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Progress in Human Geography 1–18 Geographies of the future: ª The Author(s) 2020

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Craig Jeffrey and Jane Dyson University of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract This paper uses an examination of prefigurative politics – popularly imagined as ‘being the change you wish to see’ – to reflect on geographies of the future. We argue that prefigurative politics, which has become common since the mid-1990s, typically proceeds through multiple forms of improvisation. Successful prefigurative politics is usually institutionalised within organisations and movements and reshapes practices, discourses, and structures of power. We demonstrate how a focus on prefigurative politics can inform scholarship on the ‘anticipatory politics’ associated with dominant institutions and geographies of the future more broadly by highlighting ways in which people seek to enact visions of the future and illustrating the impact of these oppositional practices of future making. We argue that prefigurative politics could be a springboard for investigating means-ends alignment as a characteristic of political action and the present as a terrain of politics.

Keywords anticipatory politics, geographies of the future, improvisation, prefigurative politics, the present

I Introduction the social relations, political structures, and cultural practices they would like to see general- Notwithstanding a rapid rise of geographical ised in the future. We identify three common work on the future (Anderson, 2010; Kraftl, aspects of prefigurative politics as it has 2013; Castree, 2014), investigations of local, emerged since the mid-1990s: a tendency for situated efforts by people to imagine different prefigurative politics to involve productive futures have been less apparent. While substan- improvisation; the importance of institutiona- tial attention has been directed towards how lised spaces of relative protection in the fuller dominant institutions pre-empt futures in order development of prefigurative politics; and the to manage the present (e.g. Anderson, 2010; capacity of prefigurative politics to impact Amoore, 2011; Kraftl, 2013), the production wider society. Throughout we focus on progres- of ‘counter-futures’ by marginalised or minori- sive forms of prefigurative politics. tised populations lags behind as a theme (but see Dodds, 2013; Shaw and Sharp, 2013; Dyson and Jeffrey, 2018). This paper addresses this point through offering an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of prefigurative politics, high- Corresponding author: Craig Jeffrey, School of Geography, Faculty of Science, lighting the efforts of multiple sets of people University of Melbourne, Carlton, Victoria, Australia. in different parts of the world to try to prefigure Email: [email protected] 2 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)

Analysis of oppositional prefigurative poli- sake. But the graffiti in Oxford 50 years ago tics answers a call among geographers for looks odd from the perspective of early 2020. grounded work on how counter-futures are con- Governments, corporations, multilateral institu- structed, discussed, imagined, lived, and tions, NGOs, and a wide variety of citizens are defended (Anderson, 2010; Kraftl, 2013; Cas- increasingly mobilising the idea of ‘the future’. tree, 2014). It highlights similarities, differ- The causes of this apparent effervescence of ences, and connections between dominant ‘the future’ are complex and vary regionally but efforts to manipulate the future for partisan ends relate to a set of converging global crises, most and oppositional action aimed at creating differ- notably around climate change, technological ent futures. It also demonstrates the value of transformation, and the inability of contempo- reflecting across the discipline of geography rary capitalism to address the social needs of the on the extent to which means-ends alignment majority of the world’s population. The rise of characterises social and political action. the future is also connected at the same time to a Finally, the examination of prefigurative generalised ‘bonfire of certainties’ associated politics suggests the value of considering from with the decline or reformulation of organised different perspectives where and how the religion and waning belief in the major political present becomes an object of intense reflection. philosophies characteristic of the 20th century, The remainder of the paper is split into five including liberalism. sections. The next section introduces anticipa- Geographers studying the ubiquity of future tory politics. The following section introduces talk during the 2010s tended to focus on how prefigurative politics and outlines our argument. dominant institutions manipulate the future. In a The subsequent three sections examine different seminal article, Ben Anderson (2010) discussed aspects of prefigurative politics – improvisa- the contemporary importance of the process tion, institutionalisation, and impact. The con- through which national governments, in partic- clusions relate our discussion of prefigurative ular, use visions of the future to manage the politics to wider themes within geographies of complex process of governance. He argues that the future. states frequently engage in a type of ‘anticipatory politics’ where discourses of emergency, crisis, and threat are usedtojustifyvarious II Anticipatory politics acts and interventions. As Anderson (2010: Anecdotally, during student protests in Oxford 782) puts it, anticipatory politics proceeds ‘by in the late 1960s, someone scrawled on Balliol (re) making life tensed on the verge of cata- College Wall: ‘Due to a lack of interest, tomor- strophe in ways that protect, save, and care for row has been cancelled’. This may have been certain valued lives, and damage, destroy, and prescient: the last quarter of the 20th century abandon other lives’. Anderson goes on to show involved, in one view, a ‘slow cancellation of how governments’ political manipulation of the the future’ (Berardi, 2011, quoted in Anderson, future works though linked processes: prophe- 2017). This was manifest in major synoptic sying the future, engaging in complex techno- treatments of the global condition, such as Fran- logically driven tasks in relation to that future, cis Fukuyama’s (1989) oft-cited essay ‘The End and then enacting changes that have the general of History?’, and in the changing form of some effect of reordering social and political oppor- social movements, which, according to anar- tunities in the present. Many geographers have chism expert Uri Gordon (2012), commonly built on Anderson’s work on dominance and the moved from seeking to anticipate a better future spatio-social production of the future. They to simply celebrating the present for its own have shown, for example, how powerful Jeffrey and Dyson 3 institutions use the notion of an impending