Advanced Diploma in Southern Perspectives that Enable (Re)existence: Contemporary Debates on Decolonization

Class 1: Initial Activity: Presentation of activities, instructors, academic program, and work schedule. Challenges to (re)existence: other stories, other paths

Teachers: Maria Paula Meneses and Iolanda Vasile

Conceptual summary of the class

The colonial-capitalist relationship, as well as heteropatriarchy as a system that denies the human dignity of many peoples and the epistemic complexity of the world, symbolizes an immense space-time of violence, oppression, and (re)existence, which today is called the Global South. This class is organized into three parts: first, the main characteristics of modern colonialism are analyzed, explaining how abyssal thinking is central to modern rationality. Second, the legitimizing logics of the political and epistemic action of the colonial project in African contexts are analyzed. Finally, some clues for an epistemic decolonization of the Global South are presented. Therefore, Epistemologies of the South demand a new aesthetic, a plurality of post-abyssal creative artistic practices arising from the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. This is a call to transgress the boundaries between academic knowledge and knowledge born from social struggles, recognizing the role of reclaiming other narratives and ways of narrating in the creation of transformative knowledge.

Class 2: History of the Present

Teacher: João Arriscado Nunes

Conceptual summary of the class

A critical engagement with the genealogies and lineages of narratives is fundamental to writing the "history of the present" across the Global South. It is also a concern with how the Global South was problematically and forcibly integrated into the evolving modernity of the North Atlantic and its heteropatriarchal and capitalist system over the past few centuries. Methodologically, "rescuing" other narratives, other genealogies of being and belonging, allows for a systematic analysis of continuities and discontinuities, while simultaneously considering the temporalities of ideas, systems, institutions, and orders over time—key to rethinking (re)existences.

Class 3: 

Teachers: Maria Paula Meneses and Jessemusse Cacinda

Conceptual summary of the class

Debates in the field of contemporary art have highlighted the political importance of creatively reworking the past, especially with regard to traditionally marginalized themes and subjects. Drawing on the artistic work of several Mozambican artists who share an interest in histories and representations, this course aims to show how these artworks translate complex narratives in which history and subjectivity intersect. 

Class 4: Decolonization and Pan-Africanism

Teachers: Karina Bidaseca and Marta Sierra

Conceptual summary of the class

We begin with the premise that decolonizing Western aesthetics is situated within the logic of the white box, which necessarily implies bridging the geographical and spatial disconnections of the cognitive empire in order to enter into the “Relationship” (Glissant). And, in this way, to be able to imagine possibilities. This is the complete opposite of imperial thought, defined by Glissant: “Empire is the absolute avatar of totality” (2017, p. 62). It is certainly necessary to call for the decolonization of our bodies, genders, and minds (Thiong'o) in order to achieve the decolonization of the third space (...) To decolonize the disposition of a micropolitical gesture “between,” of a fabric that is, at once, sensitive and affectionate; a gesture that appeals to the new “poetics (erotic) of the Relationship.” Many of filmmaker Sara Maldoror 's works trace creative connections with key artists and intellectuals of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora , including surrealist artist Wifredo Lam and poet of négritude Aimé Césaire, as well as jazz musicians such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Her scathing anti-colonial drama Sambizanga (1972)—one of the first feature films made in Africa by a Black female filmmaker—rewrites the rules of films that focus on resistance and rebellion, and often feature women as protagonists of male-dominated movements.

Class 5: Environmental Aesthetics and Decolonization

Teachers: Karina Bidaseca and Marta Sierra

Conceptual summary of the class

This unit seeks to define the relationship between bio-art, visual art, and environmental interventions as forms of decolonizing the extra-visual archive, which functions both materially and representationally. One of the central concepts of this class will be that of an environmental insurgency and its impact on reflections about gender and the coloniality of being and knowledge. We will discuss the work of artists who, by intervening in the codes of environmental representation, seek to liberate bodies and knowledge from the networks of global capitalism. The artists included here are Cecilia Vicuña, Carolina Caycedo, and others. Art thus functions as an ecology of the Global South, understood as a possibility for re-inhabiting the land and creating community bonds that rebuild the social fabric torn apart by coloniality. The methodology consists of a meditation on the image; that is, thinking of the image as a mechanism for entering a dimension contrary to the binary logic of coloniality. We propose that students take on this challenge as a way of not "understanding rationally" but of entering into a knowledge that returns us to another form of rationality and intellectual understanding: a being in the south, a being in the other, a being in Mother Earth.

Class 6: Decolonizing the archaeology of art. Open-air museums.

Teachers: Karina Bidaseca and María Isabel Hernández LLosas.

This Art Archaeology course will introduce concepts from Archaeology and Anthropology to analyze diverse artistic productions using examples and case studies from different cultural contexts, locations around the world, and periods throughout human history (prehistoric and non-Western). From there, we will compare what, who, and for what purpose “works of art” have been created, and how these ancestral examples can provide us with insights to understand and address present-day challenges arising from the relentless expansion of the World System in these critical times of the Anthropocene. We will present the work of Ana Mendieta, a Cuban artist who worked with Taíno and Yoruba peoples on the themes of body, territory, landscape, and memory. 

