Martin Calnan & Thomas Mofolo
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters”
– Antonio Gramsci
Introduction – A decolonial metaphysics of U.S. hegemony
The invitation of the symposium is to examine futures beyond U.S. hegemony. It is a powerful and necessary call in the face of the demons of war, genocide, violence and injustice that have invaded our geopolitical and geophysical landscape. However, we suggest that focusing on U.S. hegemony without addressing its deeper nature, treats the symptom, at best, while potentially contributing to its development. In the words of Bayo Akomolafe, “solutions are often how problems grow intelligent and perpetuate their agency.” (Akomolafe, 2017) As such, we will explore U.S. hegemony from the perspective that its deeper nature may in fact be a spiritual ailment of “inner fragmentation” that requires that “[w]e […] step into our roles as ‘spiritually informed political activists’ and whereby this spiritual understanding informs our political actions in the world.” (Levy, 2013) In other words, a metaphysical diagnosis of our current malaise is required in order to identify the deeper existential nature of the turmoil and violence we are reacting to. From this perspective, imagining any new futures requires more than an alternate vision or system, but an exorcism.
We therefore suggest that framing the current geo-political moment and its pathologies requires making explicit the implicit constitutive metaphysical assumptions that define the architecture of the “reality-system” (Campagna, 2018) or worldview (Inayatullah, 1998) we inhabit. By metaphysical assumptions, we mean F. Campagna’s definition of metaphysics as “a set of decisions on how best to order the chaos of mere existence” (Campagna, 2018). As Campagna suggests: “This ordering is superficially social/economic/etc., but in fact derives from a set of fundamental metaphysical axioms. These axioms combine together in an overall system, which is the reality-system of our age.” (Campagna, 2018) As such, if we are not to perniciously perpetuate the deeper cosmogony, where whiteness (Akomolafe, 2017) and ableism (Campbell, 2017) still impose their calcified, disembodied, ranked and prioritized system of value and identity and where only the litanies and those who sing them have changed, then it is not just the social and structural elements that need be analysed and adapted, but the worldview and, deeper still, its constitutive myths and metaphors (Inayatullah, 1998; MacGill, 2015).
We suggest then that the contemporary status quo be interpreted as a liminal phase between endings and beginnings that is marked by constant flux which can be understood holistically in terms of metamorphosis – literally a shift in form and essence. It would be prudent to not solely rely on the dominant and metaphysically exclusive paradigm for our sensemaking to interpret this process of systemic change, and even more judicious to do so by firstly decolonizing the history of the United States in order to imagine new futures that include the voices of those it has discredited, silenced or erased through colonialism. To this end, we will draw on indigenous critical theory to articulate the spiritual nature of the inner fragmentation – the beast – that we are contending with when confronting hegemony and seek to better understand the current transit of empire. American indigenous scholar Jodi Byrd contends that this shift can best be understood based on how the ideas of native Americans and their Indian identity have served as the ontological ground through which U.S. settler colonialism enacts itself as settler imperialism at this crucial moment in history when everything appears to be headed towards collapse (Byrd, 2011).
In this context then, we will examine the following questions: What if the cosmogony we have built is one that structurally negates all other cosmogonies and their related ontologies and epistemologies? What if it is metaphysically exclusive and hegemonic? In other words, to what extent does “blaming” the U.S. on the one hand and framing its declining / shifting dominance as an opportunity for change, on the other, root both the problem and the transition in the same “hegemonic” paradigm it seeks to change? Born of a metaphysics of exclusion, what does the notion of “arc of change” say about its implicit “direction” and the “agency” we have to control it? To what extent are the notions of “progress”, “empowerment, “development” and even “justice” built on an axiomatic “hegemony” in their own right?
