Speculative Storytelling: Solidarity, Fabulation
Solidarity has a speculative character and is fundamentally a horizonal activity with its focus on liberation, justice, and the creative processes of world- and future-building—projects that are never complete. The horizon is always present in the landscape, reminding us that there are things beyond what is visible from a particular location. As a coordinate central to perspective and orientation, the horizon is vital to successful navigation. As we move toward the horizon it remains “over there,” showing us that there are limits to what we can know in advance. However, rather than frustrating our efforts, horizons represent possibilities.
Speculative and solidarian storytelling offer alternatives to stories of dependency and structural vulnerability. In finding that precarious balance between hubris and humility, these modes can contribute to futures based in justice. In these stories, relationships are established that extend beyond kith and kin, leaving little room for saviours, heroes, or victims. Grounded in and understanding of culture that includes both humans and other living things, stories based in speculative solidarity understand the necessity and delight of interdependence—a sort of collective effervescence where we desire to belong and enjoy welcoming others.In posing alternatives to how we live now, these stories, are generative, change is understood as relational, and transformation is led by those who have been marginalized.
Our work asks how storytelling can guide us in recognizing our interdependence, shifting power dynamics and fostering belonging.The discursive and performative power of stories can help in overcoming obstacles to collaboration, cultivating models of action that rearrange the coordinates that frame our understandings of the world—in its past, present, and future forms. Solidarian storytelling prioritises mutuality and justice over empathy and aid. Rather than maintaining existing conditions and their inherent power dynamics, stories of solidarity seek transformation through conviviality. This is something particularly salient in the realms in which we work where heroic myths, damage narratives, and tales of resilience dominate the discourse.
