For this call for proposals, the Working Group “Territorialities, Bodies, and Spiritualities” draws on the experience of the Working Group “Subjectivations, Critical Citizenships, and Social Transformations,” which developed a series of projects focused on training for critical thinking and the construction of territorialities of peace. This group incorporated powerful concepts and made progress in unraveling the scenarios from which peace is built in our Latin American and Caribbean societies, as well as understanding the territories and territorialities that emerge from the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of the social dynamics involved in the complex challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean within a global context of constant change, struggles, and expressions of resistance that constitute the new worlds being forged.

The aim now is to foster exchange and dialogue among social researchers in the region, consolidating critical convergence in the constitution of a new field of relations around the conceptual framework of Territorialities/Bodies/Spirituality. This pursuit is increasingly important within critical thought across the continent and globally, as it involves exploring new epistemological and methodological problems that will equip social studies with analytical tools and build a capacity for proposition. in the face of problems posed by the deepening crisis of the capitalist mode of production, by its ecological disaster, its propensity for war, dispossession and the impoverishment of populations.

Issues such as new migration trends, the exponential growth of refugees and the decline of modern citizenship; climate change resulting from human activity; the design and use of increasingly extreme biopolitical and necropolitical strategies; and the emergence of Zoé-politics, to mention some of the most significant, make the study of forms of resistance that develop from bodies and territories, and the renewed interest in the ways of reactivating and re-energizing spiritualities linked to them, highly relevant and important. A social ethic of the common good as a spiritual dimension of social change. That is to say, the problem of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological possibilities of approaching the question of new modes of existence arising from territorial emergences resulting from resistance and, in conjunction with them, the role of bodily experimentation that unleashes new powers of being, as well as the ethical-political constitution of subjectivity in terms of spirituality, is brought to the forefront.

Thus, Latin American and Caribbean researchers are addressing territorial issues and emerging territorialities from perspectives such as social studies of territory, where rhizomatic approaches are gaining ground. These approaches base their analysis on the interconnectedness of experiences like those of Afro-descendant or Indigenous territories and the forces of resistance that confront wars or the exploitation of transnational capital in these territories, giving rise to new forms of existence (Escobar, 2010; Montañez, 2016; Useche, 2016; Vommaro, 2017). Furthermore, a renewed critical geography is emerging that addresses problems through the relationships between territoriality, space, and power; or proposes tools for representing and managing territory, especially around new forms of cartography, and envisions a new approach to territorial planning for life, as part of an emerging political ecology (Zaragocín, Moreano, and Álvarez, 2018). Others have also hypothesized “overlapping territorialities” (Agnew and Osiander (2010)), which emphasize specific processes of reterritorialization, constituting territorial authorities outside of or in dispute with the territorial authority of the nation-state. This is to mention only a few of the studies that seek to distance themselves from Eurocentric hegemony on these issues, without abandoning very strong concepts derived, for example, from post-structuralist philosophy (Deleuze, Guattari; 1975), from the reappraisal of Michel Foucault's work on governmentality (2014), or from the works of Virno (2003) or Serres (1995).  

Something similar occurs with the Latin American and Caribbean critical perspective on the problem of bodies and embodiment. Body studies allow us to delve into the ontological, aesthetic, and political possibilities of acts of resistance that arise from the power of affirming life, which unfolds in the multiplicities of experiences involved in the processes that dissolve preconceived identifications, undermine disciplinary mechanisms, and herald new ways of being.

Investigating the lines of flight from which difference is expressed is a perspective grounded in the thought of Deleuze (2002) and Braidotti (2016) and developed by Latin American specialists who grapple with the question of posthuman subjectivities (Piedrahita, 2017). There are also approaches to the problem from cultural and aesthetic perspectives that examine its interaction with new understandings of political space in Latin America (Pedraza, 2007). The biopolitical production of the body is likewise a frequently adopted approach in Latin America, drawing on ideas such as those of Hardt and Negri (2000) and Agamben (2003), and, of course, on the analyses of Foucault, which in Latin America have been interpreted from various schools of thought, including those of the decolonial turn (Quijano, 2000; Grosfogel, 2006; Castro-Gómez, 2010).   

