Building on Nunes Filho's recent positioning of paraconsistent logic as a constitutive element of Latin American philosophy (RUDN Journal of Philosophy, 2025), this paper traces a continuation of that tradition into the contemporary problem of artificial intelligence alignment. We argue that the Latin American paraconsistent project — initiated by Miro Quesada's coining of the term in 1976 and formalized by Newton da Costa's C-systems — finds its natural twenty-first century extension in Florentin Smarandache's neutrosophic logic (1995), which generalizes paraconsistency by (...) introducing three independent dimensions of evidence: truth (T), indeterminacy (I), and falsity (F), with no sum constraint. We further contextualize this development within the broader Eastern European tradition of non-classical logic, from Vasiliev's non-Aristotelian logic (1911) and the Romanian school of Lukasiewicz–Moisil multi-valued algebras to Smarandache's emigration from Romania in 1988 and his subsequent founding of neutrosophy. We then show that contemporary AI alignment frameworks — Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, Constitutional AI, Direct Preference Optimization — operate under an implicit epistemological monism that mirrors precisely the classical-logic universalism the Latin American tradition critiqued. Anthropic's own documentation of Collective Constitutional AI confirms that contradictions among diverse constitutional principles are resolved by majority vote — what we term enforced convergence rather than alignment. We propose Pluriversal Alignment: a research program that operationalizes paraconsistent neutrosophic triplets as reward signals, constitutional evaluations, and policy outputs, allowing T+F>1 as a structural feature rather than an error. We close by arguing that the Latin American paraconsistent tradition, in convergence with its Russian and Eastern European counterparts, is uniquely positioned to contribute the formal apparatus that the decolonial critique of AI has named philosophically but not yet formalized. (shrink)

The imperative to decolonise health disciplines underscores the need for a critical examination of the coloniality of nursing knowledge development. Decolonising nursing requires epistemic resistance aimed at exposing and dismantling epistemological hierarchies that marginalise indigenous knowledges. This paper introduces the ‘Pluriverse of Nursologies’ as paradigm to guide decolonial theorising in nursing. Through a four‐part exploration, I first elucidate the coloniality embedded in mainstream nursing knowledge. Next, I offer a decolonial critique of Fawcett's nursing metaparadigm as an exemplar of pyramidal (...) epistemology. I then discuss pluriversality as an approach to decolonising nursing knowledge. Finally, I introduce the Pluriverse of Nursologies (PoN) as a meta‐theoretical paradigm for theory and knowledge development that decentres and dismantles the pyramidal epistemology of colonial/modern nursing, and relinks diverse nursologies from marginalised communities to the centre of intellectual nursing discourse, thereby revitalising the theoretical landscape of the discipline. (shrink)

_Decolonial Pluriversalism_ offers a unique, powerful, and crucial perspective on decolonial theories, political thoughts, aesthetics, and activisms. In going beyond a postcolonial critique of eurocentrism, it provides some of the most original interventions in the field of decolonial theory. Drawing from the Francophone worlds, Latin American and Caribbean philosophies, it explores concepts of creolization, racialization, Afropean aesthetics, arts and cultural productions, feminisms, fashion, education, and architecture. Contributors: Zahra Ali, Luis Martínez Andrade, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Jane Anna Gordon, Mariem Guellouz, Léopold Lambert, (...) Alanna Lockward, Fátima Hurtado López, Olivier Marboeuf, Donna Edmonds Mitchell, Corinna Mullin, Marine Bachelot Nguyen, Minh-Ha T. Pham, Françoise Vergès, Patrice Yengo. (shrink)

_Pluriverse_, the final work of the American poet and philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood, was published posthumously in 1920. After an experience of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide during a dental operation, Blood came to the conclusion that his mind had been opened, that he had undergone a mystical experience, and that he had come to a realisation of the true nature of reality. This title is the fullest exposition of Blood’s esoteric Christian philosophy-cum-theology, which, though deemed wildly eccentric by commentators both (...) during his lifetime and later in the twentieth century, was nonetheless one of the most influential sources for American mystical-empiricism. In particular, Blood’s thought was a major inspiration for William James, and can be seen to prefigure the latter’s concept of Sciousness directly. (shrink)

