regeneration
As with many other potentially transformative concepts hijacked within past and present regimes of racial capitalism, regeneration, as concept and practice(s), is itself in need of regeneration. “Urban regeneration” projects gentrify and scatter once vibrant centres of community and living. Regenerative agriculture practitioners too easily ignore rich global histories and practices of agroecology in a promissory desire to portray their approaches as emergent and new. A flattening form of settler colonial imagining that ably prepares the ground for further acts of dispossession. Is it worth fighting (back) to reclaim any transformative potentials held in a term such as “regeneration”? If so, then only by keeping such ongoing damages and dispossessions as a grounding within which to collectively define and cultivate a plurality of material practices of resistance, reclamation, recovery, generosity, flourishing and joy.
(Regenerative Energy Communities, Aug 2022)
