Territories • Fabulation • Restorative Justice
transdisciplinary research and practice
The New School / Parsons School of Design
Examining, amplifying, and co-creating narratives that unsettle colonial assumptions
Critical and collective fabulation provide rich soil from which story can emerge and transgress the boundaries and limitations of linear time, property forms and the crisis of imagination.
Fabulations are processual and emergent forms of story, rather than outcomes of representation. Fabulation is a way of becoming-other through the co-creation of hybrid fiction/nonfiction stories that contribute to conditions for invoking a people to come.
Designing Florestania, Forest as Cosmopolis
Florestania is a neologism that brings together the concept of citizenship and forest rights created by the rubber tapper social movement in the 1980s, led by Brazilian union organizer and activist Chico Mendes. In his essay In The Forest Ruins, author, educator and curator Paulo Tavares returns to the work of Débora Danowiski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro to question the idea of “environment” in the western cultural imagination replacing with what the peoples of Amazonia consider “a society of societies, an international arena, a cosmopoliteia.”
Proposing Narrative Changes in the Amazon
Conservation efforts in the Amazon face challenges that extend beyond issues related to land ownership to encompass the ecological balance of the forest. Within this complex landscape, intricate social, political, economic, and epistemological dynamics come into play. At stake are high-value objectives, and prevailing narratives of neoliberal development, driven by Brazilian state politics and international actors, significantly influence how conservation and stewardship are approached. Addressing these multifaceted challenges of preserving the Amazon is a collective endeavor that cannot be achieved by a single actor alone. Instead, it necessitates the integration of diverse perspectives and worldviews from various actors engaged in conservation efforts. Indigenous knowledge, scientific understanding, and local beliefs all contribute valuable insights. This calls for a collaborative exploration of different approaches within deliberate spaces of cooperation.
Reconciliation, transformative and restorative justice, and responsible action
This research investigates the possibilities for responsible action and restorative justice to redress the harm of past and ongoing coloniality through practices with collective imaginaries, or fabulations, among Indigenous, settler-colonial and other nonindigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America). The inquiry process is informed through deep listening with traditional knowledges and through socially engaged approaches for cinematic story experiments within myriad tactical and improvisational considerations.
“For many Indigenous Nations, as it was practiced in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to bear witness, and community witnessing, is foundational for collective healing and transformation, honoring the truth of lived and living experiences. Fabulation amplifies the spirit of this natural law and governing principle in regenerative and mysterious ways that host the potential to surprise, ravel and awaken the deeper movements of the journey towards ways forward.”
— Erin Dixon (Giizhigaate, Ashati Sakahikan)
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