Part 1 – The Myth / Metaphor – Wetiko: The spirit of Zombie imperialism
We propose to explore possible futures beyond U.S. hegemony from a perspective that seeks to uncover the foundational myth – or cosmogony – of which U.S. hegemony is but the litany, the visible reality. Using causal layered analysis as a frame (Inayatullah, 1998; MacGill, 2015), we argue that the deeper cause – the source, so to speak – underlying the violence, wars and genocides is in fact a spiritual sickness, a psychosis, that the earliest victims of U.S. hegemony and colonialism, the indigenous tribes of the Americas, called Wetiko – or windigo in Ojibwa, wintiko in Powhatan: a diabolical spirit which terrorises others by means of evil acts (Forbes, 2008; Kimmerer, 2020; Levy, 2013). According to native American lore, Wetiko is a mythic being of supernatural powers that is portrayed as a cannibalistic spirit who embodies greed and excess and can possess human beings (Forbes, 2008; Levy, 2013). Those who have become Wetikos are perceived as individuals who have “lost their wits,” which connotes not only being out of their (right) mind, but also not knowing what they are (“unwittingly”) doing, almost as if their self has become corrupted such that they are no longer themselves (Levy, 2013). “There are many psychological traits that help form the Wetiko personality – greed, lust, inordinate ambition, materialism, the lack of a “true” face, a schizoid split personality and so on, are all terms which can be used to describe most Wetikos” (Forbes, 2008). According to Forbes, this Wetiko (cannibal) psychosis is the greatest epidemic sickness known to man and has been spreading as a contagion for thousands of years – and continues to spread – manifesting itself in the physical and psychological violence and derangement of our times. Imperialism and exploitation are natural and inevitable manifestations of this cannibalism.
Following their encounters with indigenous communities, the Europeans who colonised the Americas abandoned the webs of social relations in their homelands, fell victim to Wetiko and participated in a culture of conquest-violence, expropriation, destruction, and dehumanization (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). Moreover, these colonisers expressed a Christian zeal that justified colonialism by identifying indigenous populations as children of Satan and “servants of the devil” who deserved to be killed (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). Building on this history of violence, Byrd uses the term ‘zombie imperialism’ to describe how the current manifestation of a liberal democratic colonialism relies on biopower and necropolitics to determine how the subaltern, namely native Americans – and the rest of the world – can live and die under this hegemonic dispensation.
Raoul Peck’s 2021 documentary television miniseries, Exterminate All the Brutes (Peck, 2021) is one of the most persuasive recent critiques of U.S. colonialism and imperialism that interprets the genesis of the U.S. in correspondence to the origins of European genocide. Inspired by Sven Lindqvist’s eponymous book and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”, Peck creatively elucidates how the socioeconomic and political entity currently known as the United States, which purports to be a federal republic, is in fact a settler state. This deluded sense of identity is a glaring symptom of a schizophrenic nation that oscillates between the denial of its colonial legacy which was premised on the myth of manifest destiny, and the desire for a super imperial future which seeks to subjugate and colonize the entire world.
As Dunbar-Ortiz points out, the affirmation of American democracy requires the denial of colonialism; but denying it does not make it go away. In fact, manifesting the “othering” reality-system it is rooted in: “[t]he history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism – the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).
In this context, US imperialism abroad becomes a clear manifestation and evolution of the same worldviews, methods and strategies that were employed to colonize indigenous peoples on the American continent (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Slee et al., 2025). “While the Indigenous Americans were being brutally colonized, eliminated, relocated, and killed, the United States from its beginning was also pursuing overseas dominance” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). As per Byrd’s analysis which draws upon the lived experience of native Americans, the administration of zombie imperialism treats Indians as “the living dead”, and in turn they see the US as a torture state that continually seeks to destroy and undermine the sovereignty and futures of others (Byrd, 2011). The ongoing attempts to preserve dominance by effecting regime changes in other nations as is currently the case globally, further reveals how neo-colonialism is in fact congenital to US foreign policy.
As such, U.S. hegemony, rooted in genocide, terrorism, colonialism, and unfettered capitalism, can all be interpreted as expressions of Wetiko. Humans have to be cured of this spiritual sickness before they can even imagine, let alone build, a just society. Indigenous decolonization is but one process that can help restore life and enable the settler, arrivant, and native to apprehend and grieve the violences of U.S. empire together.