studies of oppositional approaches to the future political emergency to justify coercive or secre- that might confound or short-circuit dominant tive state interventions (Karg, 2013), how the emergency narratives (e.g. Pinder, 2013). With climate emergency has been strategically some important exceptions, such as Shaw and deployed to promote narrow, partisan agendas Sharp’s (2013) studies of fantastical futures (Karg, 2013; Methmann and Rothe, 2012; Gran- associated with gaming and Kraftl’s (2013) jou et al., 2017), how anti-terror initiatives play analysis of utopic visions in education, how- on the notion of dangerous interlopers to ratio- ever, geographical analyses have not very often nalise securitisation (Anderson, 2012), and how followed this injunction. Consideration of the law enforcement officers punish those deemed interdisciplinary literature on oppositional pre- to embody a future criminal threat through a figurative politics highlights one way of addres- process that Wilson and McCulloch (2015) term sing this gap. ‘pre-crime’. Much of this work follows Anderson in focusing especially on the spatial dynamics III Prefigurative politics through which the state governs techno- Carl Boggs (1977: 2) defined prefigurative pol- scientific futures. Amin (2013) examines how itics as: ‘The embodiment, within the ongoing governments and corporations have colluded in political practice of a movement, of those forms the development of a highly spatialised ‘neolib- of social relations, decision-making, culture and eral calculus of risk mitigation’ in order to human experience that are the ultimate goal’. deploy ideas of preparedness and resilience that Unlike straightforwardly protesting against a further commercial interests (see also Kinsley, dominant regime, prefigurative formations 2012; Amoore, 2011). Leszczynski (2016) dis- involve activists directing effort into perform- cusses the spatial dynamics through which gov- ing now their vision of a ‘better world’ to come. ernments anticipate future cities, harnessing Prefigurative politics is an inherently spatial and processes of data gathering to conjure and then performative genre of political activism in promulgate future scenarios. Other work analy- which people enact a vision of change – through ses the manner in which dominant powers treat organisation, design, architecture, practices, the bodies of certain citizens as requiring man- bodies, or something as simple as a gesture or agement (Olson, 2015), and there is also a rich demeanour – and promote this as indicative of vein of work on the use of spatial technologies an imminent or more distant ‘future’. to address climate change (Granjou et al., 2017). Commentators typically trace the salience of Across all these examples, the narrative of the idea of prefigurative politics to anarchist emergency depends upon governing as if the writing of the late 19th and early 20th century subject of that emergency is already there in (see Springer, 2014a). In contrast to the claim of embryonic form in the present (Anderson, some Marxists that submission to a party struc- 2010, 2017). Governments therefore engage in ture was required in order to realise an egalitar- a type of ‘prefiguration’ where the ‘figure’ – be ian society, anarchists argued that the goals of a it a trans-species epidemic or terrorist threat – movement must be embodied in its practice serves as a harbinger of a danger threatening to (e.g. Kropotkin, 2009 [1898]); social move- engulf society. ments should be ‘coherent’ in the sense of align- Anderson (2010, 2017) argues that this spa- ing how they go about struggling for change tially and temporally complex mobilisation of with the idea of what a post-change ‘better ideas about the future has never been the sole world’ will look like. Prefigurative politics also prerogative of the state, and he appeals for more owes a considerable debt to feminist scholarship 4 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) and action since the 1960s, particularly the formations are broadly consistent with the emphasis in this writing on the importance of emphasis in geography on the rise over the same matters of process and the notion that ‘points of period in what Paul Chatterton and Jenny Pick- difference should be embraced and incorporated erill (2010: 730) term ‘autonomous geogra- into evolving visions of the future’ (Klodawsky phies’ defined as ‘those spaces where people et al., 2013: 541). Many forms of gender politics desire to constitute non-capitalist, egalitarian have a strong prefigurative element via the and solidaristic forms of political, social, and instantiation of demands, perceived injustices, economic organization through a combination and hoped-for futures within the bodies of social of resistance and creation’. actors (e.g. Silvey, 2004; see Longhurst and Against the backdrop of this effervescence of Johnston, 2014). prefigurative politics, commentators have A crucial proximate cause of the recent effer- raised new questions about precisely how to vescence of literature on prefigurative politics is define the concept (see Swain, 2019). Confu- the rise of major movements, including feminist sion has arisen in the literature about whether formations, between the mid-1990s and early prefigurative politics refers to particular auton- 2010s. Often disenchanted with mainstream omous groups (e.g. see Kraftl, 2013) or whether multilateral forums of discussion and the per- prefigurative politics – as in Boggs’ original formance of national governments, these move- definition – simply means any instance in which ments and institutions sought prefigurative people try to model the future in the present, action as a way to achieve change. This included which could include reactionary movements, organisations such as the World Social Forum such as Golden Dawn in Greece. In this paper (Fominaya, 2010), the Occupy Movement we focus on forms of prefigurative politics that (Brissette, 2013; Halvorsen, 2017), and various are broadly ‘progressive’ in the sense of being facets of the collection of uprisings and asser- opposed to unjust political structures and com- tions known as ‘the Arab Spring’ in North mitted to individual equality and freedom of Africa and the Middle East (see Tadros, expression. We nevertheless cast our net wider 2015). Occupy is usually taken as emblematic. than the ‘autonomous groups’ described by Occupy Movement activists directed energy Chatterton and Pickerill and well beyond simply into ‘societies in waiting’ in which economic, examining urban anarchism or those committed social, and everyday practice anticipated the to decentralised democracy. Definitional issues urban futures to which they aspired. Occupy also hinge on the extent to which a formation protest camps in major cities often contained has to be ‘prefigurative’ in order for it to be clinics, kitchens, healthcare facilities, media identified as such and the related issue of centres, and democratic decision-making struc- whether