by Coral Michelin | Linnaeus University
Introduction
To begin, I ask forgiveness for writing in English, being an American from Brazil, in an edition that welcomes our languages. With this brief essay, I would like to connect to the discussions occurring around “un-” —unlearning, unmaking— and “grief” topics. These dialogues have more prominence in English, despite being frequently led by peoples from the Global Souths. Nevertheless, I must emphasize that this contribution has its roots in our terra preta de índio[1] and the knowledges we produce.
Now, let us turn to the proposed reasoning: it may not be possible to undergo Unlearning without Grief as its companion, and without having the creation of Utupias (a term later explained) as a balancing counterpart towards better futures. Unlearning, Grief and Utupias are therefore intrinsically connected concepts. Each of them possesses a relevant body of works, albeit recent and with space for complementary studies. The intertwining between the three is not so common in the literature, and it is my belief that such articulation presents a healing path of our colonial past, which has never been properly addressed — even more than 500 years after the violent invasions of territories now known as Global South. For this reason this paper may offer a contribution.
Unlearning as a concept has evolved especially in the last decade, driven by debates about the coloniality of knowledge (Grosfoguel, 2004, 2016; Mignolo, 2020; Quijano, 2019) and the need to de-centre the knowledge production from the Euro-Westernocentric hegemony that dominated (or deliberately erased by force or epistemicide) the last centuries. Likewise, studies about Grief have increased, particularly when connected to the current climate collapse and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Utopia, on the other hand, is too widespread a concept used in different contexts and connotations. It usually points to a future dimension, which is central to my interest in articulating this concept towards regenerated versions of our futures.
However, when we observe design’s production concerning these themes, we see something still timid, or, in the case of utopia, disguised in constructions of “desirable” or “sustainable” futures. I believe this happens due to the field’s refusal to deal with questions related to dimensions of subjectivity. After all, Unlearning involves a change in the “worldview” of the Western[2] individual; and Grief goes even deeper in the “psyche” of each living being, human or not. Nonetheless, some recent design approaches have been tangentially addressing these issues, such as Transition Design, for example, which includes the worldview in its conceptual framework, albeit without explaining how to articulate it.
This essay does not aim to explore the complexity of the three concepts nor solve these elusive issues. The idea here is to draft the interconnection between Unlearning, Grief and Utupias, and continue expanding the eco-decolonial approach to design coined Design Ecossistêmico (Ecosystemic Design) which seeks to explore the subtle sides of subjectivity in design, connecting them to the possibility of creating regenerated versions of our futures (Michelin, 2024). Feminist futures (Ketonen-Oksi & Wikström, 2025; Abdullah, 2025) free from the colonial-imperialist forces that are, once again, surfacing from the shadows into a new wave of oppression and wars around the world, through the manipulation, invasion and even re-colonization of latin-american countries and others. It is through the healing processes of Grief and Unlearning that we can envision new possibilities and paths forward — new Utupias. Healing is freeing.
Let us begin our journey using the figure of a cumbuca[3] as an analogy in the narrative. Pause and imagine that you are a beautiful cumbuca. Visualize one that represents who you are. Now imagine all your knowledge, from your entire life, studies, experiences and memories; all the genetic, epigenetic and social information; and all your values, beliefs, preferences and opinions, as the content of this cumbuca. Maybe many readers pictured almost overflowing vessels. Keep this image in mind.
1. Ecosystemic Design and Subjectivities
Ecosystemic Design (Michelin, 2024) is an eco-decolonial design approach that seeks to promote the regeneration of three interconnected dimensions of existence: (1) the environmental or ecosystemic dimension, whose regeneration means the restoration of Earth’s ecosystems, its resilience and homeostatic capacities; (2) the collective or social dimension, in which new forms of being-together are exercised, in convivialities that emerge from the interdependent entanglement of human and non-human beings; and (3) the subjective or personal dimension, where the subject’s worldview and their sense of belonging to this world reside. In this molecular domain of subjectivity[4], regeneration means a profound process of “inner-outter” transformation, in which one seeks to free oneself from the Western worldview towards an expanded notion of Self-as-nature, that is, towards a more-than-human relational subjectivity.
