Introduction: Making Worlds in the Pluriverse

In 1996, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (Mexico), formed by peoples of Mayan descent, declared that in “the world we want, everybody fits. The world we want is a world in which many worlds fit.” Since then, their vision of “a world where many worlds fit” has given rise to the concepts of the pluriverse and pluriversality. The concept of the pluriverse has gained interest worldwide with texts such as Design for the Pluriverse, Constructing the Pluriverse, A World of Many Worlds, and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, bringing broader attention to the work done by many activists, peasant, and Indigenous groups in Latin America and beyond. It is no surprise that the concept of the pluriverse has been embraced in non-Western parts of the world. In turn, our special issue asks: What is the pluriverse in North America, arguably one of the centres of Western, Eurocentric power? The artistic and scholarly contributions that make up this special issue investigate the crossroads, the encounters, the divergences and convergences that build new possible worlds, and the friction of incommensurabilities, in a North American context, and illustrate the potential worlds that we, as humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans alike, could share.