Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree

Abstract

The practice of envisioning the future has deep roots in the past. Across the continent of Africa, there are traditions of oral storytelling, griots, folklore, and indigenous speculation that offer guidance on how to live in the present and orient towards better futures. Whilst these traditions can act as navigational compasses, they are not prevalent in conventional futuring methodologies. Rather, we are surrounded by perspectives of thinking about the future as a projection of current trends. In this perspective, we offer a new heuristic, the Entangled Time Tree, to the body of futuring approaches for how to acknowledge multiple pasts and alternative ways of conceptualizing futures. We recognise that in a decolonial approach, it is necessary to consider a multiplicity of pasts that lead to diverse presents and futures; a recognition that we see reflected in Africanfuturism and in traditional storytelling that further offer diverse ways of understanding temporality and futures. We propose that the diverse forms of storytelling across the African continent constitute critically underexplored forms of knowledge for enabling a decolonial approach to futuring through three mechanisms -stories as power, stories as healing, and stories as diversification. We argue that centering these stories will allow the exploration of more just and ecologically sustainable futures. We recognise that this is just a first, but we hope a promising, step towards a longer term commitment of creating more diverse, imaginative visions and pathways of a decolonial future that will be useful not only on the African continent, but globally.