Part 2 – Worldview – A metaphysics of exclusion
Following the CLA framework of analysis, if Wetiko is the foundational myth and psychosis at the heart of U.S. hegemony and its consequent manifestations, how does it translate into a worldview – a metaphysics of modernity? For this, we turn to French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, who posits that what characterizes modernity’s reality-system is a shift from homo logos – humanity as defined by language – to homo faber – humanity as defined by technè, or the ability to create and possess tools (Castoriadis, 1978). This represents more than a simple shift in “perspective” or “means”. It represents a fundamental shift in the nature of humanity’s act of creation: from poiésis to technè – from creation (generative) to production (extractive) (Castoriadis, 1978). Ontologically, this also posits a utilitarian reality-system of ableism, which implies the differentiation, ranking, negation, notification and prioritization of sentient life (Campbell) and therefore hegemony. The goal of our cosmogony quite literally becomes to exploit the productive potential of a world that has become fundamentally material and over which we hold exclusive (and god-given) dominance and rights of property. It thereby also shifts the nature of our relation to the more-than-human – be it living or material. In fact, it severs our relation to the other. And by extension to any other way of being, knowing and relating.
Central to this worldview is the insidious nature of the metaphysical assumption of our reality-system that axiomatically posits “othering” through separation and production – interestingly the French word used by Castoriadis is “fabrication” – as the foundational ontology. In other words, as an inevitable manifestation of the cannibalistic psychosis of Wetiko, we create a reality-system where hegemony is in fact the only relational option. And in which there is no other “reasonable” way of relating to the world – especially in urgent times of crisis! This manifests itself in what Campagna calls absolute language: “…when [language]is unbound (ab-solutus) from any external constraint or form, any other principle outside itself, the world that it creates suddenly becomes the only possible ontological field.” (Campagna, 2018)
Part 3 – System – Structure: Whiteness, Ableism and Dominion
From a systems perspective, the metaphysical exclusivity of absolute language and shift from poiésis to technè gives rise to a set of systems and structures best described in terms of Akomolafe’s concept of whiteness, that is “distinct from white identity”, but represents a deeper logic of capture and identification: “a system of value that measures out what it means to be properly embodied, what it means to be a self, and […] what it means to be dispensable” (Akomolafe, 2017). As suggested above, implicit and foundational to Akomolafe’s concept of whiteness is F.K. Campbell’s concept of ableism, defined as a “system of causal relations about the order of life that produces processes and systems of entitlement and exclusion. […] A system of dividing practices, ableism institutes the reification and classification of populations. Ableist systems involve the differentiation, ranking, negation, notification and prioritization of sentient life.” (Campbell, 2017)
This implies that “hegemony” is implicit in the dominant systems and structures themselves. A worldview that axiomatically “others” by necessity engenders a set of systems that separate, order, rank and prioritize based on a predefined scale of hierarchy and merit. Power and dominance are in fact consubstantial to the system itself.
From this perspective, it is no surprise that speculation about U.S. hegemony and new world orders is often substantiated on the basis of a geopolitical lens that focuses on the tensions between nations and dominance, be it political or economic, but rarely if ever in correlation to the evolution of consciousness or from non-Western perspectives, as this would challenge the metaphysical axiom of dominion it is built on. Interestingly, among the most popular, and maybe even the most plausible predictions, about the current course of the of the 21st century, is the claim that we are transitioning from an old world marked by unipolarity based on US world dominance, to a new world marked by multipolarity based on new formations in international relations such as the BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) alliance. But to what extent this represents a new world order based on a fundamentally different reality-system, and therefore a truly different litany remains dubious at best.
Conclusion – The Ghost Dance: Exorcising Wetiko
Byrd suggests that colonization is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, therefore, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms. Dunbar-Ortiz similarly argues that indigenous peoples offer possibilities for life after empire, possibilities that neither erase the crimes of colonialism nor require the disappearance of the original peoples colonized under the guise of including them as individuals. The challenge is not merely to imagine a new system or structure, it is not resistance or reparation, it is the ability to exorcize the spiritual sickness that is Wetiko and its cannibalistic metaphysics. If the deeper nature of hegemony is in fact spiritual, then the cure can only be spiritual.
