Advanced Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Thought: Critical-Emancipatory Perspectives
1th Cohort | Virtual Modality
ACADEMIC COORDINATION
Felix Valdés García y Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
PROFESSORS
Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez (National University, Colombia/UCLV, Cuba), Felix Valdés García (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba), Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba), Yodenis Guirola Valdés (University of Barcelona, Spain), Patricia González San Martín (University of Playa Ancha, Chile), Carmen Castillo Echeverría (France), Marco Álvarez Vergara (University of Chile), Carlos Angarita Sarmiento (Pontifical Javeriana University, Colombia), Frantz Voltaire (CIDHICA, Haiti-Canada), Camila Valdés León (Casa de las Américas, Cuba), Lino Moran Beltrán (University of Zulia, Venezuela), Michael Lowy (CNR, France), Alvaro Garcia Linera (Bolivia) and Nelson Maldonado Torres (University of Connecticut, United States)
Virtual format | August to December 2023
Debates surrounding critical thinking in the context of emancipation are unavoidable in Latin American Studies. Intellectuals, challenging the weight of the hegemonic Western tradition, have questioned the assumptions upon which knowledge rests, proposing approaches and concepts that aim for emancipation and the overcoming of epistemic dependency. They offer alternative ways of narrating history, of considering economic and political relations, cultural values, and modes of knowing. Revealing these ideas, their critical value, and their liberating function constitute the main objective of this course, which will present an alternative perspective to the modern-liberal tradition, indebted to the Eurocentric viewpoint and the linear, disciplinary narrative that sprang from colonial empires to the possessions of the Global South.
This introductory Postgraduate Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Emancipatory Critical Thought is the result of research and teaching carried out by members of various CLACSO Working Groups dedicated to the recovery, research, and dissemination of Latin American thought. This work has been presented in virtual seminars, at various International Graduate Schools, and in the anthologies of contemporary critical thought coordinated and published by CLACSO.
Our America, as José Martí described it, shares a diversity of spaces with physical and cultural differences, as well as a common past marked by colonial subordination, socio-economic disintegration, and spiritual dependence on the hegemonic centers of Western power. Overcoming these conditions of dependence, achieving liberation, concerns not only the political, economic, and legal spheres, but also domination in the spiritual realm and in the very foundations of knowledge upon which our representations are based. In this sense, epistemic independence, liberation from notions presented as universal and from the dynamics of knowledge construction, constitute one of the tasks undertaken by critical and emancipatory thought in Our America.
Throughout history, many of the ideas developed in colonial empires, which were intended to be reproduced in the subordinate world and thereby discipline the colonized subjects, became challenges to the imposed order. Some concepts considered universal broadened their scope upon crossing the Atlantic. A paradigmatic example of the critique of the model of domination was that put forth by the Dominicans in Santo Domingo and Cuba, particularly by Bartolomé de las Casas—the first outspoken critic of the Spanish colonial project. Similarly, as Leopoldo Zea stated, the European Enlightenment came to the aid of the American independence movements of the 19th century, and the aura of classical positivism served the renewal of the young nation-states. Today, concepts such as “Blackness,” “transculturation,” “mestizaje,” theoretical variations on “decolonization,” and the critiques of feminism, theology, and dependency theory have proven to be genuine theoretical tools that allow for a theoretical and philosophical understanding of our world. These constitute a legitimate expression of thought committed to emancipation, independence, and overcoming the mechanisms of hegemonic domination.
The postcolonial, Third World, and peripheral condition, along with the patriarchal and racist perspectives imposed in this region, have made this body of thought a rich source of information that demands the utmost attention from Latin American scholars. In this sense, the aim is to present and discuss the history of regional thought, stripped of traditional logics of reading and linear, mimetic exposition, in order to avoid reproducing Eurocentric practices. The intention is not to imitate the modern-Enlightenment expository logic, nor the narratives that originate from the West as the locus of enunciation and transform its experience and concepts into infallible and stark universals. The purpose will be to unveil other ways of reading the legacies of the native peoples, the work of indigenous intellectuals, the developments of Marxism, of critical currents such as the philosophy and theology of liberation, the critique of coloniality in its different expressions, the race-class-gender problem, the analyses of feminism, the examination of Andean-Amazonian thought, of critical Caribbean thought, always in relation to and starting from the real and historical conditions, of the past and present of the continent.
