Coexisting with Ancestors – Elongating Participation between “Pasts” and “Futures”

Following strong currents in expanding notions of participation and infrastructuring time, this exploratory paper pilots how to consider the agency of ancestors and descendants when making future decisions. The paper reports on the methods trialed with the first author's family to debate and determine issues for stewarding their 1200 year-long land in Kyoto, Japan. Alongside listening to living members, the methods experimented with ways of attending to the ancestors and their “Things", like the mon (central gate), which was identified by the family as being essential in imbibing the agency of the ancestors. By considering agency through attending to such landmarks and more, this paper questions the unidirectional linearity of time and subsequent disconnection of relationalities in PD discourse. In so doing, It aims to foreground a worldview where ancestors guide the futures of descendants and elongate participation to entangle multiple coexistence.