Research Guides: Octavia’s Brood Research Guide: Radical Imagination + Prefigurative Politics

“What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” - bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Once the Imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.” - Walidah Imarisha, Octavia’s Brood, Introduction

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Definitions
Learn More - Radical Imagination
Learn More - Prefigurative Politics

Definitions

Radical imagination sees the world not as it is, but as it could be: a healthy planet that is just and equitable for all. Radical imagination does not blindly accept the status quo, it recognizes that the world can and should change. And how the world could be is not simply better, it’s radically different. Radical imagination is the courage to envision a future that is completely unlike the world we have today. It is limitless. It doesn’t react to or get discouraged by current realities. It imagines — without constraint — that anything is possible and that, collectively, we are capable of achieving the impossible.
- Everyday Activism Network, What Is Radical Imagination?

Prefigurative Politics is a nuanced concept, encompassing both the complexity of actively moving against the status quo and building alternatives rooted in justice and liberation. Living as though the world you aspire to exist in is already here, while simultaneously navigating a world riddled with polycrises and social fractures is an intricate endeavor.
- YouthxYouth, Prefigurative Politics in Practice: Examples and Strategies

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Radical Imagination

Radical Imagination: Developing Conscious Activists’ Capacities
YouthxYouth | The Commons: Social Change Library | 2023

Radical Imagination Podcast
“In all five seasons of Radical Imagination, you'll hear from courageous activists, visionary artists, and fierce organizers — people who think big and can challenge and stretch their own ideas about how to make change happen.”
This podcast DOES offer transcripts.

Books in the Emergent Strategy Series
This series features fiction and nonfiction inspired by and continuing the conversations found within adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.

The Radical Imagination by Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can it be studied and what are the possibilities and risks of doing so?This book seeks to answer these questions at a crucial time. As we enter into a new cycle of struggles marked by a worldwide crisis of social reproduction, scholar-activists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish explore the processes and possibilities for cultivating the radical imagination in dark times.A lively and crucial intervention in radical politics, social research and social change, and the collective visions and cultures that inspire them.
Call Number: eBook (SAIC Login Required)
ISBN: 9781780329024
Publication Date: 2014-06-12
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
Call Number: eBook (SAIC Login Required)
ISBN: 9781849352611
Publication Date: 2017-03-20
Print copy available to request from I-Share

Prefigurative Politics

Prefigurative Politics in Practice: Examples and Strategies
YouthxYouth | The Commons: Social Change Library | 2024

Prefigurative Politics
Guilherme Fians | The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology | March 18, 2022

Prefigurative Politics and Design
Alix Gerber | Pivot 2021: Dismantling/Reassembling [virtual conference] | p. 22-23 | July 2021

Prefiguring An Alternative Economy: Understanding Prefigurative Organizing And Its Struggles
Simone Schiller-Merkens | Organization, vol. 31 (3) | p. 458 - 476 | September 2022

Prefigurative Politics And Social Change: A Typology Drawing On Transition Studies
Anton Törnberg | Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, vol. 22 (1) | p. 83–107 | 2021

Prefigurative Politics by Paul Raekstad; Sofa Saio Gradin
Call Number: HM881 .R34 2020
ISBN: 9781509535903
Publication Date: 2020-02-03
Immersive Life Practices by Daniel Tucker (Editor)
Call Number: NX180.A77 I443 2014
ISBN: 9780982879849
Publication Date: 2014-09-15

Related Works in the Flaxman Library

Discover eBooks and physical books in the Flaxman Library Main Collections related to social justice work conducted by the authors of Octavia's Brood. The following related topics were determined from the authors' biographies: