Latin American Thought Research Articles

Against decolonial reductionism: The impact of Latin American thinking on the data decolonization project

This essay argues that Latin American scholarship and movement practice are key to understanding the dynamics of the datafied society and countering its inequities. Examining the sources of inspiration of a frontrunner seeking to decolonize the datafied society – the Big Data from the South Initiative ( BigDataSur) – we review Martín-Barbero's ontological shift from media to mediations, Freire's methodology centring individual agency and empowerment as a structural task of society, Mignolo's invite to take decoloniality as a praxis rather than merely an idea, Rodríguez's first-hand engagement with technology at the margins, Escobar's autonomous design for the pluriverse, and the critical ecology of eco-social movements. We engage with a new generation of Latin American thinkers who turn their gaze to core problems of today's systems of knowledge production, be they media or academia. Learning from these scholars, we warn against decolonial reductionism, namely the trend to evoke decolonial ideas and theories without fully committing to putting them into practice. We maintain that to decolonize datafication, we ought to also change how we generate knowledge about the datafied society. We outline three practical strategies that foster an open-ended dialogue on alternative approaches to datafication and scientific practice: multilingualism, public scholarship, and mentorship.

Participatory action research in critical data studies: Interrogating AI from a South–North approach

In this article, we draw inspiration from participatory action research (PAR) and the work of Latin American thinkers such as Freire and Fals Borda to interrogate artificial intelligence (AI). We propose a South-North flow by utilising PAR approaches that stem from Latin America, challenging how the North's centrality is taken for granted regarding AI epistemologies, experiences, and understandings. Conducting workshops in London with a diverse group of students, tech workers and activists, we argue that PAR can not only empower marginalised communities in the Global South; we can also learn more from its application in the Global North, in contexts where people deal with different struggles. Our analysis delves into three specific concepts around AI and data (in)justice: autonomy, empathy and dialogue. First, inspired by PAR principles, participants started to problematise what they called an empty interpretation of empathy, establishing parallels with transnational dynamics of data capitalism, which disadvantage marginalised communities in the Global South. Second, PAR offered a critical lens to analyse issues of AI and autonomy in ways that are less individualistic and more collective and politically engaged. Third, PAR's dialogical spirit enabled participants to locate various intersections between AI and dialogue. Critiquing the idea of a superior AI, participants were reminded of the possibilities offered by human intelligence and the combination of thinking, making and feeling or what Fals Borda (2003. Ante la crisis del país: I deas acción para el cambio, 1st. Ed. Bogotá: Panamericana) calls our sentipensante nature.

Valongo, the Place of the Ancestors: Spiritual Practices among Enslaved Africans in Nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT In 2017, UNESCO added Valongo Wharf to its list of World Heritage Sites. Located in Rio de Janeiro’s Port Zone, the wharf is a place of memory associated with the transatlantic slave trade, which has been compared to other sites that have witnessed intense human suffering, such as Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Gorée Island, among others. This chapter explores the spiritual practices of the “wretched of the Earth,” as Frantz Fanon named those Africans dehumanized by European colonialism. More specifically, it focuses on the Africans shipped to Valongo to be sold as slaves in Rio de Janeiro and who left vestiges of their spiritual beliefs, recovered through archaeological research. Here, these remains are analyzed from a decolonial perspective, born from the reflections of critical Latin American thinkers who reject the diverse forms of domination and oppression inflicted by Northern hemisphere powers on subaltern populations of the global South.

On the relentless labour of deconstructing domination logics: The case of decolonial critical accounting research in South America

Eight years after the publication of our article on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, this reflexive commentary responds to a recent critique by M. Gómez-Villegas and C. Larrinaga, which claims our study is characterized by a colonial and Anglo-Euro-centric bias, as is found in other critical accounting research. While the two authors criticize our use of a Bourdieusian framework to investigate a technology, participatory budgeting, born and implemented in a region of the Global South, we point to the relevance of using Bourdieu’s critical sociology to think of emancipation, even more so as European thinking is constitutive of Latin American thinking. We extend some of Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga’s comments to question more broadly the conditions under which critical accounting research and research at large are being produced. Welcoming the diffusion of decolonial perspectives in critical accounting research, we lastly invite all critical researchers to remain alert to the pervasiveness and relentless renewal of capitalist, colonial, and masculine domination logics – including in decolonial research itself.

“In Difesa della Natura”

AbstractThis contribution, inspired by critical debates on the Anthropocene and by the ideas of key Latin American thinkers and academics such as Maristella Svampa, aims at offering an overview of selected works of artists who operate in Latin America. Their work highlights some of the key contradictions and emerging arguments in the debate around the Anthropocene, notably its colonial and patriarchal character. Some of them represent the current systemic crisis induced by extractive capitalism, and underline the relevance of Indigenous peoples’ worldview and traditional knowledge or the connection between the exploitation of feminine bodies and extractivism. Their direct engagement and collaboration with Indigenous communities that resist extractivism visibilizes their agency and active contribution to radical transformation and ecological change, while contributing to challenge the power structures in which these operate.