As may be evident, the approach focuses especially on Western practitioners, as those from other ontologies may not need such “regeneration”. For this reason, Ecosystemic Design defines itself as eco-decolonial[5], proposing two key paths for this great regenerative process: ecology & systems thinking, which teaches us, from the micro- to the macroscopic universe, the interconnection and interdependence of all life. And the decolonial path, which emerges as a critical and philosophical foundation pointing to alternatives to the anthropocentric civilizatory project. Such a decolonial path to design is also explored in Schultz et al (2018), explaining its challenges and relevance.
The decolonial foundation of Ecosystemic Design is linked, albeit implicitly in its original formulation, to Unlearning. Because for us to collectively and individually create new modes of being-together and new relational subjectivities, we need to go through a necessary process of “un-“: Unlearning and undoing paradigms, values, histories, and other components of our Western subjectivity. In other words, we need to empty the cumbuca (to “die”), so that we can refill it (to be “reborn”) with what surfaces from awareness and interconnection.
2. A cumbuca that empties: the process of Unlearning
From the moment the decolonial agenda gains strength and prominence in academic discussions across different fields of knowledge, its most varied researchers have verbalized the need for us to Unlearn certain patterns connected to the oppressions of the Western paradigm (Tufte, 2024; Hart, 2025). The current climate collapse has made it easier to identify questionable beliefs of this worldview: the notion of progress and economic development; the objectification and commodification of nature at the service of profit; and the belief in the superiority and exceptionalism of the human species in relation to other living beings, are examples. They illustrate and justify the reason we need to Unlearn.
Although mostly connected to the domains of Education, Unlearning can be a more encompassing concept, pointing to a never-ending process of becoming aware of systems of oppression, to transform them. This also means questioning the structure of knowledge production and the social engine that reproduces it—in a sense of critical analysis regarding the origin and bias of the knowledge we adopt as truth, and the mechanisms that operate from it. This means asking, for example, if these mechanisms (discourses, pedagogies, mass media, technologies, etc.) serve to oppress or liberate those who adopt and reproduce them as truths, and those who are left out of the world created by them. In this setting it requires us “to empty our cumbucas,” getting rid of what imprisons in order to open space for emergence.
Nonetheless, as Hart (2025, p.2) explains, Unlearning is not simply discarding knowledges, but engaging with threshold concepts that can “challenge and expand one’s existing frameworks”. As our ability to live in regenerated futures is greatly dependent “on our capacities to more consciously incorporate ‘unlearning’ into our various futures thinking processes” (Jain, 2005, p.115). These processes call for the support of other knowledge systems and other ways of producing it, from other worldviews and ontologies (Tufte, 2024).
Yet, not much has been discussed about the subjective burden that Unlearning carries. That is, about the “price” that this process demands from the psyche of the Western subject. For, metaphorically speaking, emptying the cumbuca may sound easy, but it is neither at the level of macro social structures nor at the molecular level of subjectivities. Designers have been dealing with “wicked problems” for quite some time now, therefore we can imagine the daunting task that a paradigm shift of a global society like the Western one means. It may not be an exaggeration to say that it is like a transition of Eras. However, we don’t discuss enough the necessary subjective transformation of this transition. It is definitely not an overstatement to say that all our subjectivity is transformed in this process of Unlearning, since we are talking about our values, our beliefs; of that which we use to give shape to our reality and meaning to the world around us. The Western subjectivity is Westernness itself.
Thus, when we make explicit the undeniable need to change the knowledge and social structures that have brought us into collapse, we are also bringing to light the imperativity of subjective transformation. We are asking that Western people abandon notions and portions of Self —with good reason— so that we are able to fully regenerate. For this reason, Grief emerges to aid this painful process.
3. Living emptiness: the grieving process
Grief, like Unlearning, is a process. It also has an interior, subjective dimension and an exterior, collective one. Some authors, such as Prechtel (2015) and Weller (2025), point to the collective side of mourning, as that which sustains the individual so that their process receives support and respect. Grief usually occurs when we face a significant loss in our lives, of a loved person, of a place that is left or forced to leave, of a non-human animal that dies, for example. In our Western society, however, Grief—which is a slow painful process—is suppressed, since the demand for hyper-productivity, growth and progress are imperatives that transform time into money with no space for “sadness”. Nowadays we add a layer of complexity to such process, as we are grieving (even if only unconsciously) while living losses (caused by wars, genocide, ecocide and climate collapse).