Despite the historical origins of philosophy from a richly diverse tapestry of thinkers, which cuts across geopolitical, cultural and religious traditions, and despite interna- tionalising trends to develop both a more inclusive and authentic account of philo- sophical thinking, it remains largely unquestioned to equate philosophy of education with its western canon. These concerning biases are succinctly laid bare in Jackson and Kwak's (2025) editorial, 'Is philosophy of education western?' They are correct in their assertion that the persistent perspective of (...) philosophy of education as western suggests that the world beyond Western Europe and North America appears insignificant, holding negative implications for the development of curricula, research, scholarly discourse, and educational practice and outcomes in the field globally. Jackson and Kwak (2025, p. 2) are also correct that the unfolding epistemic framing is not only a continuing marginalisation of 'non-western' thinkers and philosophies, but also expectations of the latter to be 'western facing in outlook, and a preparedness to 'sacrifice 'internally oriented explorations and articulations of thought from other positions! In this collective article, we seek to take Jackson (2025) thesis a step further - by acknowledging the colonial logic that has ensured the systemic subjugation, assimilation, or erasure of Indigenous and other 'non-western' philosophies, while also affirming philosophy of education as inclusively pluriversal. Our aim is not only to foreground marginalised voices and traditions, but also to restore the epistemic dignity of all philosophies. By bringing together the contributions in this article, we do not simply gesture toward 'alternative' knowledge systems as supplements to the dominant canon; rather, we affirm them as philosophies, constitutive of a genuinely pluriversal field of philosophy of education. [NB: An article composed of short contributions by several authors, Metz's section is titled 'What It Means to Be an African Philosophy of Education'.] -/- . (shrink)

A perennial debate in the field of global ethics revolves around the possibility of a universalist ethics as well as arguments over the nature, and significance, of difference for moral deliberation. Decolonial literature, in particular, increasingly signifies a pluriverse – one with radical ontological and epistemological differences. This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the (...) current state of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far. (shrink)

This paper sets forth and defends a pluriversal approach to religion in the context of an increasingly global bioethics. Section I introduces a pluriversal view as a normative technique for engaging across difference. A normative pluriversal approach sets five constraints: civility, change from within, justice, non-domination, and tolerance. Section II applies a pluriversal approach to religion. It argues that this approach is epistemically just, recognizes diverse standpoints, and represents a productive, preferred, way to tackle global bioethics concerns. Section II also (...) considers an opposing viewpoint, which holds that religious perspectives have no place in bioethics. We show that this viewpoint would have adverse effects on bioethics publishing, conferencing, and training programmes. The paper concludes (in Section III) that bioethicists should engage with people who hold different worldviews, including religious worldviews, and should do so in accordance with pluriversal ethical constraints. (shrink)

This article dreams and thinks the hypothesis of a utopian “pluriversal Europe” thanks to the study of the “agora-performance” Dispak Dispac’h – Crépuscule européen from Patricia Allio and her friends, colleagues and comrades. To explore Dispak Dispac’h – European Twilight’s pluriversalist aesthetics and politics, the paper investigates two directions. First, it outlines the concepts of “Pluriverse” and “pluriversalism” as a theoretical framework, examining the “ontological turn” in philosophy and anthropology, its political implications, and – briefly – some critiques of (...) this current. In a second part, the aesthetics of the “agora-work of art” Dispak Dispac’h – European Twilight is analysed as an antidote to “monological universalism”, enabling to sketch out pluriversalist dialogues, and Dispak Dispac’h – European Twilight’s “artivist” approach is established as a way of overcoming the modern dualisms between art and life and between artworks and social struggles – even beyond the limits of twentieth-century documentary theatre –, and contributing to the emergence of a new, “pluriversal” Europe[1]. [1] This text was originally written in French thanks to Patricia Allio, who invited me to present it during the workshop « Faire agora : autour de Dispak, Dispac’h » organised by Prof. Dr. Sophie Lucet at the Université Rennes 2 on April 10th, 2024 (unpublished). Thanks to the invitation of PD Dr. Niels Weidtmann and Lect. Dr. Alina Noveanu, I then rewrote the paper and translated it into English thanks to DeepL to present it at the conference Europe – between Idea, Imagination and Reality. New Philosophical Perspectives at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj on June 24th, 2025. The present text is the new corrected and rewritten version of the translation-adaptation. I would like to deeply thank Patricia Allio, Sophie Lucet, Niels Weidtmann and Alina Noveanu for their great support during this whole artistic, epistemological, ethical and political process. (shrink)

According to a certain pluralist view in philosophy of mathematics, there are as many mathematical objects as there can coherently be. Recently, Justin Clarke-Doane has explored what consequences the analogous view on normative properties would have. What if there is a normative pluriverse? Here I address this same question. The challenge is best seen as a challenge to an important form of normative realism. I criticize the way Clarke-Doane presents the challenge. An improved challenge is presented, and the role (...) of pluralism in this challenge is assessed. (shrink)