THEMATIC INVESTIGATION AS CURRICULAR DYNAMICS: DEVELOPING THE PROPOSAL IN THE CLASSROOM

This is a qualitative study, based on the theoretical perspective by Paulo Freire and the assumptions of the Science-Technology-Society (STS) approach and the Latin American Thought in Science, Technology and Society (LAT-STS), considering the perspective of the social context of students as a starting point for their learning. From this perspective, we investigate how a curricular configuration based on Freirean assumptions and CTS/PLACTS productions may contribute to the knowledge building by students in the school environment from an effective work in the classroom. The objective of this investigation is to get a better contextualize the knowledge, involving students in order to promote their critical positioning and the creation of a more democratic society, in which students can express themselves in view of the advances in Science-Technology (ST), regarding issues that imply changes in their world. Thus, we addressed the theme of the implementation and operation of a Hydroelectric Power Plant. Therefore, we investigated an effective classroom practice, which involved teachers of Science and Geography and 9th-grade students from a municipal public school in the same location as the power plant. The corpus for analysis consists of journals kept by the students and the researcher used during practice. Methodologically, we adopt the Discursive Textual Analysis. The results are presented in three categories: Resignifying knowledge through 'demystification'; The critical social-environmental development of students in relation to the theme: from limit situations to untested feasibility; Learning assessment: the understanding and lines of thought from the perspective of students. Hence, connecting the critical-reflective classroom practice to curricular development.

Against coloniality in the international law curriculum: examining decoloniality

ABSTRACT Prompted by the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement in South Africa, debates concerning the decolonisation of the university curriculum have gained increased traction. In the discipline of international law, a tentative pedagogical project of decolonising the university builds on a rich academic debate on the continuities of colonialism. Our contribution to this emerging pedagogical project is to introduce traditions of thought on decoloniality that may complement already existing reflections on and suggestions for decolonising the curriculum. We highlight some key concepts from Latin American thinkers on decoloniality and consider how far this body of knowledge can be translated into a decolonised international law curriculum. For this purpose, we devise four tactics of decoloniality: the tactic of accepting an “ecology of knowledges”, the tactic of “locus enunciations”, the tactic of “dialogical teaching”, and the tactic of troubling a “pedagogy of absences”.

Hemispheric Thinking and Queer Kin

Hemispheric Thinking and Queer Kin

Thinking with Julio Carrizosa’s Complex Environmental Perspective

In Latin America, the humanistic thought has seen a diversity of formations seeking to account for current socio-ecological transformations. These kinds of reflections —better known in the region as Latin/South American Environmental Thinking — have focused on critiquing the structural dualisms of modern thought, such as: civilized-savage, mind-body, society-nature. Through this critique, Latin American thinkers have sought to consolidate the project of environmentalizing knowledge, integrating both scientific and non-scientific practices to face the environmental crisis. However, there are very few analyses of the different theoretical contributions that have emerged from the Latin American humanist project, particularly from Colombia. Therefore, this article analyzes the contribution of Julio Carrizosa, focusing on his conceptualization of the Complex Environmental Perspective. Ultimately, the intention is to contribute to the consolidation of a Latin American perspective on environmental humanities.

Is Oscar Del Barco a perverse man?

This article seeks to contextualise the ‘Heideggerian’ or destructive critique against Lenin in the 1980s. The hypothesis I develop is based on Oscar Del Barco’s critique against Leninism and on the theoretical moments in which this critique has been resisted by other Latin American thinkers. Del Barco is one of the leading philosophers in Latin America. His extraordinary effectiveness reconstructs the history and thought of the Bolshevik leader in order to abandon the leader’s enlightened programme. I argue that the demonisation of Lenin and the complex relationship with a demand for the authenticity of the Bolsheviks’ original project leads the philosopher to omit the birth or the genealogy of extreme liberalism or neoliberalism. The demonisation of Lenin and the omission of the historical context in which he writes makes Del Barco’s philosophy a propitious place for the neutralisation of the relationship between politics and emancipatory programmes. This hypothesis is confronted with the resistance of authors such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, García Linera, Bolívar Echeverría, Dominico Losurdo, Marta Harnecker and Tomás Moulian, among others. The article concludes by affirming that the Leninism reloaded by these authors constitutes a ‘toolbox’ for thinking the conflictive and never-finished relationship between politics and emancipation.

