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There has been a proliferation in the use of the concept of prefiguration to describe and understand many of the protest and social change movements of the past decade. However, there are key aspects of the concept that remain unexplored. In this paper I consider telos and justice, and unveil a temporal paradox arising from the thinking behind prefiguration. Rather than this temporal paradox of prefiguration being the undoing of the concept, it does in fact have the potential to be its strength. The purpose of this paper is to assert, by drawing on Derrida’s notion of the impossibility of justice, that the temporal paradox of prefiguration is not something to be resolved but instead is to be foregrounded and navigated. I use research from a food sovereignty collective in the north of Spain to offer an illustration of a prefigurative economic politics that embraces Derrida’s justice‐as‐an‐impossibility.
A significant section of the alternative food initiative (AFI) literature has expressed concerns about the predisposition of some research to assume neoliberal outcomes from particular AFI practices. As a counterpoint to this, there has been a call for analysis tools that will allow for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities and contradictions of AFI practices. In this paper, I explore the ethical dimension of AFI practices. By interrogating the relationship and interplay between ethics and their correlative ethical practices, new learning and knowledge are generated in both a lay and an academic context. Drawing on Derrida's concept of aporetic ethics, I argue that what allows for such learning to happen is a non-foundational understanding of ethics and ethical practices. When we consider ethics, ethical practices and the relationship between the two as dynamic, fluid and emergent, we develop a disposition that foregrounds reflexivity and learning as key components for 'eating in the anthropocene' . With such a disposition and the learning it generates, researchers, both lay and academic, are in a stronger position to understand the complexities of AFI practices. I offer an illustration of such non-foundational ethics through research on food sovereignty collectives in northern Spain. The collectives demonstrate an understanding of the non-foundational nature of ethics and they employ practices to manage the productive discomfort that comes from destabilising ethics, contesting decisions, reflecting on approaches and using ethics as a process to learn how to care for others.
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