The complex reality of Our America, that space which, as José Martí said, stretches from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, including the sorrowful islands of the sea, has generated disruptive and undisciplined forms of knowledge, other ways of thinking about our world, that transcend imitation and the dynamics of traditional academia. It is urgent in the debate on these issues to de-philosophize philosophy, to broaden our perspective, to recognize the necessity and usefulness of concepts that guarantee the understanding of concrete historical experiences and confront theoretical dependence and Western academic dynamics.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES
- To distinguish the critical capacity of Latin American and Caribbean thought as a work committed to human emancipation.
- To offer a general overview of the work of critical-emancipatory thought in the Caribbean and Latin America based on the study of different currents, theoretical perspectives and intellectual movements.
- To make visible the concepts, theoretical proposals and positions given by Latin American critical intellectuals throughout history as a way of recognizing their cognitive, evaluative and transformative practical value.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
- Note the historical trajectory of Latin American and Caribbean thought, beyond the visible expressions in academic life.
- To argue the critical perspectives given by Latin American and Caribbean thought movements such as Latin American Liberation Philosophy, Liberation Theology, the Decolonial Turn and Subaltern Studies, Feminist Critical Thought, and the epistemic transcendence of Popular Education, based on the work of the most prominent intellectuals.
- To highlight the place and contributions of Latin American and “Third World” Marxism in the analysis of the realities of Latin America and the Caribbean.
- To reveal the real conditions that have favored theoretical criticism and practical commitment based on the analysis of real processes in the political, economic and intellectual life of our America.
- To assess the current state of emancipatory critical thinking in the insular and continental American space.
The Higher Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Thought: Critical-Emancipatory Perspectives is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students; teachers at all levels; activists and members of trade union organizations, social movements and political parties; public officials; members and managers of non-governmental organizations and professionals interested in the subject.
The program consists of 5 modules of 3 weekly classes each, taught consecutively and linked together.
Total workload of 128 hours.
The modules that comprise the Higher Diploma are:
Class 1: The European invasion of the “New World” and the establishment of the dominant perspective. To de-discipline philosophy, to de-philosophize philosophy.
Teachers: Felix Valdés García / Raúl Fornet Betancourt
Conceptual summary of the class:
1492 and the beginning of the imposition of the dominant perspective in the field of knowledge. The conquest and colonization, the Indo-Caribbean and Amerindian world, and the first counter-project to the colonization project. A critique of Eurocentrism and European ethnocentrism. The problem of the nature of philosophical knowledge and its expression in the Global South. De-philosophizing philosophy, de-disciplining philosophy to reconsider the critical work of philosophical thought in Our America. Interculturality for the consideration of philosophy in Our America.
Class 2: Latin American thought: the course of its history
Teacher: Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez
Conceptual summary of the class
The question of the authenticity and originality of Latin American philosophy. Practical humanism and the interrelations between ideologies and philosophies in Latin America. From Juan Bautista Alberdi and his ideas on an American philosophy to José Martí and the project of reconstructing Latin American thought in Our America. Positivism sui generis and the anti-positivist reaction in Latin America. Studies on the History of Ideas. The Leopoldo Zea – Augusto Salazar Bondy debate. Current trends and perspectives in Latin American academic philosophy.
3 Class: Caribbean thought. Academic indiscipline
Teacher: Felix Valdés García
Conceptual summary of the class
Possibilities for the theoretical understanding of other concrete historical realities: the case of the Caribbean islands. Peculiarity of philosophy in the Antilles region. Problematic cores (inversion of the historical narrative, revolution, the problem of Blackness, race and racism, Antillean identity, epistemic Caribbeanization). Concepts of Caribbean thought (Blackness, transculturation, colonized, mimesis of the colonized, creolization-creolity, Antillean identity). Caribbean intellectuals and theoretical-practical critiques.