Building on the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, Bernstein introduces the concept of borderland consciousness to explain how the Western psyche is indeed undergoing an evolutionary psychic shift that requires it to reckon with its past in order to mature, and develop new, sacred sensibilities towards the ethereal nature of the cosmos. Congruent to Castoriadis’ definition of homo faber, the so-called global North seems to live in a world where other living creatures are merely constitutive elements of a mechanistic environment, whereas native Americans, like the Lakota and the Ashiwi (Zuni) people, among others, regard all creatures as their kin and view all nature as animate (Forbes, 2008; Kimmerer, 2020): “Everything animate and inanimate has within it a spirit dimension and communicates in that dimension to those who can listen” (Bernstein, 2005).
Again, it is in indigenous ways that we may discover alternative horizons and possibilities for healing beyond othering and hegemony. Throughout this history, indigenous nations and communities have continually resisted modern colonialism (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). Using both defensive and offensive techniques, they defied the founding of the United States in a manner that allowed for their survival and created a legacy of cultural resistance that has persisted (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014). “Without the culture of resistance, surviving Indigenous peoples under U.S. colonization would have been eliminated through individual assimilation” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).
“The Wetiko psychosis, and the problems it creates, have inspired many resistance movements and efforts at reform or revolution” (Forbes, 2008). In response to the coloniser’s voracious appetite for more land, the native Americans pioneered a new form of resistance called the ghost dance, it was a simple dance performed by everyone in the open that spread contagiously and evolved into a spiritual movement (Peck, 2021). The dance was spontaneous and promised to restore the indigenous world as it was before colonialism, make the invaders disappear, and the dead warriors and buffalo return (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Peck, 2021). Symbolically, the dance represented a renewal of the earth and reconnection with the native Americans’ ancestors.
Rediscovering these other ways of living requires exploring other ways of knowing, and of relating to others – in all their forms – and therefore a new dance that is pluri-epistemic and inclusive is needed in order to enable collective meaning making, sensemaking, and changemaking. A metaphysics where poiésis and technè can both be true at the same time.
References
Akomolafe, B. (2017). Homo Icarus: The Depreciating Value of Whiteness and the Place of Healing. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/homo-icarus-the-depreciating-value-of-whiteness-and-the-place-of-healing
Bernstein, J. S. (2005). Living in the borderland : the evolution of consciousness and the challenge of healing trauma. Routledge.
Byrd, J. A. (2011). The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. University of Minnesota Press.
Campagna, F. (2018). Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality. Bloomsbury Academic.
Campbell, F. K. (2017). Queer Anti-sociality and Disability Unbecoming: An Ableist Relations Project in (O. Sircar & D. Jain, Eds.) New Intimacies, Old Desires – Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times. Chapter 10, 280-316. Zubaan.
Castoriadis, C. (1978). Les carrefours du labyrinthe. Éditions du Seuil.
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Beacon Press.
Forbes, J. D. (2008). Columbus and Other Cannibals : The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism. Seven Stories Press.
Inayatullah, S. (1998). Causal Layered Analysis: Poststructuralism as Method. Futures, 30(8), 815–829. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-3287(98)00086-X
Kimmerer, R. W. (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Penguin Books.
Levy, P. (2013). Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil. North Atlantic Books.
MacGill, V. (2015). Unravelling the Myth/Metaphor Layer in Causal Layered Analysis. Journal of Futures Studies, 20(1), 55-68.
Peck, R. (2021). Extreminate All the Brutes [Television Miniseries]. HBO.
Slee, C., Damhof, L., & Calnan, M. (2025). Dis/abling Futures: What Ableism Stops Us Noticing. Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 29(4), 95–101.
Affiliation
Martin Calnan, Chaired Professor, UNESCO Chair on the Future of Value at Ecole des Ponts Business School
Thomas Mofolo, Founder and Chief Content Creator at Making Media Move Culture ™ (M³C)