The contributors to _Constructing the Pluriverse_ critique the hegemony of the postcolonial Western tradition and its claims to universality by offering a set of “pluriversal” approaches to understanding the coexisting epistemologies and practices of the different worlds and problems we inhabit and encounter. Moving beyond critiques of colonialism, the contributors rethink the relationship between knowledge and power, offering new perspectives on development, democracy, and ideology while providing diverse methodologies for non-Western thought and practice that range from feminist approaches to scientific (...) research to ways of knowing expressed through West African oral traditions. In combination, these wide-ranging approaches and understandings form a new analytical toolbox for those seeking creative solutions for dismantling Westernization throughout the world. Contributors Zaid Ahmad, Manuela Boatcă, Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Arturo Escobar, Sandra Harding, Ehsan Kashfi, Venu Mehta, Walter D. Mignolo, Ulrich Oslender, Isiaka Ouattara, Manu Samnotra, Aram Ziai. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that for the purposes of ordinary reasoning, sentences about properties of concrete objects can be replaced with sentences concerning how things in our universe would be related to inscriptions were there a pluriverse. Speaking loosely, pluriverses are composites of universes that collectively realize every way a universe could possibly be. As such, pluriverses exhaust all possible meanings that inscriptions could take. Moreover, because universes necessarily do not influence one another, our universe would not be (...) any different intrinsically if there were a pluriverse. These two facts enable anti-realists about abstract objects to replace, e.g. talk of anatomical features with talk of the inscriptions concerning anatomical structure that would exist were there a pluriverse. The availability of such replacements enables anti-realists to carry out essential ordinary reasoning without referring to properties, thereby making room for a consistent anti-realist worldview. The inscriptions of the would-be pluriverse are so numerous and varied that sentences about them can play the roles in ordinary reasoning served by simple sentences about properties of concrete objects. (shrink)

Postfoundational political thought is characterized by a distinction between “politics” (a socio-symbolic order that delineates what is knowable and thinkable) and “the political” (the instantiation of a socio-symbolic order). This article critically engages with the postfoundational thought of Jacques Rancière to rethink “the political” in the context of the pluriverse, a matrix of multiple distinct yet interconnected worlds. In so doing, this article challenges the idea that “care” is not properly political. Specifically, I argue that in the context of (...) the pluriverse, socio-symbolic orders, or worlds, are not instantiated as such; rather, they must be established and, importantly, reestablished in the face of one another. From this vantage point, caring for and maintaining worlds—especially worlds marginalized by relations of power in the global political economy—is of political and ethical significance. This article thus offers a decolonial and feminist approach to thinking about the political as it (a) destabilizes the Westerncentric assumption that there is one-world, and takes different worlds as worlds seriously; and (b) centers issues of care and reproduction, demonstrates how they are politically and ethically salient, and thereby contributes to the project of foregrounding the political import of care. (shrink)

The World Congress of Bioethics held in Qatar in 2024 (WCB 2024) sparked controversy around the role of religion in bioethics, highlighting the need for critical discussions. During the congress, there was a strong push for incorporating religious values into bioethical discourse, raising questions about the validity and implications of such an approach. This paper examines the influence of religious thought on bioethical discussions, and the ongoing debate over the role of religious perspectives in this field. Here, we explore Jecker (...) and colleagues’ pluriversal framework, which was proposed at WCB 2024, espousing a bioethical discourse grounded in civility, respect for law, justice, non-domination, and toleration. While the framework aims to embrace the world's cultural and religious diversity, here, we suggest that it struggles with significant ethical inconsistencies, poses challenges for pluralistic dialogue, and may be hard to reconcile with human rights. Through an analysis of Jecker's principles and their application, we discuss the difficulty of integrating conflicting religious views with ethical values and with widely accepted human rights frameworks. We then proceed to examine how and why religions might exert undue influence on bioethics, and we argue for a different future for bioethics. (shrink)

This chapter is about literacies including, but exceeding, language-based literacies. In the language and educational sciencesScience, literacyLiteracies, literacy has become synonymous with reading and writing the written word. However, human based language is only one of many sign systemsSign systems that mediate our world and all life on this planet. We argue that relating to, and communicating in this world, equitably and sustainably, requires far more literacies than that of the written word.

This book explores how decolonial epistemologies are concretely translated in thinking and theorizing about cultural and political practices. Chapters draw on Latin American and Caribbean philosophies and concepts of creolization and racialization, Afropean aesthetics, arts and cultural productions, religion, feminisms, education, and architecture.