Class 4: Latin American Liberation Philosophy: The Work of Enrique Dussel
Teacher: Patricia González San Martín
Conceptual summary of the class:
Liberation philosophy as a perspective of Latin American philosophical thought and a heterogeneous continental intellectual movement. Its emergence in the late 1960s and the theoretical and historical conditions that motivated the shift toward an emancipatory critical philosophy. Its fundamental theoretical positions. The Morelia Declaration (1975). Main authors linked to philosophical critique: Horacio Cerutti, Arturo A. Roig, Francisco Miró Quesada, Abelardo Villegas, Leopoldo Zea. The debates surrounding situated thought that does not ignore the situation from which it emerges and the discussions concerning the very definition of philosophy, the questioning of its methods, the critical reading of classical European philosophers, and the accumulated body of Latin American thought. The intellectual work of Enrique Dussel and his ongoing critical dialogue with traditional, Eurocentric philosophy. Dussel's critique of Eurocentrism and his interpretation of the trajectory of philosophy as a decolonizing act.
5 Class: Liberation theology, critique of religion and fundamentalisms
Teacher: Carlos Angarita Sarmiento
Conceptual summary of the class
Liberation Theology (LT): a theology of Latin American and Caribbean origin, unique to this region. It emerged in the 70s, linked to the social and political transformations of the time. Its epistemological break with traditional theological rationality and the rationality of the social sciences and humanities is significant. LT presents itself as a new paradigm capable of challenging the Christendom regime, the pact between political power and religion, and the alliance between State and Church that guaranteed the consolidation of the hegemonic model in the West. LT is the most visible reference point of the liberation theology movement (Löwy), an ecumenical socio-ecclesial actor articulated with social and political movements. The 80s and 90s saw its persecution by dictatorial and authoritarian regimes, ecclesiastical hierarchies under the US National Security Policy, and the Vatican restoration promoted by Pope John Paul II. The Christian faith and its role in the liberation of peoples, fueled by a spirituality with sources in sociopolitical praxis and in primitive Christianity.
A significant contribution of Liberation Theology is proposing a way of seeing reality through a critique of religion (F. Hinkelammert). It recovers the critique of religion made by Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus, following the path of Karl Marx's critique of religion. It recognizes the need to unmask the specters of fetishism that alienate people's consciousness and obstruct the struggles for emancipation of the oppressed.
Meaning and current state of Liberation Theology, its possible future. A critical examination that allows us to understand the causes of its decline: strategic political errors (Gallardo), the triumph of neoliberalism and the crisis of historical socialism, the advance of religious and secular fundamentalisms, and the dispersion of theological trends that claim to be liberating.
Class 6: Latin American critical social thought. The work of Franz Hinkelammert
Teacher: Yohanka León del Río
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American Critical Social Thought and Human Emancipation. A Critical Program in Latin American Thought. The Vindication of Utopia and Anti-Capitalist Emancipatory Movements. Key Themes, Trends, and Authors of Latin American Critical Thought. Franz Hinkelammert's Anti-Neoliberal Critique.
7 Class: Genealogy of the decolonial turn
Teacher: Nelson Maldonado Torres
Conceptual summary of the class
This course explores the formation of the decolonial turn from the Haitian Revolution to the celebration of the fifth centenary of the 'discovery' of the Americas. It examines the contributions to decolonial thought of figures such as the Haitian decolonial historian Jean Casimir, Sylvia Wynter, María Lugones, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Catherine Walsh.
8 Class: Decolonial, Black, and grassroots feminism: The women's movement in Latin America and the Caribbean
Teacher: Yohanka León del Río
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American and Caribbean feminism: A critique of the metanarrative of modernity and the naturalization of patriarchy. The complexities of power relations and the interrelations produced in specific contexts, times, and places around sex, race, and class. The Marxist feminist debate on human emancipation and its theoretical and practical challenges. The proposals of popular, decolonial, and community feminism, and their relationship to Marxism and socialism. The Black woman of the Antilles confronting the patriarchal legacy of colonial roots, found in communities resulting from the plantation system, a socio-economic system that favored enslaved male labor while reinforcing the roles of white patriarchal domination. Analysis of critical texts by Rhoda Reddock, Cecilia Green, Alissa Trotz, and Violet Eudine Barriteau.
9 Class: Critical thinking and pedagogy. The work of Paulo Freire
Teacher: Lino Morán Beltrán
Conceptual summary of the class
The work of Paulo Freire, its epistemic and practical significance for emancipatory Latin American pedagogical practices. Popular education develops and critiques traditional education. Theoretical foundations of liberating popular education that contribute to decolonial thought and pedagogy. Popular education, decolonization, and decolonial thought. The liberating work and action of Latin American pedagogy and the theoretical paths of decolonial thought in its critique of Western civilization, Eurocentrism, its scientific rationality, and its historical inevitability.
