I started a 6 month sabbatical at Yale today! Wow, I have dreamed of something like this for years and years, and somehow never taken a proper sabbatical. I will return to Stellenbosch for a few weeks of teaching in August, but should be here almost continuously until mid-October. I am hosted by the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies (YIBS) and they do not expect me to do anything other than deliver the annual Bass Lecture in April. My aim is to write a book provisionally entitled Just Transitions in a Complex World: Reflections of an Enraged Incrementalist. I want to build a theory of change that is commensurate with a widely held view that we need radical structural transformation to address the polycrises we now face. However, when you look at what people actually do to bring this about, it is primarily about facilitating multiple dialogues between stakeholders. There is something incommensurate about the depth of radical change we think is needed and the somewhat anemic practice of facilitating dialogues. We no longer believe in revolution, and yet we have not fully conceptualised what radical incrementalism really means. While revolution creates the delusion that on the morrow of ‘seizing power’ it becomes possible to impose structural change, facilitating dialogues creates the delusion that talking is good enough to engender structural change. What seems to be missing is an appreciation of what Roberto Unger has called radical incrementalism – the increasingly large number of experimental practices that seem to be coalescing into a transformative force that lacks a coherent sense of directionality and identity. Granted, some of these are more radical than others, but often it is difficult to tell what the outcome of any given experiment is likely to be. This is what I would like to address via a wide range of discussions that will characterise each chapter. A key part of this exploration is going to be a thematic discussion of rage. While writers like Mishar in his book Age of Anger follow a long mainly Western tradition of fearing the power of rage (by psychologising, pathologising and spiritualising it), from Fanon, to Sloterdyk, to the Nigerian feminist novelist Adichie, rage can be a positive force. However, rage is usually associated with the revolutionary, and the incrementalist is regarded as tame and marginal when it comes to radical change. But can we conceive of an enraged incrementalist? Maybe the most radical person in the room is not the revolutionary who calls for the seizure of power (whatever that may mean in practice), but rather the person who asks ‘What is the next step?’ …. I’m so looking forward to exploring this core set of ideas – certainly hope I don’t get lost as I wind my way through them.
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