What is Postactivism?
I definitely understand post-activism as activism post, i.e. after activism. I therefore also understand post-activism as a better, more profound and therefore more useful activism. In my view, post-activism is everything that thinks conceptually deeper and in a generalist, holistic way about the crisis as a driver of deep transformation than was the case in large parts of activist engagement in the past. Committed action, contemporary activism today should not only reflect on the fields in which we ourselves are entangled in our activism in a problematic way that consolidates and perpetuates the crisis. It should also be aware that many of the sustainable narratives that are sold to us today in all areas of life as being committed more or less amount to a kind of greenwashing. This applies to large parts of politics and industry, but also to the field of social entrepreneurship and even to NGOs. Today, sustainability has degenerated into an indispensable label with which things can be marketed very well in capitalism. Post-activism should be skeptical of simple and superficial approaches to problem-solving and hope. Post-activism should consider the foundations and deeper causes of the crisis.
The foundations of the crisis include, above all, the issues of racism/thering, colonialism, trauma and the human urge to control “nature” through scientific analysis and the technology associated with it and to harness it without regard for its regeneration. Post-activism should think about the big questions of the crisis and develop patterns of action. This applies both to the need for a large civil society movement and to a philosophical and spiritual expansion of our perspectives when it comes to questions of engagement. When it comes to spiritual perspectives and cosmologies, we enter a broad field in which our view of the crisis takes on a completely different spin than we are used to in our view of things based on scientific facts. In this way, we can learn – also with regard to Far Eastern philosophy and spirituality – to look at the crisis with much more serenity and understanding. A firm anchoring in such perspectives can lead us to a deeper form of resilience if it is not done on a rather superficial and sentimental or mystifying level.
All these requirements do not necessarily mean that things should be presented in a way that is overly complex and difficult to understand. Things are not only complex but also simple and we can certainly understand them if we have the courage to use our own minds. For me personally, a direct poetic or artistic approach to the topic of crisis seems less meaningful. Access to a world of poetry, art, chaos and paradox is without question essential for future activism, but for me it takes place behind the scenes of the rational and practical and does not exclude it in the slightest.
