*A lecture on Degrowth Utopianism*
Yesterday was session 3 of our #Degrowth and Socioecological Justice course at the University of Copenhagen, co-organized by Rebecca Rutt and @FerRacimo . This time, the course featured Assoc. Prof. Mikkel Krause Frantzen from the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies and Jeppe Sørensen as representative of Den Grønne Ungdomsbevægelse (The Green Youth Movement) and the ecological publishing house Økotopia.
They hosted a great session on "Degrowth Utopianism", opening up a space to critically think about how to work towards utopias in the here and now. We wrote our own visions of #utopia in a futuring exercise, and delved into many sci-fi works. The lecture was centered around discussion of the article “Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth” by Kallis and March, as well as Ursula Le Guin’s essay “A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be” ( https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/9/20/files/2019/07/1989a_Le-Guin_non-Euclidean-view-California.pdf ), with its famous quote: “It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.”
Thanks to both Mikkel and Jeppe for an engaging and mind-opening session!