearly inevitable, but furthermore, often desirable (depending, most certainly, on a variety of conditions, especially the ways in which relations of power shape the interactions between worlds). Therefore, while in the book I have focused on ethnographic cases that highlight the possible harms and dangers of world interactions (especially when relations of power are at play), I think it would be short-sighted and erroneous to entertain the idea that every instance of world-interaction is negative. Understanding, as I do, that worlds are vulnerable – constantly unfolding and open to revision, to affecting and being affected – means that in and through their connections and engagements with one another, worlds can come to exchange, revise, and reorient various practices in a way that enriches, in the words of Walker (2007: 258), ‘the possibilities and the goods of [all of our] shared lives’. This is, in fact, the very reason why I hold on to a ‘global ethics’ in/for the pluriverse.

At the same time, however, historical relations of power have exhibited totalizing tendencies, in which the erasure and subsumption of certain worlds has been the very goal. As noted above, colonial-capitalism, so tied to the modern world, has sought relentlessly to ‘creat[e] a world after its own image’ (Marx and Engels, 1992: 7). I would assert that it is, in fact, these very tendencies that the pluriversal privileging or foregrounding of difference strikes at. As I argue in the book, while the totalizing impetus of modernity has damaged many worlds, these worlds, in their precarity, persist and thereby continually challenge the one-world narrative of modernity. Centring difference, and the ways in which different practices, relations, and worlds exceed the modern imaginary, is a powerful act of resistance against this totalizing project.

That being said, my focus on difference in the book has been somewhat controversial. Over the past several months, I have found that the most common critique of my argument is that I overstate, or over-tend to difference, at the cost of solidarity or the embracing of commonality. Jabri’s commentary makes this point the most forcefully, although again, both Robinson and Hutchings touch on this as well. And certainly, this is a critique worth thinking about and addressing. I am grateful for this opportunity to do so here.

While writing the book, I was attuned to this concern, and I was particularly cautious of two dangers that I think can arise when foregrounding difference. First, there is a risk of ‘seeing’ difference everywhere – this can lead to a romanticization, idealization or deference to the Other that is unhelpful or even patronizing. There are also many times that differences sit side by side, unnoticed and not needing to be noticed (see page 90–93 in the book, for instance). Second, difference is, itself, always a construct (produced, reproduced, enacted, practiced) and not a property. While Jabri contends here that my treatment of difference corresponds to the latter, I would humbly reply that I think our understandings of difference are, in fact, more aligned than not (although certainly we use different grammars, and I do not mean to suggest total equivalence). As I write in the book, ‘a pluriversal ethics requires that we pursue the relentless task of examining over and over again the ways in which different moral voices and different moral knowledges are formed, the conditions in and through which certain moral claims and judgements gain authority and meaning and the good to be found in living different forms of moral life’ (2022, 216; also cited in Hutchings in this forum). I am not interested in conferring metaphysical status to differences (see chapter 5 in the book in particular); I am rather concerned with how difference is formed and reformed, concealed and revealed, and how it motivates differently constituted and positioned subjects in various ethico-political world-affirming projects.

It is, in fact, for this reason that, despite the aforementioned concerns, I nonetheless chose to focus the project on difference. As I see it, differences are never just differences, and they are not detached from commonality and solidarity. Rather, difference and commonality are relational, and the boundaries between these two – the ways the lines get drawn – matter in political and ethical ways. In a reflection on her ground-breaking essay, ‘Under Western Eyes’, Mohanty (2003: 505) writes:

In knowing differences and particularities, we can better see the connections and commonalities because no border or boundary is ever complete or rigidly determining. The challenge is to see how differences allow us to explain the connections and border crossings better and more accurately, how specifying difference allows us to theorize universal concerns more fully.

I have seen my focus on difference in this same vein: the ways in which difference is rendered invisible or ignored, on the one hand, or centred on the other, constitutes in part the connections that exist or that can exist. For instance, we can think of connections that have been made that ignore difference – colonial projects that assert a sameness across groups – and resulted in harm. Somewhat paradoxically, we can also think of connections that centre difference –like when those in/of the modern world attempt to engage with different Indigenous knowledges and practices – but that have also caused injury. I have learned from scholars like Hunt (2014) and Watts (2013) who emphasize that for many Indigenous ways of being-knowing, knowledge (‘place-thought’ (Watts, 2013)) is inextricably tied to place/space/time, the relations in and through which it emerges. When those from other worlds (including well-intentioned folk in the modern world) attempt to make connections to these knowledges without also being in deep relation to the places that hold said knowledge, they often abstract it from its place, transforming and subsuming the place-thought in ways that are one-sided and destructive. My point is thus that, in many ways, commonalities and differences are two sides of the same coin: how we locate and treat difference shapes and is reflected in the connections we seek to make and the commonalities we find and can rightfully claim.

