What is Radical Imagination?
How To Use Your Radical Imagination to Envision a Just and Equitable World
To use our radical imagination is to envision a just and equitable world for all. One of Everyday Activism Network’s eight core beliefs is that radical imagination has the power to envision a different future and, combined with pragmatic solutions that meet the moment, it can bring that future into being.
Imagine with us.
Defining radical imagination
Radical imagination sees the world not as it is, but as it could be: a healthy planet that is just and equitable for all. Radical imagination does not blindly accept the status quo, it recognizes that the world can and should change. And how the world could be is not simply better, it’s radically different. Radical imagination is the courage to envision a future that is completely unlike the world we have today. It is limitless. It doesn’t react to or get discouraged by current realities. It imagines — without constraint — that anything is possible and that, collectively, we are capable of achieving the impossible.
If the future you see gets a reaction such as “that will never work,” then you know you are engaging in radical imagination!
Radical imagination is the engine of social change movements
Radical imagination feeds the creation of a just and equitable society. Social change movements use radical imagination to envision a future free of oppression, exploitation, and all the social -isms rooted in injustice: racism, sexism, ableism, nationalism, classism, ageism, heterosexism, and many more.
Radical imagination sees a future built on a fundamentally transformed society where everyone enjoys equal rights on a healthy planet, no matter the circumstances into which they were born. Many believe that capitalism is incapable of producing a healthy, just, and equitable world. Therefore, radical imagination often includes a vision of a post-capitalist society. Where geopolitical-economic structures are used to end human suffering and regenerate the earth, not exacerbate inequality and propel us toward human annihilation.
Some might call this future a utopia. Thus, radical imagination is also the courage to be hopeful and optimistic about the future in the face of ongoing injustice and impending climate disaster.
Radical imagination is joyful
Radical imagination invites pleasure, fun, and celebration into the world so that it becomes a place we all want to be. It’s specific. For example, how can we turn voting into an irresistible experience that ensures our ability to participate in decisions that affect our day-to-day lives rather than an obligation which often involves waiting in long lines? And it’s expansive. For example, a world where everyone has enough to eat, a safe home, and a productive and healthy life that they enjoy.
Radical imagination is time travel
The Center for Story-based Strategy (CSS) defines radical imagination as time travel. It’s not just the ability to see a radically transformed future, it’s understanding how the past brought us to the present, and how the present can get us to that future. Understanding the past requires an honest historical reckoning, honoring the struggles of those who came before us, and taking stock of social change strategies used throughout time and across continents. By being rooted in the past, present, and future, radical imagination combines hope for the future with pragmatism about the present. It offers solutions that both meet the moment and propel us toward social transformation. That is, when we understand the past and know what we want the future to be, we can create a present that begins to bring that future into being.
Radical imagination questions everything
Radical imagination does not get stuck in the status quo. It requires us to unlearn what we’ve been taught by recognizing that our education is controlled by entities with power such as the government, media, school systems, and entertainment. And that these powers have indoctrinated us into believing that our current systems, structures, laws, and policies are the only available choices.
We should not have to prove that a radically different future is possible. Instead, those who defend our current systems and structures — the same systems and structures that sustain and allow oppression, inequality, violence, and exploitation to flourish — should have to defend why they believe in maintaining the status quo.
Radical imagination is our common cause
We all hold some power and privilege. It can be based on race, ethnicity, social status, income level, education, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ability, age, citizenship, etc. Those who benefit the most from power, privilege, and systems of oppression (think: patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism) must be as equally committed to a just and equitable future as those who suffer under those same oppressions and inequities. It also means that we must all do the work of moving from passive allyship and solidarity into actively challenging our own privilege and seeking to dismantle the structures of oppression and inequity we inherited, created, and maintain.
Radical imagination centers the voices and visions of those who have experienced the most oppression and inequity. Centering isn’t just about acknowledging ideas and strategies; it’s about creating space, building support, and taking action so that those ideas and strategies can flourish.
Therefore, radical imagination is not something that we each possess, individually. Radical imagination is a collective process. Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven discuss in The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, that radical imagination allows us to make common cause with the experiences of others and build solidarity across identities. And that, as with all collective processes, our individual experiences will inform our vision. As such, it is not necessary to share a single vision of the future nor does what we imagine have to be identical. In common cause, we can build multiple versions of the future we wish to create. These sometimes overlapping and contradictory futures can coexist as long as we maintain common possibility and shared understanding.
Radical imagination requires us not only to think differently but to act differently
Finally, radical imagination involves questioning our everyday actions and asking ourselves how the decisions we make today will affect the world we want to live in tomorrow. We can’t take the easy way out by assuming that others will step up. Radical imagination requires all of us to believe that our actions matter. And that our collective action will create a world that is just and equitable for all.
How to strengthen your radical imagination muscle
What is radical imagination to the everyday activist? We get it. Everyday activism isn’t necessarily about being on the frontlines of the revolution. You may not be sold on the idea of a post-capitalist society or even understand what it is and if it’s a place you want to live. You don’t have to be radical to flex your radical imagination muscle and imagine a different future.
Start by exploring topics relevant to your everyday life and learning about bold and inspiring solutions
We recommend listening to Radical Imagination, the podcast. Hosted by Angela Glover Blackwell, it focuses on radical solutions to our society’s most pressing problems. For example, they have episodes on debt cancellation, democratizing patents to create vaccines for all, reimagining our economy to put people and the planet over profits, water as a human right, reparations, police abolition, open borders, and much more!
Stretch your mind with science fiction
The genres of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and magical realism often comprise visionary tales that offer a roadmap to both utopian and dystopian societies. Unbound by what is, many famous works have predicted the future. They stretch our imaginations to build different worlds and not only to dream them but to see them.
We recommend reading Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, co-edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha. Per the book’s website: “Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. [This book brings] twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.”
Or start with a book by Octavia Butler herself, the Black science fiction writer for whom the anthology is named.
Get inspired by real-life examples
Explore community-based projects turning visions into realities at One Million Experiments and with the Transition Network.
Use art to transport you to a different reality
Check out Cooperative Journal Media’s audio-visual gallery. It contains nine examples of what a solidarity economy could look like. Get to know NDN Collective’s Radical Imagination Artists, ten Indigenous artists and storytellers creating and expanding unique expressions of a radically imagined, more just and equitable future through community-based cultural expressions.
Learn about economists who are challenging mainstream thinking
Groups like Evonomics, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and The Next System Project are combining research, theory, and practice with innovative thinking to challenge conventional wisdom and offer new economic models.
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Originally published January 4, 2021.
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