prefigurative politics requires that peo- tures that activists presented as prefigurative ple self-consciously understand their action as (Graeber, 2013). The many other examples of prefigurative. In our view, the term loses its prefigurative politics that emerged during this explanatory power and specificity unless it is period include participatory environmental viewed as a self-conscious effort to direct organisations (Mason, 2014), online networks energy into practising in the present the future (Kulick, 2014), queer festivals (Eleftheriadis, that is sought. Finally, the ‘politics’ part of pre- 2015), alternative schools (Kraftl, 2013), alter- figurative politics is contested. We believe that native economies (McCarthy, 2006; White and to qualify as prefigurative politics, a set of prac- Williams, 2012), and everyday forms of prefi- tices must involve issues of power, conflict, and guration (see Jeffrey, 2013; Dyson and Jeffrey, transformation. With all these points in mind, 2016), to name but a few. Many of these prefigurative politics can be defined as the self- Jeffrey and Dyson 5 conscious channelling of energy into modelling nature of the anticipatory politics of dominant the forms of action that are sought to be general- organisations. ised in the future in circumstances characterised In what follows we draw on the work of geo- by power, hierarchy, and conflict. graphers, anthropologists, sociologists, psy- Oppositional prefigurative politics thus chologists and those in related fields to argue defined and the anticipatory politics discussed for the importance of analysing oppositional in the previous section are to some extent prefigurative politics for what it tells us about responses to the same set of changing global how people comport themselves in relation to conditions and make some of the same assump- the future and how to relate anticipatory politics tions about the future or futures. Both these to other aspects of future making. We attend to forms of politics are connected to a sense among what we see as three dimensions of the governments and citizens that key aspects of development of many forms of oppositional human existence, for example ecological and prefigurative politics. First, we show how pre- climate processes and our relationship to our figurative politics typically proceeds through an own bodies, will be substantially different in intensive commitment to improvising with an imminent future. Technological, climatic, available ideas, materials, spaces, and bodies, and political uncertainties have encouraged this and affective states. Second, we suggest that the sense of the possibility of radical difference. In aggregation of prefigurative practices tends addition, and partly at odds with this notion of towards the institutionalisation of effort, such being caught up in inevitable and bewildering that prefigurative actors often create protected change, capitalist and other organisations have spaces where counter futures can be further instilled in institutions and individuals a sense developed. Finally, we discuss the extent to which institutionalised practices impact wider of a capacity for being able to act on the present systems, for example by altering the momentum in highly effectual ways, in the process of of dominant projects, changing perceptions, or achieving self-fulfilment (Guyer, 2007) or shaping spaces and society. In moving through reshaping the world through dramatic action the focus on improvisation, institutionalisation, (Schneider, 2013). But anticipatory politics and and impact we debunk the notions that prefi- prefigurative politics respond to this mixture of gurative politics is typically concerned with rea- uncertainty and an imagined capacity to act on lising a fixed utopia, that it usually proceeds the present in somewhat opposing ways. Antici- through individual self-transformations, and patory politics tends to orient itself towards pre- that it is commonly ineffective. serving the present against the deprecations of Through this discussion, we show that prefi- hypothesised dangerous futures. By contrast, gurative politics, like anticipatory politics, is those involved in oppositional prefigurative predicated on the idea that the future will be politics seek ways of changing the present. They different from the present and developed typically do so not only to manage dangerous through the production of spatial processes, futures and but also to address existing crises – material engagements, embodied practice, and ones that may not have been emphasised or affective atmospheres. But we also highlight a spotlighted as emergencies by dominant pow- crucial difference between the two forms. Most ers, but which affect the living conditions, secu- notably, prefigurative politics seeks to embrace rity, and affective states of marginalised and the potential of the future to be more inclusive, minoritised populations. One of the general sustainable, and equitable than the present, effects of oppositional prefigurative politics is whereas institutions engaged in anticipatory thus to highlight the selective and partisan politics usually imagine the future as threat. 6 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)

We also argue that prefigurative political actors future society is a myth, albeit one that main- sometimes confound the visions of the future tains a hold over discussions of prefiguration disseminated by dominant institutions and alter within academia and among practitioners (see the discursive and spatial environments in Fominaya, 2010). We should enter some which dominant powers operate. caveats, however. The notion of an impending dramatic change and the metaphor of the synecdoche may be relevant for analysing the strate- IV Improvisation gic use of prefiguration by dominant A key dimension of prefigurative politics is its organisations (anticipatory politics), for exam- commitment to action. This fundamental orien- ple where a state obsessively concentrates on a tation towards enacting futures separates prefi- single case of disease as harbinger of an epi- gurative politics from anticipatory politics, demic (Anderson, 2017). Moreover, the idea which can deploy prefiguration as a tactic but of prefigurative politics as a preparation for is not closely wedded to the idea of doing so. It some imminent future shock may have exer- also separates prefigurative politics from many cised a hold over the imaginations of some par- other forms of oppositional politics which are ticipants in prominent recent prefigurative concerned with acting on dominant powers agitations, as reflected for example in the intui- rather than acting out social alternatives. tions of some Occupy activists that they repre- Some scholars have argued that, in order to sented a brave new world ‘just around the be defined as prefigurative, a political form corner’ (see Schneider, 2013). But the majority must have a fully worked out vision of utopia of studies of oppositional prefigurative politics (Gordon, 2018; cf. Swain, 2019). Notably, in the period between the mid-1990s and early Gordon (2018) traces the idea of prefigurative 2010s make clear that the contents of the pre- politics back to medieval and early modern Eur- figurative struggle are rarely fixed in advance opean millennial movements that positioned (see also Vasudevan’s (2015b: 345) critique of insurrection as preparation for the imminent Simone on this point), and nor are participants arrival of Christ (see also Levitas, 2013). typically very confident that their prefiguration For example, in the 1660s in southern England, actually presages a near-term future. Prefigura- Gerard Winstanley began a ‘diggers movement’ tive activists are more like uncertain actors in which he occupied and directly cultivated improvising around a theme than religious sub- former common land in defiance of local land- jects adhering to a creed, and trial and error are owners. Winstanley emphasised that the act of core founding components of most prefigura- digging was a harbinger of an emerging social tive action. rebellion and a foreshadowing of the arrival of Tadros’s (2015) research on feminist acti- the ‘Spirit of Christ’. Such examples, for Gor- vists’ prefigurative politics is illustrative in this don (2018), demonstrate a wider point: that all regard. Working in the midst of the anti- adherents of prefigurative politics inevitably Mubarak protests of late 2010 and early 2011, follow a blueprint. It follows from this argu- Tadros identified a cadre of young women who ment, too, that prefigurative politics is typically sought to raise awareness of long-term gender- a synecdoche: a miniature version of the society based violence and discrimination. She argues desired (see Swain, 2019). In this optic, all that that activists trialled different ideas in order to is required of prefigurative politics is for it to arrive at a vision of how social relations should expand outwards from its founding space. be organised in urban Egypt. This involved test- In our view, however, oppositional prefigura- ing different ways of relating to each other and tive politics’ strict adherence to a model for a those outside the movement, occupying and Jeffrey and Dyson 7 crafting urban space in new ways, and judi- alternative urban life’ (2015a: 321). Building on ciously developing the patrols that sought to Simone’s (2004) writing on the reworking of guarantee women’s safety, all the time jettison- urban materials in pursuit of social opportuni- ing unsuccessful actions and retaining those that ties in several African cities, Vasudevan charts provided momentum. Jenna Maeckelbergh the diverse, creative, and unusual ways in which (2011) makes a similar point in her work on the squatters retrofit spaces and build social rela- alter-globalisation movement, carried out as a tions simultaneously. For example, Vasudevan participant in this movement over a period of notes that some squatters in Berlin in the 1960s ten years. She charts the capacity of the sections and 1970s occupied abandoned spaces that of the movement to change the terms of debate required renovation, and, in doing so, not only regarding inequality. Prefigurative improvisa- connected these houses to utilities but also tion was central to this success. Maeckelbergh reworked their physical structure and meaning, writes (2011: 1): ‘By literally trying out new creating more shared spaces, reusing found political structures in large-scale, inter-cultural materials, and queering established notions of decision-making processes [ ...] movement domesticity and the home. actors are learning how to govern’. She con- The themes in Vasudevan’s work – of the cludes that what distinguishes the alter- energetic improvisations of urban denizens, of globalisation movement from previous the enrolment of multiple spaces and materials movements was in part the sense among in their activity, and of the capacity of such activists that much about the form, spatiality, improvisation to recast assumptions – are and direction of the activism was open and up repeated in many other recent geographical for debate. Such accounts connect with much of accounts of prefigurative urban life. This the work on social movements emerging in the includes Jonathan Silver (2014)’s work with last third of the 20th century, notably Antonio slum dwellers in Accra, Ghana, who improvise Melucci’s (1989: 208) argument, that: ‘The electricity and housing provision in ‘incremen- submerged networks of social movements are tal infrastructures’ that survive in large part laboratories of experience’ in which ‘new because they are in a constant state of adjust- problems and questions are posed ...[and] ment; Vanesa Castán Broto and Harriet Bulke- new answers are invented and tested’. ley’s (2013) analysis of how climate activists Alex Vasudevan’s research on the history of have sought to prefigure alternative practices squatting and related actions in European cities within cities across the world, innovating since the 1960s is important in developing this around environmental practices in often theme of prefigurative improvisation, not least remarkable ways; and Asara’s (2017) account because his work pegs the process of improvisa- of the Indignados movement in Spain, where tion back to the themes of spatiality and materi- thesquarebecameacrucibleforsocial ality that underpin much of the recent work on invention. anticipatory politics. Vasudevan argues that One of the common themes across much of process of occupying buildings and seeking to this work is of the reflexivity of those engaged inhabit and alter them is part of a wider set of in prefigurative improvisation. Fominaya strategies and tactics among urban marginalised (2010) notes that the World Social Forum acti- populations of creative improvisation. With due vists that she studied were constantly debating acknowledgement of the dangers of imposing the relative value of prefigurative action vis-à- political sensibilities on populations who may vis actions that might involve diverging from not be activist minded, Vasudevan writes that to means-ends alignment but yield strategic bene- squat ‘is to open space for piecing together an fits. In other settings, reflexivity is focused on 8 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) the precise content of the message that activists environment in which they operate or in terms are seeking to communicate – for example, how of their own prior experience – to act, as it were, much is core and how much can be renegotiated ‘unrealistically’. This could be viewed as a form (see Schneider, 2013). In still other cases, and as of ‘prolepsis’: ‘anticipating greater competence part of this, participants in prefigurative action and possibility for success even before such appear to be especially concerned with monitor- skills and opportunities have emerged’ (Swain, ing their practice for ‘signs’ that might provide 2019: 13; see also Brescó de Luna, 2017). If clues to what should or