Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned 2 walk without having feet Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams it learned 2 breathe fresh air Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared! -Tupac In […]
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 […]
différance
Trying to examine the stitching of Cusicanqui’s text is maddening. Closing in on the detail of one stitch, for example the dyad chi’ixi-chhixi, I lose track of the of the greater weave. The only way is to move in and out, view the taypi from nearer and farther, in endless alternations of perspective. The wak’as […]
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 […]
Takiy-thaki
Extending Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and biopower, Achille Mbembe points to the insufficiency of Giorgio Agamben’s theories about homo saccer, bare life, and the paradigm of the state of exception. Mbembe does not resort to an obscure figure from Roman law to locate the paradigm in which juridical right and its exception coexist. In […]
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 […]