HUMANS, NONHUMAN OTHERS, MATTER AND LANGUAGE: A DISCUSSION FROM POSTHUMANIST AND DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES

Laryssa Paulino De Queiroz Sousa,Rosane Rocha Pessoa

doi:10.1590/010318135373715822019

Laryssa Paulino De Queiroz Sousa, Rosane Rocha Pessoa

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/010318135373715822019

Copy DOI

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our objective is to discuss decolonial and, mainly, posthumanist perspectives, as we engage in an inter-epistemic dialogue, which encompasses discussions on matter and language. At first, we address Indigenous thoughts in order to relate them to decolonial and posthumanist worldviews, briefly concentrating our attention on some arguments concerning their relation, and we justify our choices. We draw on critiques of colonial and humanist ideas about humans, nonhuman others and matter, and we then discuss traditional conceptions of language. From a posthumanist framework, we approach understandings of language that directly intertwine it with materiality. Based on the problematizations we present, our aim is to expand understandings of what it means to be human and perceptions of language, as we become involved in a project that seeks to see and go beyond human hubris. Therefore, we encourage an onto-epistemological review of language, based on its entanglement with matter.

Highlights

Our objective is to discuss decolonial and, mainly, posthumanist perspectives, as we engage in an inter-epistemic dialogue, which encompasses discussions on matter and language
We mean the movements towards delinking ourselves from the modes of living, thinking and being (MIGNOLO, 2007) that were built as a result of the process of colonization and have been maintained even after the end of colonialism in the form of, for example, racial, class, sexual, gender, linguistic, spiritual and epistemic hierarchies, which characterize our Eurocentrist world-system (GROSFOGUEL, 2010)
Concerning posthumanism, we understand it is a project that questions what it means to be human, as it engages with ethico-onto-epistemological (BARAD, 2003, 2007) challenges that arise in contemporary times, since there is a constant attempt to consider and address human and nonhuman entities, language, and space from a flat hierarchy perspective

Summary

DECOLONIAL AND POSTHUMANIST CRITIQUES

Colonial and humanist perspectives are firmly embedded in modern epistemologies, which emerged from European contexts. The decolonial and posthumanist frameworks do not engage in the rejection and deconstruction of post-dualistic and post-hierarchical forms of thought, but they rather seek to know them, to research and recognize their concrete effects, and to invest in the development of new possibilities (BRAIDOTTI, 2016; FABRÍCIO, 2017; FERRANDO, 2013; MALDONADOTORRES, 2007; MURRIS, 2016; PATEL, 2016; SOUSA, 2018; TOOHEY, 2018a; VERONELLI, 2015, 2019) In this line of thought, as an ethical commitment, the posthumanist perspective aims at including all those who have suffered along the construction of humanism – people, animals, objects, spaces, and the planet as a whole (APPLEBY; PENNYCOOK, 2017; BRAIDOTTI, 2013, 2016, 2017; COOK, 2016; HARAWAY, 2008; LATOUR, 2004; PENNYCOOK, 2018a, 2018b). We will return to these perspectives, relating them to language,

A REFLECTION ON TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS OF LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE FROM A POSTHUMANIST PERSPECTIVE