should not be part of the prefigurative politics refers to instances in post-struggle landscape they are seeking to cre- which people channel energy into modelling a ate. Words, actions, objects, material practices, desired future, proleptic prefigurative politics spatial plays, moods, gestures and performances involves particularly audacious attempts to are all scrutinised for their ability to either build ‘reach ahead’ and sets up an especially stark a new order or detract or dilute that order (Gor- contrast between prefiguration and the sur- don, 2012; Schneider, 2013; Carroll, 2015). For rounding milieu. For example, Fiona McCon- example, Carroll (2015) argues that a character- nell (2009) shows that Tibetan activists istic feature of the Transnational Alternative sheltering in India advanced their right to re- Policy Groups (TAPGs) that he studied is that establish themselves in their homeland in part they seek to identify elements of utopian futures through creating a government in waiting within that already exist within present practices, the Indian polity, complete with ministerial develop these practices, and provide them with appointments, daily business, and the trappings support so that they become sustained. The of office. This elaborate dress rehearsal rein- importance of the present emerges in a different forced their claim to sovereignty and provided way on literature on urban anarchism in the sec- the social ties, and some of the political skills, ond half of the 20th century in Europe (Gordon, required to keep the movement alive, even as it 2012; Ince, 2012). Gordon (2012) argues that might appear ‘unrealistic’ with respect to the anarchists believed that even the most ‘enligh- wider politics of the region. In a somewhat sim- tened’ activists in their organisation unwittingly ilar vein, Davina Cooper (2020) has discussed a espoused ideas that future generations would prefigurative law reform movement in the UK regard as complicit with domination. Anarchists that explicitly sought to operate ‘as if’ radical also believed that patterns of domination that reforms around gender were already under close had been tackled in a previous era could discussion. Through reference to this and other resurface and that their activity was prone to examples, Cooper (2020: 5) points out that such co-option. Activists therefore scrutinised the proleptic action ‘Can sometimes bring into present for prejudices and slippages as well as being the missing elements of authority, recog- for guidelines of how to imagine a better future. nition, science or entitlement required to make There are connections here between prefigura- an enactment real’. In work based in Uttarak- tive politics and Anderson’s characterisation of hand, India, Dyson and Jeffrey (2018) similarly anticipatory politics, where, similarly, ‘The discuss young women proleptically prefiguring here and now is constantly assayed for the new visions of female agency. These women futures that may be incubating within it and often describe overcoming trepidation about emerge out of it’ (2010: 782). talking in public meetings by simply speaking A final dimension of the improvisation that out in those forums, even though they are aware accompanies prefigurative action is a tendency that they are forbidden by custom to do so. among participants to enact practices that are Some young women argue that the act of speak- quite radically at odds either with the ing out feels like a type of out-of-body Jeffrey and Dyson 9 experience that ultimately provides them with a to Heinrich Von Kleist’s classic novella new sense of their own capacity (see also Michael Kohlhaas (1902). Set in medieval Dyson, 2018). The work of McConnell, Cooper, Germany, the book charts the travails of a man, and Dyson and Jeffrey points to the advantages Michael Kohlhaas, who is cheated by a local of incorporating prolepsis into wider improvisa- nobleman. The nobleman borrows Kohlhaas’s tional strategies. Acting ‘as if’ can challenge prized horses, puts them to work in the fields, dominant claims about there being no alterna- and returns them haggard and exhausted. The tive to existing structures of power, reinforce a remainder of the novel charts Kohlhaas’s fruit- sense of what is possible, enhance cohesion less attempts to seek justice, typically in the face among participants, and unsettle dominant para- of extreme discouragement, all the while track- digms of ‘the real’. ing Kohlhaas’s belief that he is a harbinger of a more just future world. The book documents in rich detail the futility of trying to ‘be the V Institutionalisation change’ while refusing to enrol others, compro- Mahatma Gandhi probably never said the words mise, or reflect on one’s position. ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, and Social science literature adds greater weight certainly what is striking about Gandhi’s work, to this tale by highlighting the importance of and about the activity of the many NGOs and sociality, compromise, and alliance building in activists he has inspired, is not the concentration much prefigurative politics. Drawing on field- on strident acts of individual distinctiveness work conducted in 2010 and 2011 in Barcelona, implied by the phrase ‘be the change’. What is Spain, Yates (2015) notes how the urban squats notable, rather, is the importance of slowly that she studied became seedbeds for opposi- widening circles of trust and inclusion through tional mobilisation. This often began with trial- processes of consensus-building, compromise, ling different ways of sharing around and conviviality. Likewise, what seems to possessions, food, and leisure, and then became ensure the durability of the types of improvised institutionalised as individual squats become prefigurative action is the institutionalisation of ‘social centres’ – a type of ‘free space’ offering that practice. A second act of myth busting is organisational and cultural resources for oppo- therefore exposing how far prefigurative poli- sitional movements. This process of squats tics diverges from heroic notions of ‘be the morphing into collective centres for resistance change’ individual agency (see Dyson, 2014, did not occur via individual leaders expressing and Holloway et al., 2019, on this point on distinct visions. Rather, it involved commitment social agency), especially in the process through among participants to being challenged about which it unfolds socially, comes to be embodied their preconceptions, for example around what in institutional arrangements, and spreads constitutes urban living and how to manage across networks. A caveat should be entered prejudice. here, however. It is evident that some forms of Serafini’s work on arts activism in the UK prefigurative politics depend upon not develop- offers another example of how prefigurative ing a definite institutional form (see Gordon, action can evolve from relatively individualised 2012). Our interest is in institutionalisation as or small group improvisation to