Diana Taylor concludes ¡Presente! with a meditation on walking theory and the “cultural coding” of walking which is never just walking (Taylor, 38). Recently, U.S. news has been saturated with images and stories seeking to reify the “migrant caravan” – an assemblage of Central Americans travelling mostly on foot towards the U.S. – Mexico border […]
Running To / Fro
They come pouring off the highway, salt caked to their faces, thousands of them. It looks like some will need medical assistance. Hopefully they have family waiting for them. If not, perhaps they made a friend along the way who can provide support. Some volunteers hand out shawls, others bread, fruit and water. This is the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Mascaras y Traducción: Trayectorias de la Hegemonía en Rivera Cusicanqui y Mbembe
Había leído hace un tiempo el gran ensayo de Achille Mbembe donde se acuña el tan necesario concepto de “Necropolítica”. Sin embargo, leerlo de nuevo a la luz del “Principio de Potosí” de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui fue revelador; la forma y el lenguaje del texto de la última no se parecía en nada a la […]