Dreamwork as Pluriversal Practice
Towards a world where many worlds fit
This post extends my previous writing on Hospicing Modernity at the IIPE and The Kin of Ata. It is also inspired by last night’s dream in which the dream told me to check my Substack drafts folder :)
Last night I traveled to multiple different worlds in my dream realm: my house (notably I was not home at the time and, of course, it was different), a pond with eels and snakes, a conversation with friends, my Substack drafts folder. Many worlds within the dreamworld.
There are multiple ways to interpret a dream. Part of the magic of doing dreamwork in community is when we ask, “What does it mean?” together, we find many answers. Many ways of seeing and making meaning within this world.
Dreamwork, as a regular ongoing practice, helps us to practice pluriversality - experiencing different worlds within this world, experiencing the many ways of seeing and being that are possible concurrently, coexisting within the world. And as a practice of pluriversality, dreamwork disrupts modernity within ourselves, and the tendency and habit of seeing what scholar John Law has called “the one-world world.”
In my recent post about the book The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You, which is about a culture that puts dreaming at the center, I quoted a section where the narrator asks an elder, Salvatore, a question about how to dream better. Salvatore replies:
“There are many answers. There is not THE answer. I can give you some answers, but not all…There are many kinds of dreams. They exist perhaps on different levels.”
Modernity left us with a binary way of seeing the world - and seeing that there is one right or better answer to most questions. In Minna’s recent post about Hospicing Modernity she talked about how modernity results in the colonization of mental and physical landscapes, leading to “death by monoculture.” Dreamwork helps us to disrupt this binary and discover the many answers that are possible to any given question we might ask of our dreams. Dreamwork helps us to experience that there are many answers, not THE answer. This is the heart of pluriversality - many answers, many ways.
In the fictional world of Ata, there are some core cultural stories and myths. After living there for many years, the narrator (who is not from Ata) realizes there are many versions of the same story with slightly different dimensions and perspectives. Many answers, not THE answer. Many stories, not THE story. Many perspectives, not THE perspective. To me, this demonstrates the pluriversality of the world of Ata and dreamwork.
What is a pluriverse, or pluriversality? In the words of Richard Norgaad,
A pluriverse is a world in which diverse hopes can be sown, multiple opportunities can be cultivated, and a plurality of meaningful lives can be achieved by the richly different and caring people we are. There are many alternatives to the domineering, profiteering, globalizing, disempowering ‘progress’ of the West.
The pluriverse is often described using the words of the Zapatistas: a world where many worlds fit. The vision of a pluriverse excites me, and I believe dreamwork is one portal and practice towards pluriversal ways of being. Dreamwork allows us to experience different worlds within our world, and allows us to experience the many ways of making meaning, interpreting, and seeing.
What a gift!
May we dream our way towards many worlds within this world,
Stephanie
Stephanie Knox Steiner, PhD is an enchantress, mother-scholar, dreamworker, community weaver, professor, and peace educator who currently lives and teaches at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. She has been writing down her dreams since she was a teenager, and studied community dreamwork as part of her doctoral studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She writes prolifically about enchantment, interbeing, and re-imagining education at her other Substack, Enchantable.
YES! Very difficult to do…and the practice is the work. Here’s to collective dreamwork as pluriversal practice 🔥🔥🔥