When this thread started, I couldn’t wrap my head around the “prefigurative” concept. The best I could do is imagine it as “adaptive / flexible”, but that feels too simplistic.
I’ve re-read the article linked twice and, although I still feel I don’t really get it, at least I can articulate what the problem (for my understanding) may be. The article mentions protests that are usually viewed as “failed” in the sense of “not achieving any goal”. But, if I understand correctly, it presents them as processes that induce changes in their participants.
It reminded me of Stewart Brand’s fast and slow system / processes:
Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Those protests “failed” if we look at them as “fast processes”. There were no immediate goals being achieved, but they also operated at the slow level. I personally experienced part of that in the 15-M Movement (2011).
[Getting on my soapbox…] Which brings questions of scale to the table. Maybe the changes induced by these prefigurative protocols are too slow to perceive them?
Any help to undertand it better is welcome, including negative feedback.
Exploratory raw thought: Could there be an analogue for Brandolini’s law * in this context? I mean, how can prefigurative (slow) strategies outpace the industrial-global processes that try to counter?
* The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.