HomePoietics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part II: Revolutions, Research-Crea[c]tions and Possible Worlds

Poietics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part II: Revolutions, Research-Crea[c]tions and Possible Worlds

Poïétiques et politiques du plurivers, volet II : révolutions, recherches-créa[c]tions et mondes possibles

Poéticas y políticas del Pluriverso, parte II: revoluciones, investigaciones-creaciones y mundos posibles

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Published on Monday, April 13, 2026

Abstract

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Initiated by a group of young artist-researchers from the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen and the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (UT2J), the project Poietics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part II: Revolutions, Research-Crea[c]tions and Possible Worlds aims to provide a space to expand and break down the boundaries of thought and creation. Focusing on revolutions (political, but also artistic, scientific, metaphysical…), “research-crea[c]tion” and possible worlds, this second conference will further explore the poietics, politics and cosmologies of the Pluriverse. It will bring together researchers and “artivists” for workshops, performances, academic presentations and discussions open to the public.

Announcement

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Possible Worlds A series of action research and research-creation conferences organised by PhD students and early-career artists-researchers from Toulouse and Tübingen

Conference dates and venue - 29 and 30 October 2026 – Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen

Argument

Initiated by a group of young artist-researchers from the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen and the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (UT2J), the project Poietics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part II: Revolutions, Research-Crea[c]tions and Possible Worlds aims to provide a space to expand and break down the boundaries of thought and creation. Following the success of the first conference Poetics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part I: Towards Cosmological Research-Crea[c]tions (University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès and Cave Poésie, Toulouse, 19–20 June 2025; see the report on the first symposium), and in line with other recent conferences in pluriversal studies, notably in Polynesia (REPLU) and Romania (Living from Difference), the second part of this series will take place in Tübingen in autumn 2026. Focusing on revolutions (political, but also artistic, scientific, metaphysical…), “research-crea[c]tion” (which we define as the intersection between artistic creation, theoretical research and social action; at the crossroads of research-creation in the arts and action research applied to social transformation) and possible worlds, this second conference will further explore the poietics, politics and cosmologies of the Pluriverse. It will bring together researchers and “artivists” (artists who place their creations at the heart of social struggles) for workshops, performances, academic presentations and discussions open to the public.

At a time when both the arts and academic research are opening up to the “Pluriverse[1]”, defined by the Zapatistas and anthropologists as “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos”, that is to say, “a world in which many worlds fit[2]”; and where “pluriversal studies[3]” are emerging as a field of creation, research and social action, this project aims to explore the plurality of cosmologies[4] (Boone, 2024) and existential horizons through the consolidation of a network of interdisciplinary, international and multilingual young researchers and artist-researchers (French-speaking, German-speaking, Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, etc.). This network operates within the fields of pluriversal, Indigenous (Krenak, 2024), decolonial and gender studies, whilst drawing on the arts, literatures and languages, Global South studies, as well as philosophy and social sciences. It also aims to develop research work in connection with populations threatened by land exploitation and by the dynamics of linguistic and cultural ecocide affecting cultures oppressed by capitalist and patriarchal colonisation and neocolonialism. The configuration of this network is an ecosophical, political and sensitive endeavour in the sense that we operate from various points of tension to establish understanding and relationality based on differences; the possibility of the existence of plural worlds capable of acting together for coexistence, care, respect and empathy between human and more-than-human peoples.

Calls to decolonise spaces of creation, teaching and research are now more urgent than ever: for far too long, knowledge has been confined to monological modes of perception, sensation and vision of a single world and its future (Kilomba, 2021). How can we step back and reconfigure the ways in which we have learnt to think and feel in different worlds – to move from the universal to the pluriversal? The universalist ideas of the Enlightenment relegated to the margins those systems of knowledge that recognised the multiplicity of lived worlds, perceived as irrational and primitive (Hurtado Lopez, 2017). Yet these systems of knowledge recognise the subjectivity and autonomy of all living creatures on Earth, thereby opposing the domination of white men over “nature” by virtue of their “culture”. What forms of dialogue, then, might emerge between these different ways of knowing and inhabiting the worlds? And how can artistic, scientific and political practices help to make these plural cosmologies visible?