This article reexamines the apparent opposition between universalism and pluriversalism. We argue that pluriversalism does not reject universalism but presupposes a specific form of it - “bottom-up universalism.” Our aim is to clarify and systematize this normative core. We critique “top-down universalism,” a Eurocentric model that imposes homogenizing norms and marginalizes non-Western epistemologies and instead advance the pluriverse as a framework recognizing diverse ontologies as coeval and valid. Bottom-up universalism operates through two moments. First, a critical moment universalizes the (...) recognition of human finitude and rejects any a priori claim to epistemic or moral superiority. Second, a procedural moment universalizes not substantive values but the right to participate in dialogue across unequal historical conditions and expressive forms. Ethical commitments - such as dignity or opposition to gender violence - emerge from this process as provisional, revisable outcomes rather than imposed norms. This framework avoids both relativism and imposed universalism. Through examples including Islamic feminist reinterpretations of religious texts, we show how shared ethical horizons can arise through dialogue rather than decree, bridging theory and practice while grounding plurality in epistemic humility. (shrink)

AbstrakAng kasalukuyang daloy ng dekolonisasyon ng narsing ay nananatiling masmaigting na hinuhubog ng mga pananaw mula sa Pandaigdigang Hilaga. Bilang pakikiisa sa tinig mula sa Pandaigdigang Timog na aktibong nagsusulong ng pagsentro ng mga naisantabing sistemang kaalaman sa larangan ng narsing, inihahain ng kritikal na sanaysay na ito ang Narsolohiyang Pilipino bilang isang dekolonyal na paradigma ng pagdadalumat sa narsing na nakaugat sa mga epistemolohiya at pamumuhay ng mga Pilipino. Itinatampok sa papel na ito ang Pluriverse of Nursologies (PoN) (...) bilang pilosopikal na salalayan, at nagsusulong ito ng plurisentrisismo sa siyentipikong kaalaman sa narsing. Sinisimulan ng sanaysay ang pagtalakay sa PoN bilang pundasyong pilosopikal, kasunod ang mga pangunahing katuwiran para sa pormalisasyon ng Narsolohiyang Pilipino. Inilalarawan din dito ang Narsolohiyang Pilipino bilang isang dekolonyal at tentatibong paradigma ng pagdadalumat narsing, na may dalawang pangunahing pilosopikal na mithiin: pagbaklas at pag‐ugnay. Sa huli, inilalahad ng akdang ito ang isang maikling halimbawa ng narsolohikal na pagsusuri gamit ang lokal na konsepto ng pakikiramdam, at inilalatag ang mga posibilidad at hamon sa pagsusulong ng Narsolohiyang Pilipino. (shrink)

In his lectures on pragmatism, William James famously proposed that the question of ‘the one and the many’ constitutes the most central of all philosophic problems, and that it is ‘central because so pregnant’. Prompted by James’ proposition, this article explores the intimately political connection in James’ thought between his pluralistic metaphysics and the nature of the problematic as a generative force that impregnates worlds and thoughts with differences: what I here call ‘the pluralistic problematic’. Exploring the generative significance of (...) the problematic in James’ philosophy, I propose that, where James is concerned, the pluriverse has a thoroughly problematic mode of existence. And pluralism, rather than a celebration of the many, rather than a philosophical exposition on multiple worlds and ontologies, or a theory of the organisation of a diverse polis, is first and foremost a pragmatics of the pluriverse – a political, experimental and pragmatic response to the ongoing insistence of the pluralistic problematic. (shrink)

While many are impressed with the utility of possible worlds in linguistics and philosophy, few can accept the modal realism of David Lewis, who regards possible worlds as sui generis entities of a kind with the concrete world we inhabit.1 Not all uses of possible worlds require exotic ontology. Consider, for instance, the use of Kripke models to establish formal results in modal logic. These models contain sets often regarded for heuristic reasons as sets of “possible worlds”. But the “worlds” (...) in these sets can be anything at all; they can be numbers, or people, or sh. The set of worlds, together with the accessibility relation and the rest of the model, is used as a purely formal structure.2 One can even go beyond establishing results about formal systems and apply Kripke models to English, as Charles Chihara has recently argued.3 Chihara shows, for instance, how to use Kripke models (plus primitive modal notions) to give an account of validity for English modal sentences. In other cases worlds are not really needed at all. It is often vivid to give a counterexample thus: “There is a possible world in which P. Since your theory implies that in all worlds, not-P, your theory is wrong.” But the counterexample could just as easily be given using modal operators: “Possibly, P. Since your theory implies that it is necessary that not-P, your theory is wrong.”. (shrink)

