At the heart of Alterotopia’s becoming lies a celebratory practice of thinking-with and making-with, or simply put creative encountering. A practice at the intersection of art, science and activism, which prefigures how our relations to the earth and each other can become otherwise, more just and plural. Alterotopian creative encounters can take many different forms. From encounters between practices such as the one that has given rise to Alterotopia itself, to encounters with earthly places of change, to a generative thinking-with the concepts and artworks of others in order to be propelled in new directions. Whether or not they involve active collaboration or physical presence, creative encounters are inherently relational and generative: those who engage in them are bound to be affected and changed.
To get a better idea of some of the philosophical grounding behind creative encountering, I invite those who enjoy that kind of thing to join me on this philosophical long-read. It will take you along several seeds for conceptualising alterotopias, alterotopian thinking-with and the radical potential of creative encounters.
Alterotopian thinking-with
Lets start by going back to last spring, when our ideas for Alterotopia were still very much in their early stages. After years of neglecting my philosophical passion, let alone nurturing it as a practice, I was hungry to discover new ideas, ground my own and discover which other initiatives were out there that resonated with what we wanted to bring into being.
While trying to push my ideas further, I immersed myself in an associative process of thinking-with: I was finding resonance in the words, thoughts and artworks of others to push my own thinking forward and better understand what is at stake in our shared concerns and how we are driven to address, resist and/or transform them. Those I thought-with most actively are Donna Haraway’s Staying With The Trouble (2015), Rosi Braidotti’s valedictorian speech ‘We Are Rooted but we Flow‘ (2023), Ghassan Hage’s Alter Politics (2015).
Being so actively immersed in a creative articulation of ideas was both inspiring and daunting: this type of engagement runs deep and sets all kinds of things in motion. Big leaps in understanding might be made through intuition, but it’s another thing altogether to be able to convert those into a comprehensive piece of writing, especially if one wants to acknowledge how one’s ideas are being shaped and transformed by the idea’s of those whom one is thinking-with and bringing-into-being-with. The process of affirmative acknowledgment and differentiation requires time and effort, and I have only just started to scratch the surface of the body of work of those who I got to know during that period as kindred-spirit-thinkers. What I can already say is that my conceptualisation of Alterotopia and Alterotopian practice takes root and grows from the fertile soil those I have been thinking-with have already laid out1.
Now one can of course say that there is no thinking that is not thinking-with. It certainly is the case that we cannot think in a vacuum, and we are always engaging with the words and concepts of others. What I mean by thinking-with is more specific: it is celebratory, joyous and affirmative. It is about allowing one’s ideas and what is being brought into being to be affected and changed in an ongoing and-and.
In that regard reading Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble was certainly an experience that stood out. What an abundance of novel concepts and what a generous and joyous practice of thinking-with! Getting to know her work felt like coming home, but in the most exciting way. The home of a kindred-spirit-thinker one didn’t even know one was thinking with.
Thinking-with Bergson
There are, however, older seeds for conceptualising Alterotopian thinking-with that precede my knowledge of any of the scholars just mentioned. These seeds take root in a philosophical practice that started to take shape during my undergraduate research on Bergson’s process philosophy nearly two decades ago. At the time, I described my approach as a meta-philosophical reflection: a generative and in depth engagement with the concepts and philosophy of Henri Bergson, which culminated into my thesis Radical Nuance.
An important characteristic of my approach, of which I found Deleuze’s work on Bergson to be exemplary, is to engage with the thinking and concepts of another person in such an in depth and affirmative way, as to be propelled by the same generative force that gave rise to them in the first place. So rather than finding fault with someone’s argument by reducing its complexity and nuance (which, for quite understandable reasons is a common, but nevertheless disappointing practice in philosophy and other academic disciplines) the intention is rather to activate, and be activated by what is trying to be brought to the fore in order to be propelled by a similar ‘force’ while bringing one’s own ideas into being. A type of thinking-with that almost inevitably leads to the creation of novel concepts. Concepts which resonate, but also differ from the original ones, and thus multiply new lines of thought, inquiry and engagement.
Thinking-with fluid concepts
The second seed that took root during the same period is Bergson’s method of intuition and his characterisation of certain philosophical concepts as ‘fluid’. He describes fluid concepts as concepts which enable us to think the world ‘in terms of change’. His concept of duration being the most prominent example. Far from being vague or irrational, as some shallow interpretations at the time argued them to be, a fluid concept requires more rather than less effort to think with. This quality is precisely why a fluid concept is more suitable to do justice in thought to something like the complex and heterogeneous nature of the earth’s creative becoming. Stemming from my own experience in thinking-with them, I would describe fluid concepts as being in a state of becoming themselves: inherently unstable, open and generative, which again, is why they are better attuned and equipped for understanding the world as such. The type of thinking-with that such concepts enable, is a thinking with life.