Class 10: Foundational Latin American Marxism: Aníbal Ponce, Julio Antonio Mella, José Carlos Mariátegui
ProfessorYodenis Guirola Valdés
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American Foundational Marxism: A historical and philosophical overview of the initial reception of Marx's work and Marxism in Latin America from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Key aspects of its development and its particularities in some of its most significant exponents, focusing on Aníbal Ponce, Julio Antonio Mella, and José C. Mariátegui.
Each case study analyzes the treatment of the problem of human emancipation, its relevance, and specificities, both in contrast to Marx and European Marxisms of the time, and in relation to what can be considered foundational Latin American Marxism. As part of these contrasts, theoretical elements are elucidated and defined in the epistemic, philosophical, political, and ethical spheres, as well as practical elements in terms of strategies and mechanisms for social transformation based on these perspectives on the problem of emancipation in Latin America.
The presentation of content is combined with the posing of thought-provoking questions, approached heterodoxically in a critical manner, prompting a critical search for answers. To this end, the class is structured in three parts. The first provides a historical and philosophical overview, specifying the sociopolitical, activist, editorial, and epistemic circumstances, dilemmas, and conflicts that influenced this development. The second part discusses a group of Latin American authors of Marxist affiliation who championed a differentiated critical reflection tailored to the realities of their contexts, focusing on three key figures. Finally, based on the above, particular and common elements are outlined regarding the disruptive, undisciplined, counter-hegemonic, and critical nature of these perspectives, thus enabling an assessment of their originality, relevance, continuity, and contemporary significance.
11 Class: Latin American Marxism: From Mariátegui to Ecosocialism
Teacher: Michael Lowy
Conceptual summary of the class
Historical Itinerary of Marxism in Latin America: From Mariátegui to the Present Day. Historical Experiences and the Relevance of the Theory. Reform or Revolution: The Debate for Latin American Countries. Current Problems and Debates. Third World Marxism, Marxism after 1959. Crisis of Emancipatory Paradigms Worldwide and Keys to Rethinking Emancipation. New Alternatives, Social Movements, and Leftist Projects. Socio-environmental Struggles and Ecosocialism. Theories and Experience.
12 Class: Ludovico Silva and the critique of Marxists, Marxologists and Marxists
Teacher: Lino Morán Beltrán
Conceptual summary of the class
Ludovico Silva, one of the Latin American critical Marxists marginalized in academic studies. A reevaluation of his work for the present day. Marxism as an instrument for interpreting national and Latin American reality. Ideology as a recurring concern in Silva's work. Ideological surplus value. A critique of the traditional Marxism of Marxists, Marxologists, and Marxists.
Class 13: Haitian critical thought: from the Revolution to the present
Teachers: Camila Valdés León / Frantz Voltaire
Conceptual summary of the class:
The Haitian Revolution, the problem of Black African slavery, and the crisis of European humanism and the economic rationale of the colonial system. The questioning, through revolutionary action, of the concepts of Western thought that justified slave oppression. 19th-century Haiti and the interrelation between political sovereignty, economic independence, and cultural emancipation within an international context of denial and silencing of the transformative potential of this event in the region, alongside two other major revolutions of the period (the American and the French). Key themes of debate in the 20th century: the racial problem, racism, and the growing awareness among Haitian intellectuals of the particular condition of skin color and national identity. The indigenist generation: the work of Jean Price Mars, Jacques Roumain, and the Revista Indigenista (Indigenist Review). The adoption of an identity-based approach and its impact on a critical study of the revolutionary legacy, on a recognition of new forms of dependency, on the particularities of Haitian cultural identity, and on how its understanding had not become independent of universalist European civilizational models. The militant intellectual generation of the 1940s: René Depestre and Jacques Stéphen Alexis, their exploration of Haitian culture, and their political commitment to social transformation. The establishment of the Duvalier dictatorship and its construction of a racial ideology, justifying brutal state oppression of its citizens. The intellectual dismantling of the mechanisms of this papacy and the understanding of the economic and geopolitical nature of such programmatic manipulation within the Cold War context. Marxist debates in Haitian thought.