In this conclusion, we consider the broader contribution of this edited volume to expand thinking via Japan as method towards more decentred and pluriversal approaches to knowledge production in Japanese international development studies (IDS). In order to highlight this broader contribution, we do two things. First, we synthesise findings from each chapter through the dimensions of time and space, in which the selected Japanese terms in the field of development cooperation were constructed, popularised, or spread. In doing so, we demonstrate (...) how intricately the semantics of those terms change through the latter’s connection with many other—temporally and spatially different—worlds and their experiences, and highlight the risk of boasting Japan’s uniqueness in development knowledge production. Second, we then consider Japan as method to elucidate the case for engaging with decolonial and pluriversal approaches in Japanese IDS by exploring Japan’s ambiguous positionality and the post-war depoliticisation of Japanese IDS. Finally, we consider the potential of relativising Japan’s position in the (many) world(s) and to critically engage with the trend of instrumentalising ODA to serve geopolitical interests through active collaboration and co-creation of decolonial or pluriversal development knowledges that ‘leave no one behind’. (shrink)

Chapter 7, Towards a Transmodern Pluriverse, discusses how Enrique Dussel’s ethics of liberation actively promotes a worldwide intercultural philosophical dialogue. These South-South as well as North-South dialogues, are inspired by the decolonizing efforts of a diversity of liberatory projects. The chapter examines the idea of a planetary humanism aimed at building a pluriversal transmodern world, a world in which all peoples can live and grow in community, with mutual respect for cultural diversity, and in harmony with Mother Earth.

This volume proposes a radical reconceptualization of reality, knowledge, and existence through the development of Meta-Garde theory, a structural framework designed to articulate systems governed not by binary exclusion, but by the coexistence of multiple, non-exclusive states. Moving beyond its origins in avant-garde aesthetics and paradoxism, Meta-Garde is extended here into the domains of epistemology, ontology, and decolonial philosophy to address the limitations of universalist, binary logic in capturing the complexity of Indigenous cosmologies and Latin American thought. The central thesis (...) posits that many Indigenous worldviews—from Mesoamerican triadic ontologies and Andean yanantin (complementary duality) to Amazonian distributed agency and perspectivism—already operate through pluriversal structures where contradiction, indeterminacy, and relational multiplicity are constitutive rather than anomalous. To formally articulate these coexistential dynamics, the book integrates neutrosophic logic (the triadic system of Truth, Indeterminacy, and Falsity) and n-alectics (a logic of coexistence beyond dialectical synthesis) to model realities where affirmation and negation persist simultaneously without requiring resolution. Through a five-part interdisciplinary inquiry, the text traverses the foundations of pluriversal thought, analyzes specific Indigenous cosmological structures as proto-Meta-Garde systems, and explores the role of language as a site of epistemic resistance against colonial erasure. It further develops a Meta-Garde Complexity Model to address recursive contradictions and nonlinear epistemologies, culminating in the formulation of the Pluriversal Meta-Garde Space—a formal field where heterogeneous ontologies interact without collapsing into a singular universal order. The book concludes by outlining the ethical, political, and anthropological implications of this framework, proposing new models for environmental ethics (such as the Meta-Garde Sustainability Index) and a Meta-Garde Anthropology that studies contradiction as a structural principle of social life. By bridging formal logic, decolonial theory, and Indigenous epistemologies, Meta-Garde and the Pluriversal Condition offers a transformative philosophical orientation capable of engaging the dynamic, unresolved, and profoundly interconnected realities of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Unity has been touted as the cornerstone of Indonesian nationalism since its declaration in 1945. With the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, Indonesian unity holds a sacred and absolute status. However, in reality, unity sometimes becomes a national problem. This article revisits Indonesian unity by shedding light on its darker aspects, namely heteronormativity, and introduces how Indonesian unity can be supported by a new ontological alternative: pluriverse. The study provides a brief historical overview of the New Order era and (...) the family ideology that shaped an adherence to heteronormative norms, and followed by exploration of the pluriverse as an ethical ontological foundation that can deepen the struggle for unity. (shrink)

This article examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) through the lens of political ontology. We contend that CSR is not only a discursive mean of legitimization but an inherently ontological practice through which particular worlds become real. CSR enables the politics of place-making, connecting humans and nonhumans in specific territorial configurations in accordance with corporate needs and interests. We discuss three CSR mechanisms of singularization that create a particular corporate ontology in place: (1) community engagements that form ‘stakeholders’; (2) CSR standards (...) and certifications that produce singular sustainable environments; and (3) CSR reporting that erases ontological conflicts and enables the singularized representation (of the environment and the community) to travel to other locations of the corporate world. We argue that these ontological CSR practices obscure the pluriverse of other world and place-making practices that would create different kinds of sustainabilities based on less extractive and non-corporate ways of being in place. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic brings to our attention in a forceful way that feminist modernity is complicit with imperialist ideals and attitudes. She offers an extensive set of examples, analyses and arguments to recommend a nonideal universalism while embracing maternal ‘feminized power’ from non-Western cultures. I comprehend her arguments to understand salient features of imperialist feminism and then contextualize her critique in the South Asian context of feminist discourse. Expanding on her main critique of Western imperialist (...) hegemony, I propose pluriversal philosophies as a positive approach towards a more just world. I take inspiration from Mignolo, Phule, Ambedkar, Buddha, Anzaldúa and Freire as philosophers of praxis and engage with important anti-hegemonic scholars and organizations to offer a pragmatic translation of powerful ideas. (shrink)