Alterotopia as sites of entangled becoming
Without even realising it at first, I treated the concept of alterotopia as a fluid concept. I bracketed its definition and started to put it to work in an open state of becoming-with. In other words, I was allowing it to attune to what it was trying to attune us to and vice versa. In that process it morphed and shifted so that it could help conceptualise what we want to develop as a practice, and ground the work we want to keep doing. In the case of Alterotopia this is to enable us to conceptualise places, matter and agency in terms of change and becoming, to provide a fertile ground for a practice of creative encountering and embodied, artistic explorations of power, change and radical belonging. It is only upon reflection and rereading my thesis on Bergson that I realised what I had been doing: I was allowing the concept to be in a broader state of becoming to increase its capacity to think change, and as we will see, entanglement and alterity in generative ways2.
What then does approaching alterotopia as a fluid concept entail? It is less about giving a set definition, and more about asking: what thought does it enable? What worlds and ways of relating does it make possible? Giving any definition implies addressing those questions as well. The initial definition that Flor gave when she coined the concept was for alterotopias to refer to places of change and their inherent quality of being in a constant state of flux and becoming. As she writes in the origin story of the word, her intention is to use it as a concept for creative writing: a lens to look at change and stability over longer periods of time and from non-human perspectives. My engagement with the concept has broadened the scope of its lens to include what I see as the inherently relational and generative aspects of places of change. This has been brought to the fore by approaching alterotopias as sites of non-reductive, heterogeneous and entangled becoming.
Alterotopias conceived as such assume reality as full and pluriform: as teaming and brimming with generative entanglements between material and temporal presences of vastly different scales and rhythms that are able to affect each other’s becoming. Moreover, it sees this entanglement as a constitutive force of the earth’s creative becoming. The budding practice of creative encountering that I am imagining aims to celebrate and nurture those same qualities of entangled becoming. Before taking a deeper dive into which worlds and ways of relating this will make possible, I first want to address a related and complementary seed for the idea of entangled becoming.
Alterotopias as sites of entangled alterity
The other crucial seed for conceptualising alterotopias and the practice of creative encountering can be found in Ghassan Hage’s writings on alter politics, radical alterity, minor realities and critical anthropology. As we will see, this seed underscores why the artistic and embodied aspects of engaging with places of change are both important when it comes to prefiguring more just and plural worlds and ways of relating.
In his book Alter Politics Hage writes about the need to cultivate what he calls ‘alter-political’ passion as a complement to the more dominant ‘anti-political’ (oppositional) passion that drives much critical thought. Alter political passion is, simply put, the political drive to make the world other, to make ourselves other. What I find so relevant in Hage’s book, apart from appreciating his highly nuanced and critical way of writing, is his notion of the ‘alter’ and what he calls radical alterity as grounded in what he calls minor realities. Minor realities are not minor in the sense of being less important or less real. They are equally grounded in the real and our embodied relation to it, but may become overshadowed by dominant realities.
“Radical alterity is present everywhere. There is always an outside of a system of intelligibility, of governmentality, of domestication, of instrumental reason … etc. There is always an excess to how one defines a social relation also: it is always more than a ‘relation of power’, a ‘relation of domination’, a ‘relation of exploitation’, an ‘ethnic or a racial relation’ … etc”
– Ghassan Hage
Hage pleads for a critical anthropology that is able to think the alter in addition to critical theory’s predominant focus on thinking anti-politics. According to Hage the critical anthropologist is someone who is “always on the look out for minor and invisible spaces or realities that are lurking in the world around us”. He continues to describe the ethos of a critical anthropology as searching for encounters with spaces “that give enough of themselves to tell us that they exist but are nonetheless impervious to easy capture and to being assimilated to our dominant realities.”
Following Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Bruno Latour he positions this critical anthropology as move away from the dominance of mono-realism in western modernity, which they argue, is what has led to our inability to recognise the myriad ways in which we are enmeshed in the multiple realities in which we also exist.
“being enmeshed and dwelling in one reality that becomes dominant never stops us from being enmeshed and dwelling in a multiplicity of other realities, even if we lose a sense of these.”
– Ghassan Hage
The arguments that Hage presents to undermine the dominance of mono-realism are clearly politically driven. Amongst other things, he is agitating against the common dismissals of the radical potential of our hopes and aspirations for a better world on account of them being unrealistic. Hage shows that things are rather the other way around: thinking the ‘alter’ is not less, but rather more realistic in the sense that it acknowledges reality itself to be more than what is narrowly seen by dominant paradigms and social, political narratives. As such what Hage is showing is that radical imagination is an actual material threat to the status quo.