The GT's conceptual map concludes with the category of spirituality. The GT researchers aim to construct a space for inquiry that recovers Spinoza's (2002) notion of potentiality, which conceives of the body as a field of relations manifested in affective intensities capable of connecting with desire. This unfolding of forces is in constant search of connections that develop contingent forms which can lead to emergent resistances or be controlled and disciplined as body-forms subject to sovereignty. In Deleuze's (2002) vision, for example, the path to spirituality appears within a framework of experimentation, mutation, disidentification, and ego rupture, which carry within them a strategic line of flight made up of alliances, encounters, and events connected to life.

Thus, for the philosophy of difference, spirituality is a commitment to life and is related to the field of immanence, or the invisible field of possibilities available to each person. Desire—in its immanence—is the presence of the spirit as potential; not as representation, but as event. Unraveling spirituality, then, means following the path of the production and experience of desire, embracing it as agency, understanding it as (inorganic) life where each individual or group composes a plan of immanence to journey in the spirit, to escape through the margins of constant confrontation and the dualism of war.

Other contributions, such as Negri's (1993), indicate that from this dimension it is possible to cultivate joyful emotions and find in solidarity and love ways to establish lasting bonds, rethinking the relationships of individuals with themselves and experiencing increasing power to achieve shared happiness. This speaks to the possibilities of the ethical-political constitution of subjectivity in terms of spirituality.

Authors from other schools of thought, such as those that emerged from Latin American liberation theology (Polis. Editorial Team, 2004), propose a dual process of revitalizing and renewing spirituality, along with broadening the scope of politics aimed at social change to include ethical, epistemological, ecological, human rights, gender issues, cultural identity, common sense, and the development of consciousness. In this context, a politics of life becomes relevant, one that allows for the integration of spiritual experiences into everyday life.

In summary, the conceptual field proposed by the GT (Territorialities/Body/Spirituality) aims to contribute to the constitution of epistemological, ethical and political openings in service of the production of new social knowledge in areas such as subjectivities, resistances, critical citizenships, gender and post-gender perspectives and the deepest social transformations.

The investigative and critical process undertaken by the Working Group on Subjectivations, Critical Citizenships, and Social Transformations during the three-year period from 2016 to 2019 allowed for the consolidation of a research program that made visible the construction of a particular way of knowing, articulating, and acting based on critical thinking connected to the creative realm. The epistemological convergences that emerged from these critical exercises made it possible to consolidate pathways for subjectivation, the consolidation of citizenship, and the development of social transformation processes, generating new problematizations related to territorial emergencies, spiritualities, and bodies. It is therefore necessary for the Working Group to investigate these conceptual shifts and the experimental approaches currently unfolding in the Latin American, Caribbean, and global contexts.

The theoretical relevance of studying territorialities and territorializations stems from the urgent need to break with the notion of territory contaminated by the development models that have guided modernity, especially in this latest phase of capitalism (Useche, 2008). Other logics are required, other ways of understanding spaces for life, based on continuous learning and substantive exchanges among all actors within the territory (Assman, 2002). This refers to inhabiting, that is, to the ways in which territory is constructed as an organism in constant motion, not immune to power struggles: some attempting to build closed spaces suitable for domination, others emerging as forces seeking to create places full of meaning, suitable for life, populated with significance, where the question concerns the vital relationships between women and men and between them and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual with themselves, with their spiritual and bodily territories, and with their ethical and political choices. This immerses us in the richness and complexity of the chaotic processes that give rise to life.