Today, the ‘pluriverse’ is considered to be a radical new concept capable of decolonising political thought. However, it is not only decolonial scholarship that has taken up the concept of the pluriverse; far-right intellectuals, too, have been cultivating a decolonial imaginary based on the idea of the pluriverse. This article compares the way the concept of the pluriverse appears in certain strands of Latin American decolonial theory exemplified by Walter Mignolo, on the one hand, and the (...) ethnopluralism of the European New Right represented by Alain de Benoist and Alexander Dugin, on the other. Despite Mignolo’s pluriverse being an ‘open pluriverse’ of entanglement between peoples, while the European New Right’s is a ‘closed pluriverse’ of ethnic separation, I argue that these uses of the pluriverse are nevertheless underpinned by a shared analytical and normative framework. This framework is defined by a simple refrain: that what oppresses the world is ontological and epistemological sameness, and what will liberate it is ontological and epistemological difference. I argue that this schema, which misapprehends imperialism as a form of epistemic domination geared purely towards homogenisation, rather than as a set of material relationships that also produce (e.g. racial, sexual, and class) difference, does not provide a solid foundation for contesting colonial relations. (shrink)

In _Around the Day in Eighty Worlds_ Martin Savransky calls for a radical politics of the pluriverse amid the ongoing devastation of the present. Responding to an epoch marked by the history of colonialism and ecological devastation, Savransky draws on the pragmatic pluralism of William James to develop what he calls a “pluralistic realism”—an understanding of the world as simultaneously one and many, ongoing and unfinished, underway and yet to be made. Savransky explores the radical multifariousness of reality by (...) weaving key aspects of James's thought together with divergent worlds and stories: of Magellan's circumnavigation, sorcery in Mozambique, God's felt presence among a group of evangelicals in California, visible spirits in Zambia, and ghosts in the wake of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Throughout, he experiments with these storied worlds to dramatize new ways of approaching the politics of radical difference and the possibility of transforming reality. By exploring and constructing relations between James's pluralism and the ontological turn in anthropology, Savransky offers a new conceptualization of the pluriverse that fosters modes of thinking and living otherwise. (shrink)

Normative realism is the view that there are ought facts, i.e. facts about what we ought to do. A recent influential challenge to normative realism, raised separately by Justin Clarke-Doane and Matti Eklund, argues that ought facts—even if they exist—are inert in the sense that they cannot tell us what to do. The ground for this challenge is the epistemic possibility of a normative pluriverse, that is, the epistemic possibility of there being not only ought facts but also ought-like (...) facts. I counter this challenge by showing the inconsistency, and thus the epistemic impossibility, of a normative pluriverse. I do so mainly by revealing a certain constraint on ought-likeness. (shrink)

The original peoples of the world, who encountered colonization from the XV1 to the XVIII centuries when the Europeans arrived at their lands, have been resisting the erasure of their beliefs, knowledge, and praxes systems. Within the violence of colonization and the genocide it caused, the original inhabitants of the lands the colonizers occupied have continued practicing their religions and spirituality, taking care of the land using medicinal herbs and plants for healing and wellbeing. This capacity to resist and refuse (...) the imposition of the colonizers constitutes a powerful movement that has also reclaimed their land and sacred territories and developed growing knowledge systems aligned with their cosmologies and cosmovisions (Ciofalo et al., 2022). (shrink)

Considering the critical scenario of the modern international human rights system as an opportunity for a radical reimagination of human rights, in this article, I propose an epistemic-methodological counter-hegemonic approach to human rights through a frontier dialogue between the critical yet constructive interventions of Joaquin Herrera Flores, Sylvia Wynter, Sumi Madhok, and B. Rajagopal. Despite their different geographical and social positionalities, Flores’ Critical Theory, Wynter’s human after Man argument, Madhok’s anti-imperial epistemic justice, and Rajagopal’s Third World Social Movements Approach, all (...) converge on a framework with which to theorise historicising, pluriversal, and concrete knowledges of rights and being human grounded in the situated struggles of subaltern social movements across ‘most of the world’. This pluriversal approach allows for a conceptual production capable of transforming human rights scholarship to unveil the emancipatory potential of human rights beyond the modern imaginary. To this aim, I present my argument in three parts. Firstly, I expose the ethnocentric capitalist rationality of international human rights law and its function in maintaining the violent globalised capitalist system. I then present a literature review of the main elements of Flores’, Wynter’s, Madhok’s and Rajagopal’s aforementioned proposals. Finally, in the third part, using a frontier dialogical approach, I identify the points of confluence between the four theories, analysing how they mutually reinforce each other into an epistemic-methodological approach of human rights as pluriversal subaltern praxis of worldmaking, grounded in diverse ways of being human and knowing rights. (shrink)