more organised a type of thickening of social practice rather activity through intense social effort. Serafini than the inevitable emergence of named (2015) describes a group of actors in the UK organisations. who came together to develop a set of theatrical One way of illustrating the importance of interventions aimed at forcing oil companies out institutionalisation in this sense would be to turn of artistic sponsorship. These self-styled 10 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) activists – or ‘actorvists’ – began testing and movement, Huff-Hatton (2004) quotes one modelling the type of relationships between worker who had occupied a book publishing artists that they felt should be more widely firm: generalised in society: a democratic system of self-allocating tasks, the absence of ascribed It [the enterprise] wasn’t won by its eight workers ‘leaders’, and efforts to critique professiona- [ ...] It was also won by the neighbours, the teacher, the plumber, the grandmother for the lised and neoliberal notions of artistic prac- neighbourhood who came out and fought off tice. Crucially, they institutionalised their the police, who helped stop the eviction attempt action through forming a group called ‘BP (quoted in Dey 2016: 570). or not BP?’ and linked themselves to other organisations seeking to critique oil sponsor- Once free to redefine how factory work ship in the UK. This partial institutionalisa- should operate, the workers departed from for- tion – and its development through the mer hierarchical modes of organisation and emergence of cross-regional ties – provided instituted democratic assemblies, an ethos of participants with a vehicle through which to mutual support, and non-oppressive working co-design and activate transgressive prac- conditions underpinned by values of democ- tices, as, for example, when they staged a racy, justice and equality. These aspects of the mock Viking funeral for BP in the British factories’ new organisation – what Dey sums up Museum; it also provided a safe space of as the prefiguration of post-capitalist modes of collaboration and conviviality. existence – in turn strengthened the role of the Another example of institutionalisation factories as spaces of protection. emerges from the research of Dey (2016) on It is important to note that improvisation is a workers’ movements in Argentina. In the early constant characteristic of much prefigurative 2000s the Argentinian state created conditions action, and thus that the three key elements of in which big businesses could file for deceitful prefigurative politics that we are discussing – bankruptcies. These changes shored up large improvisation, institutionalisation and impact – businesses’ position but led to factories closing are not part of a linear sequence. Halvorsen’s and left workers unemployed. A minority of (2017) account of the Occupy Movement in workers refused to accept the closure of their London, based on field research in 2011–12, enterprises and began to occupy and recover illustrates this argument. Halvorsen stresses the abandoned factories. Beginning through small- adaptive and changing nature of social mobili- scale set improvisation, by the mid-2000s some sation at the Occupy site near St. Paul’s. For 15,000 workers were part of a worker-occupied example, he notes that during Occupy London enterprise movement. Dey reads these occupa- the burden of ensuring the reproduction of the tions not as illegal acts but as examples of a camp at a daily level and also guaranteeing the withdrawal from the impending influence of care of vulnerable participants typically fell to the neoliberal state and an attempt to recover women. In response, women developed their principles of public ownership. Since the fac- own spaces of representation at a tangent from tories had received taxpayer subsidies, workers the main symbolic effort of the movement. They were simply taking back control of the means also tried mobilising outside Occupy, ultimately of production and, through their bodily occu- using contacts with the Global Women’s Strike pation, creating spaces protected from the organisation to develop a women’s network of imprecations of the neoliberal state. Dey occupiers across the UK. Through testing and (2016) emphasises the strongly social nature then utilising the skills and experiences of estab- of these efforts. Examining the same lished feminist networks, these women Jeffrey and Dyson 11 developed mechanisms of mutual support that combination of direct action and social media emerged in parallel to other elements of activity. Occupy. The Occupy movement was a type of institutionalisation that in turn provoked new improvisations. VI Impact As noted in the cases of BP or not BP and Notwithstanding the creativity of prefigurative Argentinian workers reoccupying factories, the improvisation since the mid-1990s and its insti- institutionalisation of prefigurative politics tutionalisation across a wider range of areas and often involves engaging across regional networks, there is considerable debate over the boundaries, and this engagement is obviously impact of oppositional prefigurative politics, also international. The Occupy Movement, both in terms of the large social movements which began in New York’s Zuccotti Park on with prefigurative characteristics and the more 17 September 2017, had, by 9 October, led to localised and emergent prefigurative actions we protests in 951 cities across 82 countries. The have reviewed. Two lines of critique of prefi- Transition Towns movement, begun in the guration are important. First, many argue that Devon town of Totnes, modelled an alternative prefigurative politics tends towards a type of means of building urban life founded on prin- social closure. Cementing ties between a tight ciples of mutuality, shared learning, and envi- group of intimates takes precedence over for- ronmental sustainability, which has become ging alliances outside the core (e.g. Breines, highly influential and spread across the world 1989; Arguelles et al., 2017). For example, (Aiken,2011;Biddauetal.,2016).Intheeco- Chitewere (2010), in research on ecovillages nomic sphere, the Mondragon cooperative in upstate New York, has demonstrated that these prefigurative spaces created a sense of movement, established in 1956 in the Basque internal community solidarity but failed to region of Spain to offer secure employment address social and environmental justice issues. and decision-making power to its worker- Ecovillages have frequently become socially owners, has now spread to multiple interna- exclusive enclaves that reproduce class and tional sites (Fominaya, 2010). racial divides. Drawing on similar examples, A range of institutions and technologies has Arguëlles et al. (2017) argue that prefigurative also emerged precisely aimed at integrating organisations in the UK that seek to develop localised prefigurative organisations into spaces of relative protection may reproduce pri- wider processes of thinking