a dignidade da morte tupinambá


Uma condição constante de guerra ditava a tônica das relações entre os grupos , habitantes nativos da região da Guanabara, que sobreviveram menos de um século após a chegada dos colonizadores no Brasil. Guerreiros motivados pelo ciclo vital da vingança, entravam em embates corporais intertribais que terminavam, para os vencedores, com um banquete produzido a […]

ABC- A B C


Quijano, Rivera Cusicanqui, and Mbebe all explore the implementation of rigid power structures as mirrors through which individuals are allowed to see themselves. Either in the forcing of a conception of a “History” told as historical chains characterized by a framework of progress (Quijano), by the violent and forceful reorganization of sacred territories in Bolivia […]

for the week ironically titled “theories”


These texts come together as a braid, entangled and loaded with tension. Instrumentalizing human existence (and demise) like puppeteers (Mbembé, 14), the conquerors mentioned in these readings weave bodies and borders, denying the physical pain of tearing at roots. Most touching were the explorations into “body as place” (Mbembé, 28) and the very ways in […]

El exceso como forma de resistencia


En tiempo pre-coloniales la producción de bienes simbólicos y comerciales respondía a un principio de intercambio y reciprocidad en una trama circulatoria de energía viva. La lógica tributaria era respondida con una afirmación como miembros (Rivera Cusicanqui, 9). Esta heterogeneidad es posteriormente eliminada desde la perspectiva de la modernidad eurocentrismo reduciendo la “Otredad”, como sugiere […]

Race and the Process of Othering


The politics of race and death are, as Mbembe maintains in “Necropolitics,” inextricably linked. He cites Hannah Arednt, who traces this intertwining to “the shattering experience of otherness and suggests that the politics of race is ultimately linked to the politics of death” (17).  Many of the examples Mbembe uses to illustrate his point are conflicts […]

The Power of Duality in an Age of Globalization


I want to address a thread that runs through all three texts: the connection between dualism and globalization. In “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Quijano delineates and challenges the logic of Eurocentrism, which has a particular “perspective on knowledge” formalized through “a peculiar articulation between dualism (capital-precapital, Europe-non-Europe, primitive-civilized, traditional-modern, etc.) and a […]

Skulls, Death and Necropolitics.


The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. Walter Benjamin   E quando ouvir o silêncio sorridente de São Paulo diante da chacina (…) Pense no Haiti O Haiti é aqui  Caetano Veloso e Gilberto Gil – Haiti   This year, while hitchhiking between two […]