Indeed, it seems to me that the notion of the pluriverse seeks to dehierarchicalize the ways in which the connections drawn across difference so often lead to hybridities that are radically unequal and destructive for certain worlds and people and not others. Or, as Robinson puts it in her commentary, we cannot ignore ‘the ways in which different worlds have, and continue to be, constituted in and through relations of power’, especially if we hope to build solidarity across worlds. It is for this reason that I foreground difference throughout the text, although my intent was never to suggest that difference is so great that commonalities are not to be identified, pursued, and celebrated. My thinking is, in fact, quite the opposite: a world of many worlds is as open to productive and fruitful connections and commonalities, or relations across relations, as it is to destructive ones. Tending to difference in a way that is open, humble, and careful can enrich our chances of building meaningful commonalities and lines of solidarity, of redrawing boundaries that perpetuate damaging binaries and hierarchies.

But of course, as my commentators again highlight, there are many questions that remain related to this careful work. ‘What kinds of relations are worthy of nurture and repair, what kinds of disassociation are necessary for the protection of worlds, and what kinds contradict the values and virtue of care?’ (Hutchings)? How can we ‘find “shared understandings”, solidarities, even basic or “thin” common ground on which to build moral language and ethico-political practices’ (Robinson)? These are enormous questions that I find myself returning to continually. While in the book I attempt to think about meta-orientations, dispositions and capacities that might be productive for taking on these questions, I do not proclaim to be doing the work of evaluating wholesale which practices, relations, and connections should be upheld or disrupted (for surely, there are many relations, connections and practices we will not want to live in and with). Rather, I believe that wading through these difficult conundrums – attempting to ascertain in a variety of contexts which relations and practices to nurture and repair, and which ones to amend or abandon all together – is, in fact, the ethico-political challenge of the pluriverse (see also FitzGerald, 2023). And responding to this challenge, as Hutchings (2019: 124) brilliantly summarizes, will demand a variety of tools and capacities.

[The pluriverse] makes us think about coexistence and collaboration work and the kinds of virtues and capacities they rely on and cultivate. A pluriversal ethics is not about finding out the right answers but about experiments in ‘being with’. It is not something that can be known in any satisfactory way; it is only something that can be done.

I see this book as a small contribution towards cultivating this type of ethical orientation/practice. I am concerned here with how certain capacities, concepts, and vantage points prevent or enable pluriversal thinking and doing. I am interested in recasting the task of global ethics as one which starts with looking at how different people actually live, and how moral values, standards, and understanding gain currency within those different forms of life. Only from there may we begin the collaborative work of engaging with and critiquing each other’s practices and ways of relating via ‘the reflective articulation of ethical prescriptions which acknowledge the conditions of their own meaningfulness’ (Hutchings, 2013: 130). There is no road map to success here, only different tools and capacities that may aid us as we do this messy and arduous work. In the book, I have specifically drawn upon the ethics of care, which centres the ethico-political import of vulnerability, to foreground how an orientation towards vulnerability can attune us to several things that I find important for such an approach to ethics.

For example, I argue that our judgement is vulnerable and so we must be open to the revision and reassessment of our moral claims and ideas in light of our engagements with other worlds, and in response to the consequences of our moral deeds. Worlds themselves are vulnerable; relations and practices must be reproduced through time. This vulnerability offers a moment of action (or perhaps inaction), in which we can engage in that reproduction or seek to amend our practices and relations towards something more liveable for all. Furthermore, the ambiguity of action means that even our attempts to respond are vulnerable and may not pan out in the ways we hope. Centring vulnerability helps us embrace ‘humanly ordinary failure’ (Ruddick, 1989: 104), to strive for ‘good enough’, and to commit to the tough work of trying again. And lastly, we are vulnerable subjects, open to being changed and to changing through our interactions with others (see, for example, Fierke and Jabri, 2019; Schick, 2022). Ultimately, I now see my claim in the book, at the most general level, as suggesting that orientating ourselves towards vulnerability, and engaging in partial (i.e. evolving, animated, resistant to closure) relations of care that respond to vulnerability at these different but interconnected levels, can help us commit to experiments in being together in and across our difference. As I write near the end:

It is through our moral practices of care that we can agon[ize over] our different values and forms of moral life, as well as collectively strive to maintain, repair, and reproduce our different worlds. It is also from this care orientation that we can begin the collective and collaborative task of moral philosophy, which is reflecting on the moral orders we participate in, asking when certain practices stand scrutiny, when they are worth reproducing, and under which conditions and limitations one can claim to have made a sound moral judgement. Such an approach to moral philosophy “sets an agenda for moral criticism to lead or guide us in slow, often puzzling, and sometimes painful and costly tasks of mutual correction”. (FitzGerald, 2022: 219; quoting Walker, 2007: 257)

While some may be disappointed to find that I offer no blueprint here for ascertaining correct answers to moral quandaries, I think that is, in so many ways, the point. By engaging with the pluriverse, or perhaps committing to its decolonial project, I see my book as outlining one possible orientation, rooted in the ethics of care, that can help us cultivate practices that support ‘experiments in “being with”’ (Hutchings, 2019: 124), and thereby facilitate actions that move us towards mutual correction and better connection. In the end, however, the fruitfulness of this approach can only be revealed and judged in the doing of it, in the practice and actual messiness of being together.