The Pluriverse refers specifically to the network of multiple “ontologies” or “cosmologies” of people who are fighting against what Arturo Escobar calls the modern, colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and anthropocentric “One World World”, or OWW (Escobar, 2020). Embracing the “ontological turn” (Marisol de la Cadena, Philippe Descola, Arturo Escobar, Bruno Latour, Marilyn Strathern, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Roy Wagner...) brought about by philosophy and the humanities and social sciences over recent decades, whilst not neglecting the critiques levelled at this trend (Watts, 2013; Todd, 2016; Meziane, 2023), we thus consider that the Pluriverse is composed of all the worlds shaped by these cosmologies (such as animism, totemism, analogism, etc.); but also by what the philosopher Mohamed Amer Meziane calls the “edge of the worlds”, namely the metaphysical “inter-worlds” (Meziane, 2023).

By poietics of the Pluriverse (Abderhalden Cortes, 2014; Zacarias, 2025), we mean not only the study of the process of creation, representation and reception of works of art, but also the poiesis at play in all aspects of life, involving anthropological, metaphysical, social and political dimensions... without separating them from aesthetic questions, as it was often the case in the so-called “autonomous” sphere of modern Western art. Among the artists who deploy such cosmological poietics, we might consider, for example, Tiziano Cruz, an Indigenous artivist from Argentina who invokes the cosmology of his Aymara people in his performances Soliloquio and Wayqeycuna; the literatures of the Maya peoples (Worley and Palacios, 2019; Keme, 2021) and Guarani Mbyá peoples (Müller, 2024); or the Afro-diasporic “cosmopoetics” of the poet and philosopher Dénètem Touam Bona (Bona, 2021), and that of the comparative literature scholar Khalil Khalsi (Khalsi, 2023). In contrast to dualist approaches, we regard the poietics of the Pluriverse as “poetics of relation” (Glissant, 1990) and “cosmographic poietics” (Riboulet, 2019), which refer to “relational ontologies” and “ontological politics” (Escobar, 2020) and can give rise to “transmodern aesthetics” (Bisiaux, 2021). Thus, practical and theoretical contributions in the field of poietics are welcome not only from the performing arts and their studies (circus, dance, music, performance, theatre...), the visual arts, literary studies, etc., but also from philosophy and the social sciences, such as sound ethnography or theatrical anthropology (Barba, 2004).

Similarly, the politics of the Pluriverse, also known as “ontological politics” (Escobar, 2024) or “cosmopolitics”, refer to politics in its intertwining with everyday life as well as with the cosmos (as opposed to the separate and distant realm that politics has become in the single world of modernity), modelled on the social struggles waged collectively by peoples or communities defending their multiple worlds within the polis – from rural areas to megacities. Thus, proposals devoted to the politics of the Pluriverse are welcome across all disciplines, from Indigenous studies, action research (Reason and Bradbury, 2008) and legal studies to “aesthetic and political” approaches drawn from research-creation, oral and written literature, or cultural studies.

Research-creation (Plana, Garde and Pandelakis, 2024; Manning and Massumi, 2018; Gosselin & Lecogiec, 2009; Martinez & Naugrette, 2020; Corrons & Castillo Ballén, 2025; Spatz, 2024), meanwhile, lies at the heart of our project. It bridges the gap between scientific research and artistic creation to yield innovative and unexpected results through which knowledge is constructed from experience and experimentation within lived experience in a somatic manner (Shusterman, 2015) and is open to all forms of semiotisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). By bridging the gap between poietics, aesthetics, social action and “ontological politics”, it can be fully applied to real-life issues, thus becoming “research-creation-action”, or “applied research-creation” (Corrons & Castillo Ballén, 2025); or, to put it in a condensed form: “research-crea[c]tion”. This series of “research-crea[c]tion” symposia will thus represent a new step towards repairing the fractured relationship between collective action and cosmological “feeling-thinking” (Escobar, 2024) within our German-French context, and more broadly on a global scale.

The revolutions that our approach aims to propose, for their part, are both epistemological and political, or rather, of political epistemology: on the one hand, the need to revolutionise traditional academic research practices in several fields implies a pluralistic interdisciplinarity; on the other hand, such radical interdisciplinarity must engage with the various possible ways of revolutionising research itself – which in turn takes place across different and distinct fields. We favour the plural form “revolutions” to keep open the reference to the plurality of revolutionary epistemological possibilities rather than a single, monolithic and teleological revolution (Guattari, 2012).       