In the beginning, Savransky's book offers a copious list of many worlds that we may or may not inhabit or even know about: a world where the dead are persons with whom the living confer, a world where part of the year the sun never sets, a world where sorcery-lions stalk their victims, a world where fictional characters give advice to novel readers, a world where immortal fungi live in disturbed forests, and and and (without end). This is a “world (...) of many worlds,” say Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser; a “pluralistic universe,” says William James. But neither phrase tells us what the world is like. They only stand for a practical and burning question at a time when the erasure of differences goes on at a breathtaking pace and the worlds face globalizing forces that fracture the multiple practices through which beings exist.These attempts at world erasures were and are by no means inevitable, and Savransky offers us, more precious than any explanation, a story about the past that helps us feel important aspects of what continues to occur. The story concerns the fraction of Magellan's circumnavigating crew arriving back in Spain in 1522, and by retelling it Savransky gives us a striking sense of the crew not so much having crossed the globe as having invented it. As in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), the journey legitimized the conception of a unified reality, a globe, everywhere of the same quality, whose local particularities are but obstacles to overcome, resources to exploit, or exotic mysteries to visit. The main effort of Savransky's book, then, is to gather means that might empower ways of thinking, feeling, and living in a brazen reversal of Verne's title—around the day in eighty (or a thousand) worlds.Savransky is by no means alone in this task, and many anthropological and philosophical proposals have contributed. He comments on some of these with a view to learning from their inventiveness rather than to pointing out their shortcomings. Still, we have learned from the fate of such proposals and experiments the startling ease with which the vision of a unified reality can creep back into the best attempts at thinking about a world of many worlds. Take, for instance, the language of ontology that has enabled us to hear from other worlds things of which we could not imagine reality was capable. But then, as Savransky shows, those gains are nearly lost when ontology turns into a turn—the “ontological turn”—and the anthropologists sail off around the world, posing the question “What is your ontology?” to people who could not care less about ontology.From James especially, Savransky borrows many proposals, two of which I will mention here. First is the need to reclaim philosophical Realism from those who made it a weapon of disqualification. James himself was the keen proponent of a Realism that we might call generic: “reality feels like itself,” any experience is real, and no experience should be required to justify its existence. Second, if “reality feels like itself,” then we may expect to experience “worldquakes” whenever we happen to brush up against other worlds. Perhaps the most compelling meaning that we may assign, following James, to pluriverse, is the notion and experience of “the” world being not only more than one, but also more than many—a sense of the real as inseverable from a more. Thus Savransky writes, along these lines, that “the pluriverse is not a world we dream might come about—it is what makes us dream.”. (shrink)

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between knowledge production and coloniality, guided by the question of alterity in the epistemological context of modern subjectivity. Seeking to understand how the relationship between subjectivity and identity (or sameness) occurs, consequently, between objectivity and alterity (or otherness) in modernity, we will seek to critically answer questions essential to philosophical practice in contemporaneity: a) what does the counterpart of the “I” consist of in this philosophy more consecrated among us and for whom the (...) canon is, as such, the ultimate legacy of the legitimate and the true? b) Which can be the possibilities of these “others” coming to relate in a dialogical and positive way to this canonical philosophy? c) Which consequences can be drawn from these responses from the point of view of the constitution of an integrated multiplicity of global and pluriversal knowledges, from which all living beings on planet Earth, and the planet itself, could truly benefit? (shrink)

This article interrogates the semiotic and epistemic foundations of the Universalist human rights project. Contemporary human rights discourse presents itself as a framework of universal recognition, yet it frequently operates as a normative imposition, producing a singular legal meaning of ‘the human’ that effaces ontological and cultural difference. From a Yoruba feminist perspective, this article argues that the universal human subject is a provincial legal sign rooted in colonial modernity individualistic, secular, and gender dimorphic. Engaging the field of Epistemologies of (...) the South, it advances a decolonial semiotics of law through a philosophical legal analysis of Yoruba indigenous concepts of personhood and normativity. Centring the concept of Enìyàn (person/humanity), the article demonstrates that Yoruba legal ethical thought encodes subjectivity through relationality, cosmic duty, and communal accountability, rather than individual entitlement. In this normative order, rights do not signify possessions held against the state; they operate as relational signifiers embedded within a social and spiritual web. Drawing on Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s critique of Western gender categories while engaging seriously with scholarly challenges to her thesis, the article further shows that the colonial imposition of gender dimorphism constitutes a re signification of social relations that disrupts indigenous systems of recognition and the matriarchal authority of Ìyá. The article ultimately argues for cognitive justice: not as the inclusion of African voices within existing frameworks, but as a pluriversal reconstruction of legal meaning. Through diatopical hermeneutics, Yoruba feminist epistemologies are mobilised to unsettle abstract universalism and advance a decolonial human rights praxis grounded in epistemic plurality. (shrink)