through alterna- vilege because they tend to selectively recruit tive futures. For example, Carroll (2015) wealthier sections of society who have the time describes the emergence of TAPGs – such and luxury of ‘living outside the system’. By as the Third World Network, the Tricontinen- reproducing the narrative that participants tal Centre, and Development Alternatives should take responsibility for existing problems, with Women for a New Era – that integrate prefigurative actors may obscure a lack of general critical frameworks of global justice meaningful state intervention, reproduce neo- with local concerns on the ground. Carroll liberal rationalities of rule, and prevent bridge- argues that TAPGs addressed coordination building with other sections of society (see also problems through use of digital technologies, Pearce, 2013). The solipsism of prefigurative a theme also developed by Sancho (2014) on improvisation – a search for political purity – insurgencies emerging out of the Global Jus- may put them into a type of death spiral; Naeg- tice Movement and Juris and Pleyers (2009) ler (2018) points to a widespread critique on the alter-globalisation movement’s of prefigurative action as unthreatening to 12 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) dominant capital and the state, citing the quip: developing a community participation scheme ‘Goldman Sachs doesn’t care if you raise to encourage forms of communitarian ‘be the chickens’. The state may permit prefigurative change’ citizenship which had the effect of improvisations precisely because they are inef- undermining more genuine efforts to develop fective. In addition, specific spaces may be grassroots prefigurative action (De Wilde and fetishised. For example, Halvorsen (2017) in his Duyvendak, 2016). Another example is Wil- study of Occupy London recalls a protester say- liams et al.’s (2014) study of how David Camer- ing: ‘All they could see was the camp and [they] on’s Coalition Government in the UK in the didn’t see any wider purpose’. Caught between early 2010s imposed visions of localism – ‘the the need to transform society but the desire also Big Society’ – that undermined more progres- to withdraw from it, activists may choose the sive forms of local activism. latter, obsessing over their ‘space’ while But it is necessary to debunk the myth that neglecting wider structural reform (see Levitas, prefigurative politics is ineffective. Prefigura- 2013). Small wonder, then, that prefigurative tive political endeavours in the period between politics is sometimes viewed as ‘stuck in the the mid-1990s and early 2010s had substantial local’ (De Smet, 2014), a ‘politics of dispersed impact in at least four ways. First, in many cases singularities’ (Van de Sande, 2015) or a set of they led to the up-scaling of initiative beyond an ‘militant particularisms’ (Harvey and Williams, original site. For example, the Recovery Move- 1995). ment in the US and the UK, which rejected A second and connected line of argument is aspects of mainstream medical practice through that prefigurative politics is especially liable to modelling an alternative holistic, community- co-option, limiting its impact (see Kulick, 2014; based integrated means of addressing mental Van de Sande, 2015). Kulick (2014) argues that health, transformed aspects of the mainstream prefigurative independent youth media outlets health systems in both countries via emulation in Europe began as critical efforts to rethink (Beckwith et al., 2016). The Transition Towns society but, as they up-scaled and encountered movement (Biddau et al., 2016), Mondragan pressures to conform, often became complicit in cooperative, and Occupy Movement (Halvor- reproducing dominant norms. Even some of the sen, 2017) are other notable examples (see also more vibrant forms of prefigurative politics Fominaya, 2010). seem liable to co-option. Vasudevan (2015b) A second strength of prefigurative politics is argues that in many parts of Europe in the that it often creates durable skills, knowledge, or 1980s and 1990s, the state contractually ‘paci- resources. For example, in relation to the fied’ squatting settlements, via legislation and Occupy Movement, Brissette (2013) argues that the promise of public funding. In some cases, the confidence and sense of shared purpose neoliberal planning authorities appropriated emerging from urban sites of insurrection squatter settlements, which moved from being amounted to a transferable skill that could be critical approaches to rethinking the city to deployed strategically in later protests and for commoditised spaces of ‘alternative living’ (see formal processes of policy-making. Chatterton also Roy, 2005). and Pickerill (2010) likewise argue that activists Such co-option can involve dominant organi- in the UK involved in prefigurative forms of sations deploying prefigurative methods in bad autonomous organising developed dense social faith to defuse oppositional prefiguration. networks based on cooperative relations in spe- Examples of governments eroding oppositional cific protected locales – a crucial resource for prefigurative politics via their own prefigurative long-term efforts to articulate counter-futures schemes include the Dutch government and challenge unjust social structures. It is not Jeffrey and Dyson 13 just large-scale movements that have had strength to go on [and provided] a permanently impact. For example, Tadros (2015), in an effort altered sense of what human relations could be’. to try to rethink how to measure ‘impact’, The prefigurative disposition nurtures a basic argues that the value of the feminist organisa- sensibility that, whatever the nature of the pres- tions she studied in Egypt ‘lies in their mobili- ent, situations can change, and even the most zational power as this becomes stored in marginalised might participate in effecting that “repertoires” of knowledge, skills, and transformation. resources’. Third, prefigurative action is often notably effective at triggering attitudinal change. For VII Conclusions example, Risager and Thorup (2016) show that The last decade has witnessed intense geogra- chief protagonists of university-based opposi- phical and anthropological interest in individu- tion to the neoliberalisation of academia altered als’ and societies’ engagement with imagined how many Danish students conceptualised the futures, reflecting a global rise in concern that university. In a related manner, Barron (2017) the future may look very different from the pres- argues that community gardening has persuaded ent. Prominent geographical contributions have people to think about the long-term use value of largely focused in recent years on the work of local space as well as its market worth, and governments in prophesying future scenarios as Bolton et al. (2016) refer to how Occupy acti- a basis for interventions, many of them aimed at vists challenged dominant notions of idleness limiting freedoms. Analysis of this ‘anticipatory and ‘dirt’. A