Finally, the development of possible worlds involves moving beyond both the monolithic and “One World World” model of colonial modernity and capitalist realism (Fisher, 2006), that is, the idea that there is no alternative to the current political, cultural and social reality. At the same time, the emphasis on the possibility of other worlds involves drawing on a productive virtuality (Deleuze, 1966; 1968), able to build something concrete, to make “possible [an] other possible” (Escobar, 2024) in terms of the forms of expression and relational modalities of the arts, research, and, more broadly, of society as a whole.        

With this in mind, we invite participants to join this conversation, to create an inclusive space in which to bring to life multiple cosmologies, cosmopoietics and cosmopolitics. The conference will mainly take place in person in Tübingen, with the option of accepting a limited number of presentations via video conference should travel prove impossible. We invite researchers, artivists and all others interested in the Pluriverse to contribute to the form of performances, exhibitions, poems, participatory workshops, academic papers and other means of developing and disseminating knowledge. 

Contributions may address the following themes (though are not limited to them):

  • Cosmogonies, cosmologies, ontologies, metaphysics... What exactly is the Pluriverse? How can it be “defined”?
  • “Cosmopoetics” (Dénètem Touam Bona and Khalil Khalsi) and “poetics of relation” (Glissant)
  • Cosmopolitics (Zapatistas, Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala, Pan-Africanism, Asian worlds, Oceanic worlds, diasporas from the South to the North...)
  • “Anteaesthetics” and “Black Aesthesis” (Rizvana Bradley), “decolonial aestheSis and aesthetics” (Rolando Vazquez and Walter Mignolo) and “transmodern feminist aesthetics” (Lîlâ Bisiaux) versus modern-colonial aesthetics
  • Revolutions: social, political, artistic, scientific…
  • Possible worlds: speculative fiction (Muriel Plana), “ancestral future” (Ailton Krenak), “futurability” (Arturo Escobar), “future anterior” (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) ...
  • ‘Transmodern’ epistemologies (Enrique Dussel) and pluriversal studies.

For artistic proposals, all languages of the Pluriverse are welcome, as a song, a dance, a drawing or a performance can often do without verbal translation. Extra-verbal languages – gestures, images, sounds, objects, spatialities – are also fully recognised as modes of thought and research.

For traditional theoretical papers and artivist workshops (combining the arts and/or social transformation), the languages accepted are German, English, Spanish and French. We also suggest that presenters provide a slideshow or other visual aid with keywords in a second language (in English if the presentation is in French, and vice versa, for example) to ensure the widest possible understanding.

Duration of presentations

Standard presentations will be limited to 20 minutes of speaking time and 15 minutes of discussion per panel. For these presentations too, we strongly encourage participants to be creative in order to avoid simply reading out a text written in full in advance; experimental formats are also welcome for presentations.

Performances, workshops and other artivist proposals may last between 30 minutes and a maximum of 1 hour.

Submission guidelines

Please send your abstracts of approximately 300 words, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical note, to pluriverse.network@proton.me by 20 May 2026.

Organising committee of young artists and researchers

Yannick Essengue (ERRaPhiS, UT2J / CDFA “New Critical Theories and Decentred Epistemologies”), Carmen González (Department of German Studies, University of Tübingen), Sylvan Hecht-Aussenac (Department of German Studies and affiliated with the PhD Programme “Collocations: Constructing Interknowledges, Negotiating Proximities”, ICGSS, University of Tübingen / LLA-CRÉATIS, UT2J / CDFA “New Critical Theories”), Jacques Atiogbé Koudjodji (ERRaPhiS, UT2J), Alaeddine Maamer (LLA-CRÉATIS, UT2J), Valeria López Álvaro (PhD Collocations, ICGSS, University of Tübingen), Juliana Marín Taborda (TEPHAC, University of Antioquia / ERRaPhiS and affiliated with LLA-CRÉATIS, UT2J), Ibrahima Ndiaye (Department of Romance Languages, University of Tübingen), Kristell Pech Oxte (PhD Collocations, ICGSS, University of Tübingen), Vanessa Schmitz (Charles University Prague / University of Tübingen), Yamile Villamil Rojas (UQÀM) and Simone Zanello (University of Tübingen and ERRaPhiS, UTJ2 / CDFA ‘New Critical Theories’).

Artistic and Scientific Committee

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen:

University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès:

University of Toulouse (formerly University of Toulouse – Paul Sabatier):

University of Burgundy

References

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BARBA, Eugenio. Le Canoë de Papier. Traité d’anthropologie théâtrale. L’Entretemps éditions, 2004 [1993].

BISIAUX, Lîlâ. Esthétiques féministes transmodernes au théâtre : Elena Garro, Verónica Musalem et Conchi León : perspective critique sur l’histoire du théâtre européen et mexicain. Thèse de doctorat sous la direction d’Emmanuelle Garnier, Art et histoire de l'art, Université Toulouse le Mirail - Toulouse II, soutenue le 08/01/2021. Français. Accessible en ligne : ⟨NNT : 2021TOU20002⟩. ⟨tel-03375895⟩ ; consulté le 16 mars 2026.

BLASER, Mario and DE LA CADENA, Marisol. A World of Many Worlds. Duke University Press, 2018.

BOONE, Frédéric. « Reconnaître le scientisme de notre cosmologie pour atterrir », Cahiers de sémiotique des cultures, n° 1, 2024 – 1, Sciences, épistémologie, arts – Perspectives de l’énaction, p. 151-152.

BOONE, Frédéric. “Western Cosmology and Space Conquest”, Caliban [Online], 74 | 2025, Online since 02 September 2025, connection on 25 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/14596; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/1536d.

BONA, Dénètem Touam. Sagesse des Lianes. Cosmopoétique du refuge, 1. Post-éditions, 2021.

CORRONS, Fabrice, CASTILLO BALLÉN, Sonia. La investigación-creación aplicada (ICA). Innovar desde el arte para los sectores sociales. Ñaque Editora, 2025.

DELEUZE, Gilles. Différence et Répétition. PUF, 1968.

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ESCOBAR, Arturo. Sentir-penser avec la Terre. L'écologie au-delà de l'Occident. Paris, Le Seuil, 2018.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Un autre possible est possible : des chemins pour les transitions depuis Abya Yala / Afro / Amérique latine. Paris, Zulma, 2024.

HURTADO LOPEZ, Fátima, « Universalisme ou pluriversalisme ? Les apports de la philosophie latino-américaine », dans Tumultes, 2017/1, n°48, « Pluriversalisme décolonial », p. 39-50. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-tumultes-2017-1-page-39.htm.

FISHER, Mark, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, 2006

GLISSANT, Édouard. Poétique de la Relation. Gallimard, 1990.

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GUATTARI, Félix. La révolution moléculaire. Éditions Amsterdam, 2012.

KEME, Emil. Le Maya Q’atzij/ Our maya word poetics of resistance in Guatemala. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.

KHALSI, Khalil. Par-delà le rêve et la veille : cosmopoétique des fins du monde. Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2023.

KILOMBA, Grada. Plantation memories: episodes of everyday racism. Between the lines, 2021.

KOTHARI, Ashish, SALLEH, Ariel, ESCOBAR, Arturo, DEMARIA, Federico et ACOSTA, Alberto (éds. / Hrsg.). Plurivers. Un dictionnaire du post‑développement. Wildproject, 2022 / Pluriversum. Ein Lexikon des Guten Lebens für alle. AG SPAK, 2023.

KRENAK, Ailton. Ancestral Future. Polity Press, 2024.

MANNING, Erin & MASSUMI, Brian. Pensée en acte : Vingt propositions pour la recherche-création. Les Presses du réel, 2018. 

MARTINEZ THOMAS, Monique & NAUGRETTE, Catherine. Le doctorat et la Recherche en Création. L’Harmattan, 2020.

MEZIANE, Mohamed Amer. Au bord des mondes : vers une anthropologie métaphysique. Vues de l'esprit, 2023.

MÜLLER, Adalberto. « L'âme et ses doubles : une introduction à la cosmopoétique Guarani Mbyá », Brésil(s) [En ligne], 26 | 2024, mis en ligne le 30 novembre 2024, consulté le 25 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bresils/18745 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12t9v.

PLANA, Muriel, GARDE, Julien, PANDELAKIS, Saul. Pour des recherches diaboliques. Théorie et création inter-artistiques en laboratoire. Hermann, 2024.