14 Class: Reforms or revolution. The ideological debates of the 1960s and 70s. 50 years after the military coup in Chile
Teachers: Marco Álvarez Vergara / Carmen Castillo Echeverría
Conceptual summary of the class
Reform or Revolution: The Theoretical-Practical Debate and the Chilean Experience. Armed Struggle and the Peaceful Path. The Chilean Road to Socialism. Guevarism and Traditional Marxism. Miguel Enríquez and Marxism in Chile. Half a Century Since the Coup d'État in Chile. The Significance of the Event. The Thousand Days of Popular Unity (1970-1973) as an Unprecedented Experience in the Production of Latin American Marxism and a Confluence of Multiple Popular and Emancipatory Traditions. The Trajectory of Marxist Ideas in Chile. Receptions of Western Marxism, Especially the Critical Reinterpretations of Gramsci and Althusser by Marxists.
15 Class: Liminal historical time: Challenges for Latin American critical theory
Teacher: Alvaro Garcia Linera
Conceptual summary of the class
Challenges for Latin American critical theory in the face of today's 'historical moment,' characterized by uncertainty stemming from the complex and intertwined overlap of multiple crises, global shock, and post-pandemic readjustments. The progressive left in Latin America, its "centrifugal rebirth" marked by an elusive future of "short" victories and defeats, confronts the rise of the hard right, which seeks to discipline its dissenters, in times of aging, the debasement of neoliberalism, and post-Covid-19 global readjustments. Latin America in the wake of the pandemic's consequences, which intensified unemployment, poverty, precariousness, and the suffering of the working classes. The exhaustion of the traditional political party system and the cognitive disconnect between imagined certainties and the present. The analytical category of “liminal time” (Victor Turner) identifies the historical moment we are living through, a time when we stand on the threshold between what has passed and what is yet to come—a new historical era that has not yet arrived, is not announced, and whose form is unknown. The liminal epoch is seen as an in-between, a suspension of social time where physical time is compressed into a maelstrom of events, and social time seems to stand still. The liminal event is the end of an era, an abrupt break or void that can extend for years or decades. These are the main ideas of the book project on this topic, which invites reflection on the alternatives and challenges of thought aimed at achieving human emancipation, new utopias, and an end to global unrest.
- Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez (National University, Colombia/UCLV, Cuba)
- Felix Valdés García (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
- Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
- Yodenis Guirola Valdés (University of Barcelona, Spain)
- Patricia González San Martín (University of Playa Ancha, Chile)
- Carmen Castillo Echeverría (France)
- Marco Álvarez Vergara (University of Chile)
- Carlos Angarita Sarmiento (Pontifical Javeriana University, Colombia)
- Frantz Voltaire (CIDHICA, Haiti-Canada)
- Camila Valdés León (Casa de las Américas, Cuba)
- Lino Moran Beltrán (University of Zulia, Venezuela)
- Michael Lowy (CNR, France)
- Alvaro Garcia Linera (Bolivian)
- Nelson Maldonado Torres (University of Connecticut, United States)
| In one payment by 15/08 | In one payment after 15/08 | Payment in 3 installments | |
| CM Pleno | $175 | $230 | USD 315 (3 x USD 105) |
| CM Associate | $300 | $360 | USD 540 (3 x USD 180) |
| No link | $300 | $360 | USD 540 (3 x USD 180) |
To participate, you must register using the online form by clicking here. Registration will be open from May 8 to August 20, 2023.
Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.
Classes will begin in August and will conclude in December 2023.
All registered participants will receive the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.
Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available to you.
Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases, and within the first month of the start of the Advanced Diploma program, students may request to withdraw from the cohort and rejoin the following year. In all cases, the reasons for the request must be submitted in writing. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.
Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity.
| In one payment by 15/08 | In one payment after 15/08 | Payment in 3 installments | |
| CM Pleno | $175 | $230 | USD 315 (3 x USD 105) |
| CM Associate | $300 | $360 | USD 540 (3 x USD 180) |
| No link | $300 | $360 | USD 540 (3 x USD 180) |
Payment can be made in one installment by credit card, bank deposit, or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.
Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.
Queries: WhatsApp: +54 9 11 3880 – 1388
E-mail: [email protected]