Mário Pedrosa e José Carlos Mariátegui

Este artigo pretende investigar e problematizar acerca dos diferentes níveis de proximidade e similaridade dos percursos intelectuais e políticos de dois pensadores latino-americanos: Mário Pedrosa, no Brasil, e José Carlos Mariátegui, no Peru. Eles provavelmente sejam parte de uma mesma geração de militantes e intelectuais latino-americanos que buscava na interpretação crítica da realidade, traduzida em trajetórias comuns das metodologias e práticas de investigação, da reflexão teórica, além de suas atividades políticas, os caminhos para construir perspectivas de superação dos limites estreitos do desenvolvimento econômico e cultural em seus países. E, nesse sentido, busca-se referências para esta investigação não apenas nos debates historiográficos, mas no diálogo entre as correspondências e obras mais significativas de Mariátegui e Pedrosa. Após uma breve exposição biográfica e comparativa dos dois autores e de suas atividades políticas, pretende-se expor os pontos de contatos de suas reflexões e atividades nos campos da economia e do pensamento político e de suas contribuições comuns no terreno da crítica cultural.

Otro estilo científico y tecnológico es posible

En junio de 2020 fue creada la Red de Pensamiento Latinoamericano en Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad (Red PLACTS). Conformada por integrantes del sector científico, tecnológico y universitario, impulsa una agenda que ponga el conocimiento, los recursos y el complejo CyT en proyectos destinados a resolver necesidades y problemas de nuestra sociedad. Se propone participar e incidir en las decisiones que se toman en la gestión de los organismos de CyT, contribuyendo con propuestas e ideas que aporten a construir un proyecto de país popular, igualitario, democrático, soberano, solidario, con perspectiva feminista y desde una mirada federal. Rescata y recupera en proyectos y acciones concretas los aportes de lo que fue históricamente el PLACTED (Pensamiento Latinoamericano en Ciencia, Tecnología, Desarrollo y Dependencia). En este primer documento se describen las características principales de la dinámica tecnocientífica dominante a nivel global y se presentan algunas propuestas para impulsar un estilo científico tecnológico propio en nuestro país y la región.

Sanín Cano y España: antiimperialismo, americanismo y las tesituras de un congreso frustrado

Baldomero Sanín Cano es, sin lugar a dudas, uno de los eruditos más relevantes de la intelectualidad latinoamericana contemporánea. Sus múltiples inquietudes hicieron que dejase una huella transversal en campos tan diversos como el ensayo, el periodismo, la crítica literaria, la educación o la política. Este artículo indaga en el ámbito ideológico del autor y, más concretamente, en su vertiente unionista continental, manifiesta en sus constantes críticas al expansionismo estadounidense. Partiendo de una prospectiva sobre la personalidad, formación y experiencia política de Sanín, el trabajo incide en lo que fue la manifestación de su antiimperialismo militante dentro de los medios españoles y, en particular, durante su corresponsalía en Madrid, de 1922 y 1924, para el diario argentino La Nación. Finalmente pasaremos a analizar el impacto que tuvo su propuesta para celebrar un congreso iberoamericano con el que aunar posturas frente a las resoluciones de la Conferencia de Génova.

Fetish, Demolition, Ruins

This article compares the video Reinforced Concrete (2012) by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, begun during Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki's 2011 workshop-based project Labour in a Single Shot in Rio de Janeiro, and the performance Bustox (2014), which was carried out by the Brazilian experimental theater collective ERRO Grupo in Florianópolis. Each artwork can be read as an attempt to defetishize an idol of Brazilian capitalism, former billionaire Eike Batista. Moreover, Ehmann and Farocki's workshop can be seen as an attack on the process of fetishizing products of labor, fetishization being one of the main characteristics of capitalist society. Ehmann and Farocki's project, and consequently Nassif's video, are connected to the work of theoreticians such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben concerning the themes of improvisation and profanation. The concept of the fetish is also revitalized by taking into consideration Latin American thinkers Fernando Ortiz and Osório César.

