Jacket and prefiguration
My one and only jacket is just over three years old. I invited it into my life when I moved from England to northern Sweden. In England, I had been wearing a thin woollen coat for many years. The coat even acquired some holes. I said goodbye to it just before I moved to Sweden. I could have repaired the holes, but northern Swedish climate is too cold for this kind of clothing. This jacket has lived with me in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. I wore it in -20 and in +10. When it gets very cold, I wear a large woollen scarf over my shoulders, on top of the jacket. The jacket is made from polyester, and this is something I don't love about it. In many places, the jacket shows signs of wear. And that's ok. Some fellow humans smile when I say that I've had a jacket for only 3 years. It's not a long time. But I wear it very often. In winter, I wear it every day.
At times, I hear from my fellow humans that emphasising individual (or even collective but small scale) practices such as wearing the same thing every day or initiating small-scale alternative organisations is a-political. I gently disagree. In my view, it is political. This kind of politics is called prefigurative politics, being the change we wish to see. Not waiting for a changed system, not limiting our actions to voting or taking part in occasional protests (though these things are important too). But living as if the changed system is here already, to the best of our abilities, or creating spaces that represent this changed system. Embodying change. To me, being political among other things means, for example, wanting a kind and caring society and being kind and caring oneself. It is not serious when one says they wish to live in a kind and caring society, and they refuse to behave in a kind and caring way. Being political also means uniting with likeminded fellow humans who also want a kind and caring society and enact it in their everyday life. Wanting a society that consumes less and thus consuming less oneself. Wanting a society that respects life and nature's limits and thus living a much more environmentally sustainable lifestyle and enacting a different way of relating with the world (the self, human and non-human others, and nature). I think it's empowering. Living this way gives a sense of doing something rather than waiting.
This morning, I received an email from a fellow human who let me know what the special issue about prefigurative politics is out in an independent journal called ephemera (link).