Handle with Care. Transition, Translocalism and Experimentalism for a Green Democracy

The paper discusses Dimitris Papadopoulos and Andrea Ghelfi's proposal for a transition to a 'green democracy'. It identifies the main points of their argument, namely, a case for a green democracy from below, the level of everyday practices and of a technoscience made by and for communities; the need for taking into account more than human constituencies; and the need for having any efficacy, that these broadened constituencies be able to construct translocal coalitions, around the goals of decelerating carbon intensive activities and of engaging in reparative actions, away from mythologies of pristine nature. The paper proceeds pointing out some problematic or unaddressed aspects of the argument, namely: the problem of voice, of who is going to speak for nonhumans; of whether a green politics from below is capable of escaping the risk of ineffectiveness or unwitting alliance with their critical target; of the current zeitgeist emblematized by the notions of Anthropocene and Gaia, as hardly suited to a politics of deliberation and diplomacy; and the ambivalences of the idea of transition via experimental politics vis-à-vis the current politics of domination via ontological blurring.