Democratização em processos decisórios sobre CT: o papel do técnico

Encaminhamentos, principalmente educacionais, do movimento Ciência-Tecnologia-Sociedade (CTS) têm defendido a superação do modelo de decisões tecnocrático em temas sociais envolvendo Ciência-Tecnologia (CT). Contudo, ao incluir mais atores nos processos de tomada de decisões em temas envolvendo CT, em detrimento do modelo puramente tecnocrático, qual seria o papel dos técnicos? Para o enfrentamento dessa questão realizou-se uma articulação envolvendo a tríade: atuação de profissionais/especialistas, conhecimento técnico como um todo e processos formativos dos técnicos/tecnólogos. Neste trabalho, são realizadas considerações sobre a suposta neutralidade de CT, um dos pilares de modelos decisórios tecnocráticos, bem como são apresentadas e discutidas possíveis respostas obtidas para o problema de pesquisa, expressas em termos de papeis atribuídos aos técnicos em processos decisórios. Estes foram sintetizados em seis categorias: 1) Conhecimento Científico: condição necessária e suficiente, 2) Fornecer Informações Relevantes, 3) Fornecer Informações Relevantes e Avaliar Impactos de CT, 4) Reorientar a Agenda de Pesquisa em CT, 5) Viabilizar a Adequação Sociotécnica e 6) Buscar Soluções Junto com a Comunidade. Os principais aportes teóricos foram Paulo Freire e referenciais do movimento CTS com especial atenção ao Pensamento Latino-Americano em Ciência-Tecnologia-Sociedade (PLACTS).

Апология Природы в творчестве латиноамериканских мыслителей (на материале идей Хосе Марти). Часть 1

Апология Природы в творчестве латиноамериканских мыслителей (на материале идей Хосе Марти). Часть 1

Genre and Geoculture

Abstract Enzensberger’s sustained engagement with Latin American thinkers and literary forms was central to his attempts to shift the parameters of West German debates on literature and politics in the 1960 s. Attention to Latin American exchanges and influences challenges simplistic criticisms of his Eurocentrism and demonstrates how the novel cultural constellations that underlie Enzensberger’s genre innovation engender productive inroads into transatlantic comparative projects.

Learning-based transformations towards sustainability: a relational approach based on Humberto Maturana and Paulo Freire

This article investigates the relevance of the work of the Latin-American thinkers Humberto Maturana and Paulo Freire to learning-based transformations towards sustainability. This analysis was inspired by a case study of a Brazilian urban community seeking to develop pathways towards sustainable living and was informed by a review of their key works. The paper aims to obtain a better conceptualization of learning-based transformations and provide insights into collective learning processes focused on advancing sustainable practices. We present notions of the transformative social learning approach that underpins the case study, using the concepts of Maturana and Freire as a lens. Our results indicate the importance of a relational approach in fostering collective learning processes. Finally, we derive three principles that can guide such processes: (1) facilitating transformative interactions between people and places, (2) enabling dialogic interaction within a climate of mutual acceptance, and (3) creating space for ontological pluralism.

LA REVISTA ARGENTINA CIENCIA NUEVA (1970-1974): ANÁLISIS DE CONTENIDOS, RECURSOS GRÁFICOS, PUBLICIDAD Y PÚBLICOS

The aim of this paper is to assess the traits of Ciencia Nueva magazine (1970-1974) as a periodical dedicated to public communication of science and science policy in Argentina and Latin America, in order to characterize the scientific communication circuits and reading contract established (Veron, 1985, 1998). We describe the magazine’s regular sections, target audience, use of graphic resources, and advertising. This periodical is a milestone in the development of public communication of science in Argentina and Latin America. Ciencia Nueva was crucial in the consolidation of what would become known as Latin American Thought on Science, Technology and Development. Even now, topics such as (under)development, dependency, autonomy, science and technology policy, higher education, or state intervention in science, are hotly debated in the region. In the ‘70s, Ciencia Nueva helped place these issues into the public agenda. We thus believe this exploratory study can be the onset of deeper analyses on the reading contracts established by past and current publications dedicated to public communication of science, including their political, epistemological and ideological debates.

Policing the Environmental Conjuncture: Structural Violence in Mexico and the National Assembly of the Environmentally Affected

In this article, I contextualise the emergence and describe the political processes of a grassroots mobilisation against the structural violence of neoliberalism in Mexico in order to suggest the necessity of re-thinking conjunctural analysis in a posthegemonic direction. The National Assembly of the Environmentally Affected (ANAA) is a nationwide network of Mexican communities and organisations that has operated since 2008. ANAA's most notorious achievement has been the opening of a Mexican chapter at the Permanent People's Tribunal, the final verdict of which established the legal responsibility of the Mexican State for structural violence against the Mexican people. My account of ANAA's intervention in the Mexican conjuncture recuperates Stuart Hall's emphasis on complexity and singularity by narrating, through multiple critical voices, the cultural and political conjuncture in which some of the most environmentally affected groups of the Mexican population have been able to organise and strike alliances with critical academic communities or socially concerned scientists. In terms of theoretical elaboration, I reflect on the limits of conjunctural analysis as a response to the deeper crisis of representation – what I call a 'disjuncture' – that concerns the scale of socioenvironmental violence in neoliberal Mexico. In order to think beyond issues of cultural representation, I propose to inform a situated practice of environmentally affected cultural studies with the posthegemonic turn in Latin American thinking of the political.