Decolonizing Prefiguration: Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of Hope and the Multiversum

In the past four decades, together with workers’ protest and strikes, subjectivities other than the organized working class – including indigenous peoples’ movements – have become stronger and more visible in the global struggle against global capitalism and for social, cognitive and environmental justice. These resistances are not only rejecting the present critical condition of the planet by demanding that the state act with urgency; these grassroots collectives, movements and community networks are also experimenting with alternative practices and social relations around issues of social reproduction of life amid a new global capitalist crisis deeply affecting the social reproduction of human and non-human life in the planet. This long-term transformation in the radical agency has awoken global solidarity, but the significant differences among these collective struggles still deserve attention. What are the clues to challenge the universalizing power of global capital and to decolonize prefiguration by finding adequate ways of understanding difference? This chapter addresses this question aiming to contribute to the debate around prefiguration by suggesting that Bloch’s philosophy of hope is fundamental to understanding and decolonizing prefiguration: first, it facilitates comprehension of prefiguration as possibility, based on the utopian feature of the material world; second, it understands utopia as concrete praxis; third, it expands the meaning of prefiguration to a plurality of struggles and movements, ranging from urban resistances to indigenous peoples’ defence of their territory against extractivism. I explore three ways in which Bloch’s philosophy of hope can enhance the theory and practice of prefiguration: first, I expose Bloch’s philosophy of of ‘possibility’ as a condition grounded in the (utopian) material world; second, I present Bloch’s notion of ‘concrete utopia’ as a praxis that oposes ready- made abstract utopias, and reposition prefiguration within, and not outside, the process of accumulation of capital, mediated by the state. Third, I propose that Bloch’s notion of the ‘multiversum’ offers a decolonising -non-linear- reading of history and time that enables us to decolonize prefiguration – that is, to comprehend prefigurative struggles as non-synchronous spatial temporalities emerging from a multiplicity of situations, oppressions, and relations in, against and beyond the violent ongoing process of indifference, homogenization and synchronization that underpins the accumulation of capital