Prefiguring Futures: Towards a Politics and Ethics of Non-Domination

• Author / Creator

  Cucchiara, Salvatore

• The purpose of this investigation is to formulate a theory of change. To this end, I first explore what goal(s) can productively inform a wide range of struggles. I argue in favour of an experimental ethics tentatively geared towards non-domination --a way of organising relations where parties have a hand over the way they are managed. Secondly, I explore what methods are best suited to achieve this goal. I argue that the path to non-domination involves two mutually sustaining processes. First is the cultivation of an ethics that revolves around self-rule, self-control, responsiveness, responsibility, and openness. The second process encompasses the deployment of techniques for change that are qualitatively compatible with non-domination. Such techniques include infrapolitics, discursive challenges, reform, and non-participation, but exclude confrontation and revolution. These two processes combine to prefigure non-domination here and now, if tentatively and imperfectly, instead of relegating it to a distant future.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Change
  • Freedom
  • Power
  • Ethical struggle
  • Self-transformation
  • Non-domination
  • Prefiguration
  • Ethics

• Graduation date

  Fall 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R30T51

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.