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RIBOULET, Célia. Poïétiques cosmographiques : expériences territoriales, poétiques environnementales. Thèse de doctorat sous la direction de Patrick Barrès et Sophie Lécole-Solnychkine, Art et histoire de l'art, Université Toulouse le Mirail - Toulouse II, soutenue le 19/09/2019. Français. Accessible en ligne : ⟨NNT : 2019TOU20045⟩. ⟨tel-03623573⟩ ; consulté le 16 mars 2026.

SCHUSTERMAN, Richard. Le Style à l’état vif, Somaesthétique, art populaire et art de vivre. Questions Théoriques, 2015. 

SPATZ, Ben. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Northwestern University Press, 2024.

TODD, Zoe. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another word for colonialism”, in Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1), 2016, p. 4-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124. Consulté le 31 août 2025.

WATTS, Vanessa. “Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans (First Woman and Sky Woman go on a European world tour!)”, in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 2, no. 1, 2013. URL: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19145. Consulté le 31 août 2025.

WORLEY, Paul and PALACIOS, Rita. Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded knowledge. University of Arizona, 2019.

ZACARIAS, Armando. Exploration poïétique du corps Wixarika. Tissages pluriversels. Thèse de doctorat sous la direction de Pascale Weber, soutenue le 12/11/2025. Accessible en ligne : https://theses.fr/s303569 ; consulté le 19 janvier 2026.

Notes 

[1] See Alberto Acosta, Federico Demaria, Arturo Escobar, Ashish Kothari et Ariel Salleh (éds.), Plurivers. Un dictionnaire du post-développement, Marseille, Wildproject, 2022, a work that offers an initial overview of “pluriversal studies”.

[2] Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, 1996. By “world”, we mean, following the philosophers Sophie Gosselin and David gé Bartoli, “a set of relationships established between human beings and non-human beings in such a way as to inscribe them within a meaningful and sustainable totality”. Sophie Gosselin et David gé Bartoli, « Terre-mondes et personnes-chimères : donner voix au pluriversel. Récit à deux voix et plus », p. 64, Chimères, 2023/2 N° 103, p. 63-76. DOI: 10.3917/chime.103.0063. URL: https://shs.cairn.info/revue-chimeres-2023-2-page-63; accessed 19 January 2025.

[3] For Arturo Escobar, pluriversal studies “in no way claim to replace critical studies of capitalism and modernity emanating from established disciplinary fields such as political economy, cultural studies or political ecology. They add another approach, that of ‘political ontology’, whose aim is to ‘make visible the other ways of knowing and of making the world that exist on the planet. They seek to offer a glimpse of other worlds, other possibilities of re-existence”. Arturo Escobar, Sentir-penser avec la Terre. L'écologie au-delà de l'Occident, Paris, Le Seuil, 2018, p. 35.

[4] “In its most common sense, a cosmology is a unified and narrative representation of all that exists, a story of the world. Different peoples and human cultures have developed different cosmologies, often mythological or theological, which describe the formation of the world, how it functions, and the place held within it by the human species or the human group in question. In anthropology, the word ‘cosmology’ has a broader meaning, closer to ‘culture’, encompassing everything that determines the ways of thinking and acting of the members of a collective. In our Western culture, this word also refers to a discipline within the physical sciences that involves studying the universe as a physical object: measuring its properties (density, composition, geometry, rate of expansion) and producing a ‘grand narrative’, that is to say, a history of the universe, based on astronomical observations and theoretical modelling. There are therefore at least two definitions of the word ‘cosmology’ in an academic context: one comes from the humanities and social sciences (anthropology, philosophy) and characterises a culture, whilst the other comes from the natural sciences and refers to a branch of physics, namely physical cosmology.” Frédéric Boone, “Recognising the scientism of our cosmology in order to come down to earth”, Cahiers de sémiotique des cultures, no. 1, 2024 – 1, Sciences, epistemology, arts – Perspectives on enaction, pp. 151–152.

Places

  • Geschwister-Scholl-Platz
    Tübingen, Federal Republic of Germany (72074)

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Contact(s)

  • Sylvan HECHT
    courriel : sylvan [dot] hecht [at] univ-tlse2 [dot] fr

Information source

  • Alaeddine MAAMER
    courriel : alaeddine [dot] maamer [at] univ-tlse2 [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Poietics and Politics of the Pluriverse, Part II: Revolutions, Research-Crea[c]tions and Possible Worlds », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, April 13, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/161yv

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