Class 7: Understanding the EU's massive colonialism in the Mediterranean

Teacher: Ángeles Castaño Madroñal

Conceptual summary of the class

The construction of the EU's Southern Border has transformed the Mediterranean into the world's most dangerous migration transit zone. A space of cultural flows and historical tricontinental transit is now fragmented and subjected to an intensive process of systemic colonization in this phase of capitalism. We will focus on understanding two aspects: the notion of "disposable" applied to migrant children and youth, whose future potential is denied to the national youth; and the notion of mass colonialism articulated within a complex technopolitical-governmental system. Understanding this dimension of massive systemic colonization involves addressing the political kaleidoscope and its articulations in the deepening dependencies between the north-south shores of the basin: the impact of economic, trade, transnational cooperation and development, security, cultural, migration, and, in recent years, cyber and environmental policies. We will focus on the (in)direct impact of migration on the Western Mediterranean route, specifically the crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar between Andalusia and northern Morocco, a process that has been in place for 32 years. We will examine the feminization and youthification of migrants on this route, where women with dependent children, unaccompanied minors, and young people are the most prominent groups, a presence that has increased in the last decade. We will analyze the paradigm of the disregard for human rights and the rights of children and youth within the pragmatic politics of the Schengen Area. We will explore the biopolitical and necropolitical dimensions of these migrations, which are dehumanized and whose future potential is squandered, as reflected in the abysmal thinking that shapes and influences them. But we will also examine their sociocultural counterpart, exploring the power of knowledge generated by individuals through the migratory experience, its liberating potential from personal and collective trauma, and its diverse and sociological manifestations. Based on organizational discourses and practices, we will reflect on the ideological and political dimension, and in its plastic aspects we will observe the forms it takes in musical manifestations and collective rituals.

Class 8: Feminization and Juvenization of Migrations in the Western Mediterranean

Conceptual summary of the class

DVD “Voices of the Border” (Jesús Armesto and Ángeles Castaño)

Class 9: Decolonial Aesthesis or the Power of Knowledge in Anti-Border Art

Class 10: Towards a Decolonial Socio-Environmental History with Nature as a Historical Subject

Teacher: Antonio Ortega Santos

Conceptual summary of the class

In this class, I intend to develop a study of the academic approaches used to examine the co-evolutionary process between society and nature, dominated by a Eurocentric perspective of modernity in which nature was transformed into a commodity, reflecting the logic of capitalist domination and extraction. In contrast to this dominant epistemic and productive logic, I will present cases of epistemologies from the Global South in which life was the central axis for creating symbiosis with territories, for territorial identities based on communality that resisted and re-existed in the face of the advance of ecocidal capitalism. 

Class 11: Thinking about Socio-Energetic and Socio-Environmental Transitions in the Face of Civilizational Collapse. Beyond the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Other Conceptual Debates

Conceptual summary of the class

Increasingly, in the context of a civilizational crisis, we speak of the need to envision a post-fossil fuel future within the framework of global social, epistemic, and ontological justice, not only in the Global North. However, this horizon of green transition may be turning into a new form of greenwashing, in which so-called “developed” economies accumulate more energy production for extractive activities involving material resources and energy (industry, tourism, and agriculture), particularly to fuel an eco-mobility gap stemming from the spectrum of individual electric mobility based on the exploitation of lithium in the South American triangle (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia). Therefore, this paper proposes both a critical debate on central concepts of the discussion and a critical vision for the future scenario of energy production and consumption models on a global scale. 

Class 12: Political Agroecologies. Responses from Food Sovereignty in the Global South

Conceptual summary of the class

In this class, we will address one of the most revolutionary acts possible: eating. To do so, we will analyze, from the perspective of political agroecology, the study of agri-food public policies in Europe and the Americas, identifying synergies and inequities in energy consumption, as well as the agri-food channels that subordinate and marginalize peasant farmers within the large circuits of agribusiness. In contrast, we will offer an overview of agroecological proposals from the Global South that allow for a model of agriculture for life, not for the market, reconciling food with life in local territories, and reconnecting us with the local.

Class 13: Gender and Memory. Production of insurgencies in social-community museum spaces

Teachers: Karina Bidaseca and Maria Clara Martins Cavalcanti

Conceptual summary of the class 

This class is dedicated to exploring the potential of decolonial feminist critique in examining the production of memory, particularly in spaces such as museums. We will address both critical perspectives on museological thought and proposals developed in recent years within the field of social museology, as well as the relationship between these spaces and social movements. The starting point for these reflections will be the experiences of social museums located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, such as the Museu da Maré, the Museu das Remoções, and the Ecomuseum of Barra Alegre; in Cuba, the Museum of Africa; and in Argentina, the Terry National Museum in Jujuy.

Class 14: LGBTTIQ+ Memories and Archives as Practices of (Re)existence

Teacher : Lucía Nuñez Lodwick

Conceptual summary of the class 

This class aims to explore the relationship between gender and memory in Latin American contexts, specifically through archival analysis. It delves into counter-hegemonic archives of sexual dissidence that seek to disrupt official narratives, making other histories visible as spaces for preserving memory. The intention is to foster reflection on the (im)possibility of de-patriarchalizing/queering/queering archives.

The starting point for these reflections revolves around the political, aesthetic, and affective power of the personal archives of the transvestite and trans community during the Argentine dictatorship, and of bodies as repositories of memory, living archives.

Class 15: 

Teachers: Karina Bidaseca, María Clara Cavalcanti and Lucía Lodwick

Conceptual summary of the class 

The purpose of this class is to promote a debate around the (im)possibility of decolonizing and depatriarchalizing archives

To participate, it is essential that you register using the online form.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in June and will conclude in September 2024.

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 this initial period, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

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.