Although it may seem disconnected at first, the study on ecological grief helps us in this entanglement with the process of Unlearning. According to Cunsolo and Ellis (2018, p.275), “ecological grief” is the one “felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change”. The authors identified three pathways of ecological grief, being the second especially relevant for the argument woven here, namely: “Grief associated with disruptions to environmental knowledge systems and resulting feelings of loss of identity”. This mourning occurs when people who have a strong connection with their environment (rural producers or traditional communities, for example), undergo the loss of it due to climate changes, which can happen with floods, extreme droughts, etc. and that transform the landscape in such a way that the mode-of-life of these people, intrinsically connected to the ecosystem, ceases to exist. In this sense, what is lost is at the same time a relational knowledge system and an identity.
What we may be failing to understand is that, if it is the Western subject who needs urgently to go through a process of Unlearning, they will also be losing their identity, even though it was not forged in an intimate relational connection with Earth. The way the West constituted itself is obviously a knowledge system. How can we support the mass of humans in this deconstruction, when we tell them “now you need to understand that the human being is not exceptional on Earth and depends on all other forms of life to continue living and that, therefore, you will have to change your diet, your habits, the history you learned, besides discarding the values of status and power, and stop pursuing progress as a measure of success of your personal and social journey”. All of us, Westerners, will have to acknowledge the painful past of colonization that runs through our veins, whether we are descendants of the colonizers or the colonized: what we live today is a repetitive reenactment of the scars we carry, because we refuse ourselves to grieve our past, we refuse to take responsibility.
Perhaps we are really needing to (re)learn how to grieve: to cry for what we were and should no longer be, or for the broken dreams since neither of them fit in a pluriversal and relational world; to feel sadness for the truths that will be broken along the way. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly without pain — we should allow pain. In this process, it is important that the cumbuca remains empty for a while. We need to feel the emptiness like one feels the fresh autumn air entering the lungs before a new dawn. The space that empties opens up for novelties. Grief reintroduces us to a natural cycle of life, so we can understand that transformation is part of it, and that Grief only exists where there is Love. Love for life: both for non-human life at risk from human destruction and for our countless make-believe social selves. The emptiness also brings with it the temporal dimension of what needs to mature or transmute.
Both are lifelong journeys: the process of regenerating the subjectivity is for a lifetime; just like grief, which will always indicate something that once was and is no longer. And, in both cases, the relation established with each can be positive. Including learning to live with emptiness can be a gift: it means having space for the wonder of the new. Grief, for example, can bring hope and inspire action, as proposed by Macy (2020). I would like to bring the Utupia, as a positive counterpart to this process.
4. Filling the cumbuca again: utupian process
Utopia is a term coined by the title of Thomas More’s book from 1512, formed by the greek particles “óu” (no) and “tópos” (place). In his book, More describes an ideal, harmonious society, free from injustice. While literally the word means “no place”, it carries an understanding of fantasy, of an idea which is unachievable for its level of idealization, as some sort of “perfection”. Although utopia has been used pejoratively to discard projects aiming highly positive (“impossible”) outcomes, more recently the term has been re-surfacing as a device to provoque our imagination towards more positive dream-like alternatives of our realities and futures. Thus, utopia is a driving force to better futures.
In 2024, I had proposed the action of creating utopias as possible ways out of the dystopian present we have been imagining-reproducing-living in for decades, as future “images of regenerated worlds born out of the ruins, while present in the midst of chaos and transition” (Michelin, 2024, p.99, free translation). Hence, utopias should be seen not as impossible and unachievable scenarios, but as guiding images and narratives used to drive collective movement and change towards regenerated versions (in the eco-decolonial sense of it) of our futures. Utupia is born out of this understanding, connecting this process to a twofold movement, forward into the future and backward into the past. This is due to the indigenous philosophies of Brazil, which teach us that the “future is ancestral” (Krenak, 2022).
The tampering from utopia to uTUPIa is intentional, bringing Tupi as a driving force, that is, the ontology and knowledge of Tupi origin, one of Brazil’s largest ancestral groups. For the indigenous peoples of Brazil, as from other territories, all existence is interdependent, and life is a collective play enacted by humans and non-humans, living and non-living, where dream and dreaming has a decisive part. We dream the reality we create together. In this sense, Utupia is an embodied act of dreaming-reality-making, not an impossible or unachievable plan, but a force that emerges from our interdependent living. The indigenous inspiration seek to present Utupia as a more complex concept, as “a non-place that is at the same time present, past and future, that rescues wild ancestry […] where everything, from the smallest particle to the macrocosm, is part of the same nature” (Michelin, 2024, p. 100, free translation).
