ALTARS, SUGAR, AND ASHES #2
Anti-racism and anti-colonial resistance from the perspective of people of African descent
Mini-series curated by Veronica Lahitte and Antonio Gagliano
Bringing together knowledge from ancestral practices, cosmopolitics, affect theory, and queer theory,the Study Group on Afro/Black Ideas, Practices, and Activisms looks at the framework for current discussion around race and racism, and how “blackness” became the backbone of the founding of the modern state. The objectives of the group, which operates from the Spanish context, include dismantling the essentialist view of race, producing knowledge through embodied experience, and planning forms of political intervention in the surrounding neighbourhood and the city.
Using the study group’s work as a springboard, this miniseries unfolds in three chapters, exploring ideas around anti-coloniality and anti-racism from the perspective of people of African descent. In this second instalment, Diego Falconí Travez (b. Quito, 1979), Lucia Piedra Galarraga (b. Havana, 1972), and Karo Moret (b. Havana, 1974) talk about slavery and love, the Caribbeanization of identities, and violence as a potential resource. They discuss affects, phobias, autophagies, and unsettling objects. And they examine the Latino world in relation to the mask of gay culture, coming out of the closet as a liberal promise, and resent(i)ment as a circular form that prevents memory from disappearing.
Anti-racism and anti-colonial resistance from the perspective of people of African descent
We talk to Karo Moret, Diego Falconí and Lucía Piedra Galarraga interculturality, multiculturality, and migrant sit-ins. They share ideas on cosmopolitics, the Hispanic world, atavisms, and Afrofuturism; on El Cid's beard, the Royal Spanish Academy, and taking academia to the street. They examine the ways in which a transvestite theory of childhood challenges the imaginaries embodied in literature and explore the legal loopholes and the counter-routes of knowledge that could allow us, collectively, to come together in the south.
Ramon Amaro
The researcher and lecturer Ramon Amaro introduces the basics of machine learning, its criteria for assigning value, the collision between blackness and the artificial, its flaws, and the problem of impunity that all too often accompanies them. He also calls for a techno-resistance that would require us to sacrifice our current view of the world and of ourselves.
Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi
Professor Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi examines the ways in which universalism in academia distorts our understanding of African cultures, especially in relation to race and gender. In this podcast, Professor Oyèwùmi talks about age, seniority, and respect, about unscrupulousness and academia, dispossession and spirituality. She considers the oxymoron of the notion of “single mother” from the point of view of Yoruba culture, and she also notes how observance of community practices from non-Western cultures may be a necessary step as we face the planetary challenges to come.
Anti-racism and anti-colonial resistance from the perspective of people of African descent
We talk with Lucía Piedra Galarraga, Diego Falconí Travez and Karo Moret from the Study Group on Afro/Black Ideas, Practices, and Activisms about altars, ekekos, nefandos, Saint Barbara, and Valdivia's Siamese twins. They turn their attention to the politics of hair, talk about sugar as the star product plying the Caribbean routes, and acknowledge the usefulness of ashes in proving the extermination of the ancient Andean sodomite communities.
John Mason
John Mason talks about the power of rituals and food as the impetus for resistance, identity, and memory, about the cultural transfers that take place in migratory movements, and about the history of the Yoruba people. In this podcast, Mason also defends the untold story of the role of women as inventors, and highlights the political, social and economic impact of certain spaces occupied by women, such as agriculture and education, as well pediatrics, geriatrics and affects.
Walter Mignolo
The Argentine semiotician Walter Mignolo talks about the relation between the construction of history and the perspective of power, as imposed by the West.