Leaving Denial


This week’s reading demonstrated how colonization has made many people’s history of their ancestors vanishes under modernity. Susana Cota Amaral quotes, “This week’s readings played a debate on the hegemonic epistemologies of forgetfulness and denial. Western colonial capitalism modes of producing knowledge have disenchanted and disregarded the indigenous and colonized ancestral culture, turning a “vast […]

A Una Epistemología ética (Susana)


  “How can the exclusive, ethnocentric “we” be articulated with the inclusive “we”—a homeland for everyone—that envisions decolonization?” (Cusicanqui, 97) Sylvia Rivera Cusicanqui, in this question on how to be inclusive in decolonizing movements, brings forth her salient argument on how to practice indigenous hybridity in the colonizing hegemonic order in her writing of “Chi’ixianakax […]

post to note that my algorithm started glitching


when i began writing in spanish without using a coded translator here. meaning, my typing of spanish randomly in an english algorithm slowed the speed and even ability to type majorly! just wanted to add this note to show how serious our readings on epistemology are here. because of western knowledges now being coded into […]

“Discovery” in the 21st Century


https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture-exploration/2018/08/brazil-uncontacted-tribe-indigenous-people-amazon-video/ Although the above hit the news cycles around a month ago, it has been in the back of my mind since the start of class. It seems as if the trope of “discovery” as spectacle is alive and well– and here there is not only an exoticization of these “uncontacted tribes” but an acknowledgment […]

El tío, Antonio (2010)


El tío, Antonio / O tio, Antonio. Brasil/Bolívia | 2010 | cor | 18′ Direção | Director: Paulo Maya Fotografia | Photography: Paulo Maya Elenco | casting: Antonio Quéchua, Paulo Maya, Javier Arze Alcócen, Andrés Salcedo e María José Jaramillo. Produção | Production: Filmes de Quintal Contato | contact : filmes@filmesdequintal.com.br https://www.forumdoc.org.br/2010/?page_id=255 https://www.filmesdequintal.org.br Ensaio etnográfico em […]

Abruption in History


This week’s readings were filled with such enriching and very interesting topics I do not know where to begin. But as I was making my way to the last reading, I thought of this quote from one of my professors in my undergraduate studies related to the topic of slavery. She said something along 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 […]