Myths have a bad reputation in political science. To speak of myths is normally to refer to the post-truths of the far-right or the romanticism of esoteric subcultures. But when Ali Aslam, David W. McIvor, and Joel Alden Schlosser urge practices of “myth making” in their new book, Earthborn Democracy, they are not calling for nationalist fables or heroic legends. On the contrary, they are asking for the (re)telling of stories that stretch the social imagination to new possibilities of living, that awaken citizens to a different way of organizing, and that sensitize humans to the ecologies with which they are always already entangled. Myths, for Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser, are an intractable and necessary feature of all societies that orientate us and “hold a vision of how human and more than human worlds live together” (p. 27). In the face of “twin crises” of ecological and democratic demise, alternative myths that can provoke and sustain a search into new possibilities that can “reorient the species toward freedom and flourishing” (p. 6) are sorely needed.
This is the compelling claim of Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life. The book consists of an introduction and three chapters, each bold, provocative and interesting. The first chapter plumbs deep history to find examples of collective decision-making and “multispecies mutualism” from around the world that can help, they say, to “re-story democracy” (p. 66). If the first chapter reminds us of myths of democratic flourishing, the second chapter locates these myths within the “collective subconscious” that the authors state is nurtured by the earth and “appears in dreams, fantasies, symbols, images and ideas” (p. 69). The authors identify three persistent “democratic archetypes” that together appear and reappear throughout human history. The three archetypes—flight, sociality and politicality—emphasize different aspects of an earthborn democracy and offer to “open fields of practice for democratic life” (p. 100). Finally, the third chapter attends to examples of indigenous activism, peoples’ assemblies and coalition building which illustrate how myths are embodied in rituals that invite “the possibility of transformation” (p. 119) and prefigure social and political alternatives (p. 121).
The book weaves together notions from, among others, Carl Jung, Sheldon Wolin, Hannah Arendt, Félix Guattari, William Connolly, Donna Haraway, David Graeber, David Wengrow, Robin Wall Kimmerer, William Ophuls, Noëlle McAfee, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Romand Coles. Its claims resonate with growing bodies of work on new materialism, assemblage theory, decolonization, embodiment, and psychoanalysis and environmental political theory, which has long critiqued how dominant discourses limit both the political imagination and impact non-human nature. Many readers will concur with Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser that contemporary capitalist societies—in which rationality is fetishized and in which economic growth has become an unquestioned mantra—erroneously and dangerously perpetrate the myth of rootlessness that has depleted both the public sphere and the planet.
The authors, then, convincingly insist on the exercise of “conscious myth making” (p. 22). Indeed, it is not hard to argue that the ecological destructiveness of industrial capitalism cannot be solved without some radical reorientation of our background assumptions, promethean self-conceptions, and unsustainable dualisms. In this respect, Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser are not the first to turn to the imagination and storytelling in the aim of carving out a pathway to a better world. Many others have reached out to the alternative narratives and imaginaries found in indigenous communities and the global south. Joining these voices, this book makes the uplifting argument that although they might be difficult to detect from behind the blinkers of consumer capitalism, there are many extant examples of a “proliferating politics of entanglement” (p. 154) experimenting with different types of collective self-governance and forming new political subjectivities. The authors therefore offer an important retort to those who, alarmed by the dangers posed by a changing climate, are sceptical of democracy and view it as the cause of the problem, rather than a solution. This pessimistic framing of the relationship between democracy and ecology holds that environmental crisis is the outcome of an ever-ignorant demos, inevitably corrupt politicians, and persistently malfunctioning institutions. Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser put this relation the other way around: they see the crisis of democracy as a result of a depleted habitat for humans to govern and express themselves (p. 26).
I support the authors’ ambitious program of a “visionary political theory” that attends to myths, rituals and stories, and looks outside of contemporary liberal democracies to find alternatives that illustrate “how collective life organises and orientates itself and how it might do otherwise” (p. 19). Yet I am not so convinced by some of the presuppositions they make in presenting this program. The nation state, for example, is described as an institution that will only ever “conspire against the demos” (p. 24). It is not that I believe that state institutions around the world are functioning as they should, or that reforming them would be an easy task, or that they are eternal social fixtures. But the myth of national identification currently remains a powerful source of belonging and solidarity that is arguably needed more than ever. There is not the space here to elaborate on this argument, but just summarily: on the one hand, exiting state institutions would leave them in the hands of elites who surely should be confronted rather than left to impose their will. On the other hand, it is not guaranteed that the public sphere would be better without them. Localized politics and community traditions do not automatically result in an egalitarian, inclusive, and democratic politics; they can also involve oppression and create outsiders.
Likewise, I am wary of the authors’ apparent dismissal of political representation as a mechanism that subdues the demos into “a passive spectator” (p. 115). Although there is a widespread tendency to see direct participation as more authentically democratic, political representation functions as a crucial mechanism for the formation of collective identities and coalitions. The important question, I suggest, is not how to resist being represented but how to represent better. One of the examples referenced in Earthborn Democracy is that of an encounter between the Ktunaxa and the Piikani, which Brian Noble documented as an illustration of “treaty ecology” in his chapter for the 2018 edited volume, Resurgence and Reconciliation. As Noble recounts, while following a group of blacktail deer, a Ktunaxa hunting party strayed onto Piikani territory. The potential ensuing conflict was resolved when the Ktunaxa explained their respectful relationship to the deer and transferred to the Piikani certain rights through the Ktunaxa’s Blacktail Deer Dance ceremony. My point here is that the council formed to negotiate the situation were crucially involved in making representative claims whereby humans were entangled spiritually and materially with the nonhuman. Such more-than-human representation certainly generates new challenges and questions, but it might also foster the sort of entangled democratic politics that Aslam, McIvor, and Schlosser call for.
The question posed by the book remains: Can we grasp the myths of treaty-ecology, and of the myriad other ways of living-together discussed in the book, to re-imagine and cultivate democratic forms of life that are attuned to the nonhuman? Aslam, McIvor and Schlosser believe we can—we just need to look around, step in and claim them.