The spaces Hage is talking about above, are closely aligned to alterotopias seen as sites of entangled becoming. In their state of flux and entanglement, each material and temporal presence harbours radical alterity. In relation to itself as well as in relation to those it is bound up with. Altertopias therefor, are not just sites of entangled becoming, they are also sites of entangled alterity: teaming and brimming with generative entanglements between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, the accessible and the inaccessible. An important thing to note here is that in the case of alterotopias it is not about the state of being ‘other’, as in you are one thing, I am another. The focus is rather on being other in terms of change and becoming, in relation to what one is tied up with. It is therefore more about becoming other, causing and being caused to be other.
Alterotopian encounters with places of change are then about searching for ‘alter’ spaces that give enough of themselves to have something to say to us, or in the words of Viveiros de Castro are able to haunt us. Seen as sites of entangled alterity, alterotopias highlight the many ways we are bound to what is other, multiple and unknown.
Artistic
Where Hage pleads for developing a critical anthropology, I propose a similar ethos to inspire an Alterotopian practice of artistic encountering. The premise is that artistic practice as a mode of engagement is particularly suited not just to being haunted by alterity, but to being propelled by it. By creatively engaging with alterotopias, relations between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen will shift and change depending on who and what is engaging and the degree to which they allow themselves to be affected.
Taking a speculative leap ahead, I imagine an Alterotopian practice of creative encountering to be about entangling our longing for and prefiguration of more just, sustainable and plural worlds, with specific places of change, as well as with artistic practices, people and initiatives that inspire and nurture radically different ways of relating to the earth and each other. In our particular case, this ranges from nurturing a practice of creative writing, to developing artistic installations that provide embodied experiences of situated, relational and more-than-human power-with.
The crucial point is that an Alteropian lens helps us see that our engagement with places of change as sites of entangled alterity matters: it literally makes a difference in terms of what can be brought to the fore, which futures we are able to imagine, and thus which worlds and ways of relating become more viable.
In line with Ghassan Hage, I would argue that alterotopias harbour transformative and political power: the seeds for the otherwise that can be brought to the fore through artistic engagements with alterotopias are grounded in the myriad actual material and temporal entanglements in which we also, already dwell. In other words, alterotopias are the material and temporal ground of so many futures otherwise. Engaging with them through creative encounters is a way of grounding our radical hope and radical imagination in a potent present.
Alterotopias are the material and temporal ground of futures otherwise. Engaging with them through creative encounters is a way of grounding our radical hope and radical imagination in a potent present.
Embodied
Besides the artistic aspect, another important aspect of Alterotopian encountering is embodiment. Like geological and cultural places of change, our bodies too are sites of entangled alterity. Think only of the unseen processes at a cellular level, the bacteria, as well as unconscious experiences and memories to list but a few. Whether we like it or not, the otherness within is very much part of what constitutes a living being. It is also what binds us to the many other material and temporal presences around us.
So when we think of embodied artistic practice in relation to places of change and creative encountering it is about allowing ourselves to be porous and ‘act in concert’ with what lies beyond our conscious experience. This might seem threatening, or at minimum to be at odds with our sense of agency and power. There certainly are good reasons to be cautious of the unknown. However, as I see it, the dominant ways of understanding the world and our place in it clearly have a tendency to error on the opposite side of the extreme, paving the way for a politics of fear and othering.
Perhaps art and the type of creative encounters we imagine for Alterotopia can provide a place where we can nurture our ability to feel more at ease with what is other within and beyond. I for one am definitely using my artistic practice to get better at sensing which people, situations, and materials will propel what wants to be brought into being. This does entail stepping into the unknown each time I enter into a new project and collaboration, but paradoxically it also gives me a strong sense of agency: of being an active force that is giving shape to the unknown, in a bringing-into-being-with kind of way.
Based on this experience I would even argue that the otherness within and beyond ourselves, the ways in which we are bound to it, harbours aliberatory potential. Which brings me to what I would like to introduce as the paradox of entangled power: contrary to what we may commonly believe, we might in fact have more creative power when we decenter our sense of agency to include what lies beyond ourselves, because this increases the possibilities of what we are able to bring into being.
Prefiguring radical belonging
So how do all these seeds inform what we want to bring into being with Alterotopia? In a nutshell, the Alterotopian practice of creative encountering is a celebratory and affirmative practice that is inherently relational, generative, artistic and embodied. As I have argued above, our engagement with alterotopias as places of change harbours transformative potential: it grounds our radical imagination in a potent present and with that so many futures otherwise.
