[2021] LASA 2021 – Southern Theories in Circulation: Towards a convivial canon

Mecila takes part of the LASA 2021 Virtual Congress with the following panel:

Southern Theories in Circulation: Towards a convivial canon

17-18:45 (UTC-4) New York / 18-19:45 (UTC-3) Sao Paulo / 16-17:45 (UTC-5) Bogotá / 23-24:45 (UTC + 2) Berlin/Cologne

Chairs and Organizers: Clara Ruvituso/Mariana Teixeira

Discussant: Barbara Göbel

Despite the efforts made so far towards the inclusion of voices from the South within social science canons, interdependent inequalities in terms of language, gender, class, ethnicity, territory continue to mark the construction of classics and the so called ‘international division of labor’ between the North as a recognized producer of theories and the South as a producer and/or object of empirical research, i.e., a place where theory produced in the North is applied. Additionally, the preponderance of Anglo-Saxon production and the indexed publication system increase the South-North gaps, in spite of advances in digitalization and access to information. Moreover, there are not only North-South asymmetries: inequalities within the peripheries add to this scenario. What role does the heterogeneous Latin American periphery occupy within social ‘theory’? How to think about the concept of ‘classic’ and ‘canon’ within indigenous epistemologies, where the idea of the author is put into question? How to think about the tension between universal/particular marked by Eurocentrism? What role do Latin American Studies of the global North play in the South-North dialogues and asymmetries? In this panel, we will discuss different perspectives and proposals for the construction of alternative canons and epistemologies that circulate in different ways in academic spaces within the South and the North. With the idea of a convivial canon, we try to highlight the entangled inequalities that constituted the academic canons in which we are involved, as well as to discuss the inclusion of differences in a way that mitigates rather than enhance existing asymmetries.

Demandas de mujeres indígenas por el reconocimiento de sus epistemologías en Colombia

Astrid Ulloa

En Colombia, los actuales debates ambientales en torno a procesos extractivos y de conservación, se sustentan en conocimientos técnicos y expertos para legitimar su implementación. Los conocimientos, las experiencias y las prácticas indígenas se desconocen, por las desigualdades sociales previas y las asimetrías de conocimientos, generando conflictos socioambientales. Sin embargo, las mujeres indígenas han generado propuestas que evidencian las desigualdades y violencias epistémicas, y posicionan otras maneras de producir conocimientos en contextos de los procesos extractivos. Asimismo, las mujeres indígenas demandan ser reconocidas como expertas, desde otras ontologías y epistemologías, y ser incluidas en los debates contemporáneos no solo ambientales sino también sobre discusiones de participación política en procesos de producción de conocimientos. De esta manera, las mujeres indígenas han visibilizado las desigualdades de género y las asimetrías de conocimientos, y han propuesto redes de conocimientos como expresiones de convivialidad de lo pluriverso. Por lo tanto, se propone, analizar los posicionamientos políticos de las mujeres indígenas en torno a las desigualdades de género y etnicidad y las asimetrías de conocimiento, y sus demandas de reconocimiento a partir de ontologías y epistemologías diversas.

Two paths towards a convivial canon: inclusion or recognition of otherness?

Mariana Teixeira

Calls for the destabilization of the hegemonic frameworks of philosophy and social theory have been building up momentum in recent years. People historically relegated to the margins of society denounce the predominantly Eurocentric, male, heteronormative bias of the traditional canon, demanding a new – decolonized, queer, feminist – one, one that does not seek to eliminate otherness but rather to enmesh itself in it. In this paper, I explore two different ways of striving for such a convivial canon: the inclusion of previously neglected otherness or the recognition of previously silenced otherness. The inclusion model presupposes that many different voices should be heard and taken seriously, their own perspectives and epistemologies brought to the same canonical status of the (white, European, male) classics. When otherness is integrated into the hegemonic framework, the latter becomes richer and more encompassing. The recognition model, for its turn, seeks to unveil the many invisible ways how otherness is already present in the canon as its material and existential pre-condition. Recognition in this sense is understood as a performative action that radically changes the status of both poles, Same and Other. In order to make the distinction more palpable, I will illustrate both models with resort to two different ways of relating Hegel’s philosophy, as a classic in the history of philosophy, with the social and epistemological reality of a peripheral region like the Caribbean: the interpretations of Frantz Fanon and Susan-Buck-Morss will then provide the starting point to explore the limits and possibilities of each model.

Darcy Ribeiro: Aportes insólitos a la Teoría Crítica

Clara Ruvituso

En 1982 en el marco del Festival “Horizonte 82” celebrado en Berlín occidental, el intelectual brasileño Darcy Ribeiro polemizó duramente contra el evento, afirmando que los alemanes occidentales lo habían preparado “como una vitrina para mostrar a su pueblo, como un entretenimiento más, pintorescas curiosidades de una enorme y miserable región del mundo, región que seguirá siendo extraña para los sobrealimentados alemanes, incapacitados en su actual prosperidad consumista de elaborar utopías de sentido y alcances universales (como sí lo hicieron en el pasado)”. Las provocaciones de Ribeiro se enmarcaban en una crítica radical a la relación epistémica del centro con las periferias, el eurocentrismo del marxismo y la falta de sentido utópico y emancipatorio de la teoría crítica, temas que acompañaban las reflexiones teóricas y la práctica política de Ribeiro desde hacía ya varias décadas. Su propuesta teórica incluía -nada menos- que una nueva interpretación histórica de todo el proceso civilizatorio, en clave tercermundista. Para 1982 Darcy Ribeiro era el teórico latinoamericano más traducido al alemán y publicado en Suhrkamp, la más influyente editorial de la intelectualidad alemana de posguerra. En el marco de las discusiones actuales por “abrir” y “decolonizar” el canon de las ciencias sociales, en esta presentación nos concentraremos en los aportes de Darcy Ribeiro a los debates sobre desarrollo, dependencia, civilización y utopía que circularon entre los sesenta y los ochenta en la República Federal, dando cuenta de los avatares de su dificultosa recepción en el contexto de la teoría crítica.

Convivial Sociologies: Exploring Transdisciplinary Futures

Sérgio Costa

Three decades after the call published by Mary Jo Deegan (1989) for “convivial sociology”, contemporary sociology is still searching for ways “to speak in a different voice”. Yet the present moment seems to be more auspicious for those interested in constructing convivial sociology. Thus, the following recent theoretical and methodological advances in research on conviviality create a fertile soil for epistemological innovations, including i) Environmental critique of capitalism; ii) critique of anthropocentrism; iii) critique of sociocentrism;  iv) Critique of culturalism; v) Critique of colonial knowledge production if coherently combined, these different developments allow for imagining proper convivial sociologies which challenge the fallacious decoupling of humans (culture) and nature and strict disciplinary separations as well as the subalternization of social sciences from the Global South and the hierarchization of scientific and non-scientific knowledges and methods of knowing. This programmatic paper reconstructs the above-mentioned developments and explores their consequences for the construction of convivial sociologies as a transdisciplinary scholarly space focused on interdependencies and interactions among humans and non-humans beyond national borders.

Final program here!