Utupia is a mechanism of dreaming and acting on the creation of futures which are deeply connected to our past, to who we once were before the Western paradigm spread itself. Thus, Grief’s counterpart mechanism emerges as a process of imagination of futures anchored in the pluriversal wisdom of the nature we all are. This creative process helps us process losses hopefully yet critically, taking forms like visuals, scenarios, narratives, rituals, poetry, dance, etc., much in the direction proposed by Nassiri-Ansari et al (2025). Utupias convert Grief into hope through the Unlearning of the oppressions of Westernism.
Final considerations
This is an initial essay which addresses partially three themes of considerable complexity. The intention here was not to explore these universes in depth, but rather to outline potential connections. Currently, my research focuses precisely on the subjective side of regeneration and on the process of Grief, with future contributions in development. There are connections still to be made with the universes of the psyche, such as those made by Dryža (2020) when she speaks of working with Jung’s archetypes. For instance we could use the archetype of the Healer to articulate our three concepts: “The true mark of a Healer is the ability to create, catalyze and channel lasting, beneficial change” (Dryža, 2020). Nonetheless, I chose to leave this unripe fruit here so that other people can explore it, if equally curious.
Relevant to point to the potential of such processes to present a force of resistance against the growing oppression of the Western systems of usurpation and control. It is exactly because these systems are collapsing that we must dream new and better worlds to live in. As Krenak (2019) reminds us, we need to “hold the sky” by cheering, dancing, dreaming and expanding the spaces of our interdependent existences. To create utupias is a way of not only resisting the oppression and the imposed madness, but also sowing new futures.
I understand that, given current challenges, the realization of new and regenerated futures will depend on individual and collective action, in all spheres in which we can act, from the molecular domains of subjectivity, to the macro-structures of our ruined societies. Spaces must first be emptied and then refilled with regenerative contents. Macy (2020) brings hope in its activist guise, that is, activist hope that drives action. Pretchel (2015) calls for the poetics of Praise, reconnecting grief to life’s web as love. Others bring art to process losses and look ahead (Lindström, Jönsson & Hillgren, 2021; 2024). In this same direction, I see the exercise of creating Utupias. Thus, the dream, the imagination, the hope and the Utupia enable a more concrete movement towards these eco-decolonial regenerated futures.
References
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- “Terra preta de índio” is the popular name given to the soil, very black and very fertile, of parts of the Amazon biome, generated through centuries of indigenous life in the region, especially during the period prior to the colonial invasions at the end of the 15th century. Here, the term is used to allude to the indigenous philosophies of Brazil. ↑
- There are several terminologies used to name and characterize the paradigm and civilizatory process pushed forward mainly since the invention of the Americas and Europe after the colonial invasions: modern, eurocentric, andro-, falo- or anthropocentric, logocentric, western, among others. I had used euro-anthropocentric in my previous works, but to keep it simple, I will adopt “Western” here. ↑
- Cumbuca (kui’mbuka) originates in the Tupi language, one of the root languages of Brazil’s First Nations, meaning a “type or gourd”. I could use “bowl” as an English modern equivalent, but the exercise proposed is for you to imagine yourself as an ancestral vessel, one that can connect you to your ancestry, your roots and your sense of identity. ↑
- In other works (Michelin et al. 2021) we adopt the guattarian perspective of a processual subjectivity — which also is in the background of the understanding here. Nonetheless, entering the universe of Deleuze and Guattari would overly complexify this paper, so I have opted for keeping his influence in the background. ↑
- The approach draws from several references connected to the epistemology of complexity, such as Maturana, Morin, Haraway and Bateson; multiple references from the decolonial movement, from cannons like Césaire, Quijano, Segato and Mignolo, to those connected to the design field such as Borrero, Escobar, De la Cadena, and Oliveira e Prado; as well as indigenous authors like Krenak, Jecupé and Kambeba, among others. This means this approach is rooted on the contributions of all these references, even though they are not directly cited in this paper. ↑
