By Gisela Ruiseco.
Our present global crises have not lead to a massive questioning of growthism as a fundament of our zeitgeist. The eternal promise of more and better permeates, pertinaciously, our societies and beings. Challenging growthism could be, as Jason Hickel’s expresses it: “a struggle over our very theory of being. It requires decolonizing not only lands and forests and peoples, but decolonizing our minds. To begin this journey, we need new sources of hope, new wellsprings of possibility – new visions for how things could be otherwise” (2021, p 258).
In my thesis, I take up “growthism” as this deeply implanted mode of being, and propose “Enoughness” (following Edlinger et al., 2021) as standing not in opposition to it, but outside its quantitative logics. Enoughness could conform a “new vision” pertaining the common senses of society. The possibility of living in Enoughness can bring us nearer Degrowth’s basic vision: imagining and working towards sustainability, but without implications of renouncement.
I approach Enoughness, on the one hand, by analyzing own experiences, emerging from my concrete background and quest, following the premises of a “situated knowledge”. On the other hand, indigenous ways of living in Enoughness, accessed through concepts and poetry, give us also an access. The discussion takes place in the light of decolonial thought, of coloniality as an indivisible part of modernity (Dussel, 1994). I have followed here a path of what can described as an inter-epistemic dialogue (Spindola 2021).
Our present limitlessness is only possible because we, coloniality/modernity’s heirs, have defined all life around us as conquerable, for us to dispose of. In the first part of the essay I examine this historical disconnection with the living, concentrating on the human-nature relationship. For, in Degrowth: “A radical missing topic is the non-anthropocentric/ Nature’s perspective that leads to an absolute transformation of the relationship between humans and their environments” (Rodriguez-Labajos et al., 2019, p.179).
Starting off from my experiences in neo-rural settings, I relate how I realized that, even in the frame of a ‘voluntary simplicity’ mode of living, I was reproducing modes of being peculiar to the “moreness paradigm”: Facing the abundance of fruit in my orchard, my first attitude was one of “the more the better”. I encarnated ‘homo economicus’, and my own anthropocentrism, signaling disconnection, was quite present…
Have “we”, late moderns, lost access to connectedness? Going back and fro from own experiences and various literature, I delve into our possibilities. I discuss indigenous knowledges especially looking at literature from the Mapuche people where the maintenance of a balance with all the living is of supreme value (Chihuailaf, 2020). Connectedness is related to what we have called ‘animism’, which is actually very present in humanity’s cultural expressions, including the western ones. A further access to connectedness is given by western heterodox scientific approaches, such as holistic science and authors reflecting upon impulses gained from Gaia Theory (for example Harding, 2013).
In short, relating to a world that is alive and has agency is perhaps a necessary condition to overcome growthism. We could arrive at the same values that the Mapuche poet E. Chihuailaf expresses, but that our culture has disdained: equilibrium, reciprocity, responsibility, humbleness… all possibly leading to living in Enoughness.
One second part of my essay, beyond relationality, involves exploring “scarcity”‘ in its historical aspects as part and parcel of modernity/ capitalism, and the possibilities beyond it. We look at “artificial scarcity” (Hickel, 2019), or the lack of access to goods in spite of given abundance, as a phenomenon developing first in European local history. Further, its corollary impregnates our ways of being: the never-enoughness of our present, neoliberal, mode of scarcity. For for us late moderns “more and better’ is a valid promise, even in the midst of sheer excess and squandering. Rebuffing this standing would also include moving away from thinking in terms of a “finitarian scarcity”, given when concentrating on planetary boundaries, on limits (Jonsson & Wennerlind, 2023), as western environmental movements in many instances do. That is, moving away from late-modernity’s logics would involve accepting the world as abundant (Kallis, 2019).
In the sense of leaving the scarcity-“moreness” paradigm behind us, I explore questions of non-capitalist affluence, elaborating on what I develop as ‘adequateness’. That would pertain a quality of the experience of Enoughness. Adequateness can be given when looking for a balance for fulfilling human needs, as possible in farming (Chayanov in Gerber, 2020) or in indigenous societies which organize around care. Also, it can be understood as living a moment profoundly, as when enjoying a sunset or moments of social connectedness (Edlinger et al., 2021), as “more” becomes irrelevant. This quality of experience can be extended towards a way of living day to day tasks, beyond rushing to encompass (and consume) everything we can.
The final part of my work discusses modernity/coloniality’s intrinsic contempt for Other modes of being, looking specially at the Global South. Wherever Enoughness is lived by people who have not been devoured by capitalist-modern logics of never ending moreness, the coloniality of power is acting to convert these people to hegemonic culture. The struggle for valuing Enoughness is not an easy one.
Practically all of us are heirs of coloniality/modernity and are in need of a “lifeworld decolonization”(in contrast to”indigenous decolonization”, Fischer, 2019). And many of us, also indigenous peoples, are in hybrid circumstances, trying to (re-)construct something better. It is therefore important to deconstruct the developmentalist notions of “us” and them”. Which is to say, there is a need of adopting an “intercultural” perspective. Further, Growthism has to be combated in North and South as its hegemony penetrates everywhere in the middle and higher classes, always shifting the promise of a “better world” into the future, protecting the status quo.
Closing up, as Degrowth is aiming at an all-encompassing transformation, an approach to Enoughness could envisage the depth needed for a profound restarting of our modes of occupying our place among life on Earth.
Bibliography
Dussel, E. (1994). 1492 – El encubrimiento del otro: (Hacia el origen del mito de la modernidad). UMSA. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación Plural Editores. https://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/otros/20111218114130/1942.pdf
Edlinger, G., Deimling, D., & Ungericht, B. (2021). Enoughness: Exploring the potentialities of having and being enough | Ephemeral Journal. volume 21(3), 159–173. https://ephemerajournal.org/index.php/contribution/enoughness-exploring-potentialities-having-and-being-enough
Chihuailaf Nahuelpán, E. (2020, September 2). Nuestra lucha es una lucha por ternura. Elicura. Le Monde diplomatique. https://www.lemondediplomatique.cl/nuestra-lucha-es-una-lucha-por-ternura-por-elicura-chihuailaf-nahuelpa%CC%81n.html
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Hickel, J. (2019, March 19). Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance. Real-World Economics Review, 87, 54–68. http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue87/whole87.pdf
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This text is a summary of a thesis submitted for the Online Master on Degrowth (UAB) in March, 2024 by Gisela Ruiseco. The drawing is by Ruben Caruso.
Gisela Ruiseco is s social psychologist originally from Colombia. She has experience in academic writing on the themes of decoloniality and critique of developmentalism, and is currently writing about environmental topics on her blog fueradelmito and in various media. Gisela’s master’s degree on the programme Degrowth: Ecology, Economics and Policy of ICTA/UAB was approved in march, 2024. The supervisor of the thesis, Dr Julien-François Gerber, contributed to the final essay with relevant comments and suggestions.
The opinions expressed in the text do not necessarily reflect those of R&D, but are those of the author.