Importantly, Alterotopian creative encounters also aim to prefigure more just, sustainable and plural ways of relating to the earth and each other. As such our proposed Alterotopian approach can also be seen as part of the fundamental shift that is needed in terms of how we live and relate to the earth and each other: a shift from the devastating dominance of oppressive, exploitative and extractive was of relating, towards strengthening alternative ways of relating that foreground what I would like to call radical belonging: a kind of belonging which is grounded in the myriad ways we are bound to the earth’s creative becoming, to place and time, to past and future generations, to other species and to each other, in a creative and intimate becoming-with. This type of belonging is radical because it is rooted in the factuality of being a living creature that is in constant exchange with its environment. No matter how oblivious we are, no matter how much oppression we might suffer, the ground of this type of belonging is something that cannot be eradicated.
I see the practice of creative encountering as one way of rediscovering and nurturing our sense of radical belonging. We do this in resonance against the grain with many other initiatives, thinkers and artists that celebrate other ways of relating to the world and each other, including indigenous, queer and marginalised ways of knowing and resisting. The political potential of these alternative ways of relating is both potent and precarious. There clearly is a need to strengthen, as Donna Harroway puts it, ‘our capacity for imagining and caring for other worlds, both those that exist precariously now […] and those we need to bring into being in alliance with other critters, for still possible recuperating pasts, presents and futures’3. This adds another layer to our ground: we need each other to strengthen and amplify what is otherwise at risk of being pushed to the margins, overlooked and unattended.
Becoming otherwise
To round off this deep dive with something more tangible, let’s go back to the encounter that gave rise to Alterotopia itself, i.e. the encounter between the academic practice of Flor Avelino and my own artistic practice. In the process of creating Alterotopia, both of us have had to put our ideas, time and aspirations at stake. As Flor writes in the origin story of the word alterotopia, it’s original meaning and application have been changing through the encounter in ways she could never have imagined. So too has the way we spend our time, which in my case has shifted to accommodate a more active philosophical practice and the building of Alterotopia as a place. By putting our time and concepts at stake we have allowed them to be affected and changed while they are brought into being through the encounter and the effort we put in. This process is also changing what Alterotopia itself is becoming and will make possible.
As with any creative encounter, it is up to those who engage in them to push the consequences of the encounter further and see them through. The seeds for the otherwise that are brought to the fore, need to be nurtured in order to grow. There is in other words an invitation to start and there is an ongoing invitation to keep going. It is this ongoing invitation that Flor and I would like to extend with Alterotopia: towards ourselves, but also towards the people, places and practices we are already tied up with, in generative entanglements.
Any way they come, Alterotopian creative encounters are our way of dancing with the trouble. A way of staying attuned to the pain and injustice in our world, while attending to the seeds for so many worlds and futures otherwise. Seeds which are also and already here, but might otherwise remain unseen, repressed and marginalised by our dominant systems of extraction, exploitation and othering.
We long to bring forth through correspondence, attunement and thoughtful engagements, a way of thinking, feeling and seeing with others, with matter and with life.
Nurturing a practice of creative encountering answers the desire to bring forth through correspondence, attunement and thoughtful engagements, a way of thinking, seeing and creating with others, with matter and with life: generative, celebratory and generous.
March 17th
Marijke de Pous
Notes
1. I don’t have time to go into any of it at length here, but for the interested reader, concepts such as sympoiesis (Donna Haraway), Earth Beings (Marisol de la Cadena), alter-politics (Ghassan Hage), companion-agents (Vicianne Despret), ethics of affirmation (Rosi Braidotti) and Matters of Care (Puig de la Bellacasa), together with various strands of new-materialism by scholars such as Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Isabelle Stengers, Manual Delanda. Each provide nutrientrich ground for the type of entangled, earthly engagement and artistic crossovers we hope to put into practice in Alterotopia.
2. In hindsight it is no surprise that I treated the concept in this way, and why it didn’t feel quite right to introduce alterotopia it in contrast with Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. Conceiving alterotopia as a fluid concept resonates with intensive readings of heterotopia such as provided by Heidi Sohn in her chapter heterotopia unbound. When thought in terms of change and becoming, heterotopia also has the potential to bring the generative aspects of difference and alterity to the fore.. Sohn, H, Heterotopia Unbound: Undisciplined Approaches to ‘Space Otherwise’. In J. Urabayen, & J. León Casero (Eds.), Differences in the City: Postmetropolitan Heterotopias as Liberal Utopian Dreams (pp. 3-15). Nova Science Publishers.
3. Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q.