Thus, territorialities transcend topological views or being conceived merely as administrative units of power, instead proposing existential cartographies that seek the points of connection between social forces and their spaces, both on the physical plane and in symbolic environments, and beyond that, in the possibilities of generating collective agency. This implies the consolidation of convergences with concepts such as territorialities of peace (Useche, Pérez, and Martínez, 2019), but also with multiple visions and ways of conceiving the processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, which therefore become a challenge of both a theoretical and a practical nature. Territoriality is a complex source of vitality; therefore, it is a source of knowledge that produces identities and subjectivities capable of recognizing and empowering diversity. From there, we can ground those other existences that develop in a situated manner and in deep and complex connections with matters such as ancestral knowledge and other possibilities of thought.

Regarding the question of the body, it is extremely important to understand that it can no longer be seen solely as a text inscribed within the frameworks of power and culture, as considered in the thought of Foucault (2010), Kristeva (2005), and others, but also as a site of resistance and a field of possibility open to experimentation, as indicated by the conceptual frameworks of perspectives such as those of Braidotti (2016), Butler (2017), and Haraway (1995). The body has become a space for consolidating new ways of making visible other epistemologies, which, from the Global South, are beginning to configure corporeality as a stage for creative critique, in which other forms of existing and re-existing are constituted, of disengaging and entering into new assemblages and cartographies that unravel its potential as a political exercise. The skin becomes the canvas for denunciation, the weaving of new forms of enunciation, the construction of alliances and the configuration of war machines (Deleuze, 2015) for the strengthening of social organizations and collectives that find the best way to make their presence felt in bodies and their transformative capacity.

In this sense, the body becomes both a synthesis and a vehicle for the struggles for life, serving as a form of resistance that transcends superficiality to delve into the constitution of new ways of re-existing. It represents an escape from organization and segmentation, allowing us, along the lines of new perspectives, to begin making visible those other epistemologies hidden by the coloniality of thought. In the words of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2019), this perspective makes it possible to end the cognitive empire from bodies that break down classical boundaries but also embody other subjectivities and new territorializations. Thus, these corporealities make visible processes in spaces such as the queer, the abject, the posthuman, the transhuman, and the aesthetic forms in which it is possible to think of oneself in other bodies, in other compositions of power that range from the genetic to the performative. Therefore, in contexts such as Latin America and the Caribbean, the need arises to ground and consolidate theoretical and critical approaches capable of resonating with the possibilities offered by working with the body today.

But alongside this, a fundamental issue emerges that becomes essential for understanding political struggles and resistance in contemporary societies, as well as a central concern within the current landscape of political, social, and cultural debate. This is spirituality understood on an ethical and ontological level, which “implies mutations and metamorphoses and refers to truth, not as the production of knowledge, but as the will to power over ourselves; that is, it makes explicit an ethic that is expressed in a work of self-care and self-knowledge.” (Piedrahita, 2014, p. 29) and, for this very reason, given the current contextual situation, amidst ruptures and “crisis of political legitimacy” within the framework of the global “politics of fear” (Castells, 2017), it stands as a possibility for the subject to encounter himself in order to overcome the cooling of the political and to enhance micropolitical actions both on the theoretical level and in the foundation that allows new actions of resistance situated in the territories to be put into practice.  

Ultimately, it's about making spirituality a decisive axis for consolidating critique as an ethical-practical exercise, not only questioning the powers and "truths" that proliferate in media ecosystems and contemporary power systems, but also a path to empowering individuals through the capacity for self-care. From there, self-knowledge and alternative ways of existing can be constructed, as well as enabling the emergence of new territorialities that resist the hegemonic orders stemming from the darkest aspects of neoliberal globalization, in the spirit of digital networks and the configuration of one-dimensional worlds through screens, fueled by phenomena like post-truth.

In this way, the three working axes of the Working Group emerge as relevant elements in the present and pillars for thinking from both theoretical reflection and practical action, so that they become not only elements for deepening the conceptual order but also resources that lead both to the development of empowerment processes in the territories and to the creation of new forms of agency and resistance. These axes, consequently, allow for the construction of new minority, creative, communal, and affirmative resistances that weave other ways of existing and, at the same time, the social transformations that, from the perspective of critical thinking understood as creation, are required in an era like the present, for which the power of bodies, spiritualities, and territorializations becomes the driving force behind present and future political struggles.