key example of the effectiveness politics’ has been revelatory, but it also raises of prefigurative politics in changing attitudes is the question of how others, including those mar- also is situations in which women seek to bring ginalised by the dominant, imagine, invest in, ‘private’ spaces of the domestic sphere into pub- and defend visions of the future. Investigation lic settings (see Silvey, 2005; Klodawsky, et al. of prefigurative politics offers one means of 2013) or show through bodily performances addressing this issue. It highlights ways of alternative ways of acting in the world (Tadros, knowing, acting, and occupying space and 2015). For example, Klodawsky et. al. (2013) social networks that are not lived in the shadow demonstrates how the congregational practices of the temporal strategies of dominant powers, of chronically homeless women in urban spaces where – as Anna Tsing (2015: 234) puts Canada served as a model for urban planning; it – ‘hope and despair huddle together’. a form of prefigurative politics that began with We have emphasised three aspects or the struggles of the most marginalised and their moments of prefigurative politics. First, espe- visions of the future influenced conceptions of cially in the early stages of prefigurative poli- how wider change might occur. tics, a type of restless improvisation is a Fourth, prefigurative politics also commonly characteristic trait. Prefigurative politics tends has an affective importance, galvanising pro- to proceed through forms of improvisation that testers, creating a shared sense of purpose, and enrol and, in the process, transform objects, widening people’s sense of what might be pos- materials, flows, landscapes, and affective sible. In a discussion of the black civil rights atmospheres, just as it is shaped itself by pro- movement in the US, for example, Epstein cesses of social and spatial change. To make this (1991: 123) argues that the act of behaving in point is to challenge the notion that prefigura- public places as if they had been granted equal- tive politics is rigidly committed to a single ity – ordering coffee in a ‘white’s only’ bar, for vision of change. Ethnographies of prefigura- example – ‘gave civil rights workers the tive politics (e.g. Tadros, 2015; Dey, 2016) 14 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) suggest instead that improvised action in the Second, both forms of politics are highly present results in the temporary coalescence of inventive, in terms of the spatial forms and a vision of the future. This guides new improvi- rhetoric they employ and the manner in which sations, which – in turn – generate novel ideas they enrol other people and organisations into about how the future should be imagined. their projects. Relatedly, both forms of politics Our second argument has been that prefigura- often also expend great effort in scrutinising the tive politics is most sustainable where it leads to horizon of present practice for signs that could wider social cooperation and the institutionali- guide pathways away from anticipatory politics sation of improvisational practice, often but cer- or towards prefigurative politics in the future. tainly not inevitably in the form of named In addition, prefigurative politics and antici- organisations/movements, and frequently in patory politics shape each other in at least three ways that provide some protection against out- ways. Anticipatory politics, in building up rhet- side forces. We have stressed the spatial nature orically the importance of reflecting on the of this process and the importance in particular future and its relationship to the present, has of safe spaces where prefigurative politics can provided part of the context for the rise of pre- gain momentum. We have also pointed to the figurative politics. Second, and most impor- social nature of institutionalisation. tantly, local, situated projects of prefigurative As it institutionalises and develops within action, and the wider international movements relatively safe spaces, there are risks of prefi- that they have occasionally triggered, have gurative politics becoming inward-looking and countered the visions of the future disseminated exclusive. But our third argument has been that by dominant institutions through the impact prefigurative politics often has impact. Those they have had on spaces, discourse, and power involved in prefigurative politics have been able relations. Third, the rise of prefigurative politics to create new social and economic opportuni- has not escaped the notion of those engaged in ties, reshape spatial practice, alter how people anticipatory politics, who in some settings are conceive of themselves, and influence wider developing prefigurative practices with the affective atmospheres. appearance, but not the intent, of radical change. This summary provides a basis for specifying The wider implications for geographies of more clearly the similarities and differences the future are threefold. First, our analysis offers between prefigurative politics and anticipatory a provisional framework of analysis for other politics (Anderson, 2010, 2017). Those scholars interested in studying oppositional pre- involved in developing both anticipatory poli- figurative politics, notably via our emphasis on tics and prefigurative politics believe that the improvisation, institutionalisation and impact future will be substantially distinct from the (Maeckelbergh, 2011; Swain, 2019). Much present and that organisations and individuals more broadly, this framework encourages have the power to shape the present to result reflection on the extent to which individuals and in a different future. But whereas, for dominant organisations seek to instantiate their goals in powers, these insights are commonly used as a the process of mobilisation. This question is pretext for suspicion, control, and the policing already integral to several bodies of critical of spatial practice, for those involved in opposi- work within geography, especially feminist tional prefigurative politics the idea of a tenden- geographies (see Klowdasky, 2009; Lawson, tious present implies a refusal to accept current 2007), but it might be usefully elevated as a thought and organisational structures as fixed; it basis for comparative enquiry across different suggests ways of living more open to others, areas of geography and as a means of opening surprise, and change. up interdisciplinary conversations. Jeffrey and Dyson 15

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Author/s: Jeffrey, C; Dyson, J

Title: Geographies of the future: Prefigurative politics

Date: 2020-05-27

Citation: Jeffrey, C. & Dyson, J. (2020). Geographies of the future: Prefigurative politics. PROGRESS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 45 (4), pp.641-658. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520926569.

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/252070

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