The concluding chapter synthesizes the crealectic method within broader frameworks of consciousness evolution and planetary regeneration. It explores the transition from “anthrobotic” to “regenerative” modes of innovation, emphasizing the cultivation of what the author terms “planetary thinking” for long-term transformation. The chapter positions crealectics within a pluriversal worldview that honors diversity while seeking creative harmony across different lifeworlds and scales of existence.

This paper situates the contemporary crisis of inequality within the global political economy shaped by neoliberalism and the post-COVID world marked by fragility, anxiety, and ecological precarity. While the BANI framework usefully captures today’s brittle and uncertain realities, it remains limited in its engagement with the structural roots of inequality embedded in market-driven growth models. Focusing on India, the paper highlights how the celebrated growth story masks persistent poverty, deepening precarity, and systemic marginalisation of Dalits, minorities, and especially Scheduled Tribes. (...) Against this backdrop, the study explores three case studies that embody alternative pathways of resistance and transformation. The first, rooted in pandemic-era struggles, demonstrates how collective mobilization through public hearings and inquiry committees challenged state neglect and demanded accountability. The second case examines a fluorosis mitigation programme in tribal Madhya Pradesh, revealing both the gains of targeted interventions and the limitations of vertical, beneficiary-driven models. The third study, from West Bengal’s Dooars, illustrates how community–state–civil society collaboration can generate climate-resilient, livelihood- oriented, and ecologically sustainable practices. Together, these cases explore the possibilities of a pluriverse of alternatives—grounded in equity, solidarity, and ecological justice—while underscoring that genuine transformation must go beyond symptomatic relief to address structural roots of deprivation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The UN Sustainable Development Goals contain17 goals such as no poverty and realization of peace. The themes and goals have arguably been conceptualized from a predominantly Euro-American perspective. This article opens these themes and goals to trans-civilizational dialogues including dialogue with visions and practices of Gandhi, especially his constructive programs.

This article, which stems from separate research projects pursued by each author in Oaxaca, Mexico, explores conducting fieldwork through the lenses of community autonomy , and hospitality . Engaging with these concepts made us question how the process of research can contradict cultural ethics that operate within fieldwork locations, as well as consider how such concepts may inform a more ethical set of inquiry practices. Such a set of alternative ethics can provide, furthermore, means for negotiating situations marked by interculturality, (...) particularly as it emerges through contemporary processes of globalization. (shrink)

This transnational review begins with the importance of transcultural cross-fertilizations between three hitherto seemingly disparate cultures and the education experiments which arose in each of them: India, Denmark, and the United States. The great Odisha philosopher and educator Chitta Ranjan Das’s education began in Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan, a similar context to the Danish Folk School, and he continued his work in Gandhian Ashrams. The origins and social impacts of the Danish Folk High School provided a model of creative transformative education, (...) which had come to the United States with Myles Horton and the historical and societal contribution of the Highlander Folk School to the American Civil Rights Movement (1930s–1960s). Likewise, Chitta Ranjan Das had studied in Denmark, Vienna, and elsewhere in Europe. Parallel to this development were Highlander Folk School and other folk schools in the United States, as well as the work of Paulo Freire, Myles Horton, and others. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have witnessed a continuation and expansion of the multiple strands and legacies of these great educators through the surprising, explosive growth of Folk Schools. Self-realization and societal reform are concerns of current Folk Schools as they were for Chitta Ranjan Das. His work and contributions help us understand the similarity of these deep spiritual and creative contributions made in parallel during the twentieth century across the globe and how their impacts on the twenty-first century are emerging. We include here an account of the recent evolution of Folk Schools in North America (1990–2024) and their contributions to transformative leadership in local communities of practice (COP). We then discuss how the thinking and works of Chitta Ranjan Das, the great Odia Philosopher and integral educator, reflect and intersect with those of Highlander and contemporary Folk Schools. Anticipating Arturo Escobar and the ‘pluriverse,’ the ‘waves and currents’ of these movements across the world lead to realizations of an emerging planetary education for liberation in what can be seen as ‘schools for life.’. (shrink)