With the 1955 Bandung Conference—which brought together twenty-nine independent states from Africa and Asia and from which the Non-Aligned Movement was born—the struggle for self-determination of peoples in colonial situations entered a new stage. Central to this process was the identification in Bandung of the line that fuels imperialism, a concept that is fundamental to understanding the abyssal divides that continue to mark our times while simultaneously drawing attention to the power of experiences in what we once called the "Third World" and today the "South" or "Global South." The South is defined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos not as a geographical location but as a metaphor for suffering, which unfolds on both sides of this abyssal divide. The author writes:

The abyssal line is the radical dividing line between fully human beings and subhuman beings: the most radical naturalization of social hierarchies in modern times. This line lies at the heart of European colonial expansion. Colonialism and patriarchy have been reconfigured to operate as privileged regimes of subhumanization. (2022: 17)

As Fanon emphasized in The Wretched of the Earth, it was the struggles for political, cultural, and economic emancipation that transformed those who had been colonized into political subjects. Thiong'o, in his book Decolonizing the Mind (1981), already wrote:

The true aim of colonialism was to control the wealth of peoples. [...] But its most significant area of ​​domination was the mental universe of the colonized; the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. Political and economic control cannot be total or effective without the domination of minds. (2015, p. 49).

By defining the mind as the sole source of knowledge, the body is erased from its own history, limiting our understanding of the colonial question in the present. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos demonstrates in *The End of the Cognitive Empire*, global justice can only exist through an epistemological transformation that guarantees global cognitive justice.

In this sense, epistemologies of the South are fundamental. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos points out, thinking and knowing from the Global South gives primacy to the production and validation of knowledge anchored in the experiences of resistance of all social groups that have been systematically victims of the injustice, oppression, and destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Santos, 2018, p. 19).

The proposal of Epistemologies of the South, formulated since the 2000s, aims to name and highlight the ancient and contemporary knowledge held by social groups resisting modern Eurocentric domination. They conceive of modern science as a valid (and valuable) type of knowledge, but not as the only valid (and valuable) type; and they insist on the possibility of interknowledge and intercultural translation. Epistemologies of the South maintain that modern domination is constituted not only by colonialism but also by capitalism and patriarchy. Critical studies on contemporary forms of oppression have given rise to quite divergent intellectual, political, and aesthetic reflections and practices, but with multiple commonalities that are important to (re)connect. In fact, despite an apparent fragmentation, we have observed throughout 20219-2022 that the objective of the critical stance of Epistemologies of the South is what we might call the intertwining of histories and the concatenation of worlds, that is, of ecologies of knowledge. However, we have identified two weaknesses that we intend to overcome. On the one hand, and following the work of the Working Group, we intend for the Working Group on Social Movements to conduct research with (and not about) peoples and social movements, based on empirical cases. On the other hand, this debate requires rich, contextual translations. These intercultural and interpolitical translations are fundamental to generating solidarity-based knowledge born from struggles, rather than importing conceptual tools that do not necessarily do justice to the uniqueness of the multiple realities that make up the Global South.

The central objective of the Working Group for 2023–2025 is to develop a conception of the broader context to grasp the intellectual and political significance of the multiple contexts that characterize the Global South, which is epistemic rather than geographical. To understand the complexity of Eurocentric modernity, it is essential to understand the three main contemporary modes of domination (and their articulations): capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Luxemburg, 2003; Lenin, 1977; Mariátegui, 2009; Nkrumah, 1965; Harvey, 2003, 2005). These modes (and their interrelations) have taken different forms throughout the modern period, but they are intrinsically intertwined, as none of them can exist without the others (Santos, 2014). Both colonialism and patriarchy existed before capitalism, but they were reconfigured as they became integral parts of modern domination (Loomba 2002 and Meneses 2018). Since then, the three main modes of domination have operated in close articulation on a global scale. This articulation varies according to region and time period. One of the key characteristics of modern colonialism is the intimate relationship between capital and property. For example, land ownership constitutes a central part of foundational colonial narratives, underpinning and naturalizing possession and occupation. For Brenna Bhandar (2018: 3), “if land ownership was (and still is) the ultimate goal of colonial power, then property rights are the primary means of realizing this desire.” Another reason for this structural articulation lies in the fact that the free social labor underlying capitalist domination, based on the principle of formal equality of human beings, cannot stand as a pillar of modern social formations without the co-presence of highly devalued and unpaid social labor. These latter two forms of social labor are provided by ontologically degraded human beings, whether racialized or sexualized bodies. These bodies are the domain of colonialism and patriarchy. They are the realm of subhumanity, the zone of non-being, as Fanon (1952) designated them. Consequently, there is no capitalism without colonialism and patriarchy. For 2023-2025, the Working Group intends to focus its attention on contemporary forms of oppression, paying attention to the specificities of the contexts where and how these forms of oppression occur: racism, xenophobia, violence against women, slave labor, the internment and deportation of immigrants and refugees, land grabbing, the mass expulsion of peasant communities in the name of development and megaprojects and their impacts on the environmental crisis.

The strategy proposed by the Working Group gives significant weight to indeterminacy and movement, beyond contemporary capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel, 2007; Federici, 2018). But it also proposes that the Global South is, first and foremost, a relationship that is not only external and objective, but also internal and subjective (Glissant, 1997; Dussel, 2002; Santos, 2014), allowing for reflection on our shared future (Krenak, 2020). These assertions materialize through a tense and critical articulation of various academic disciplines within the Working Group: history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and others.

The Epistemologies of the South, a term coined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, aims to present and discuss knowledge produced in the Global South, providing a basis for reflection on social transformation in our times. In other words, through the study of the diverse possibilities revealed by the Epistemologies of the South, this Working Group's theoretical and methodological objective is to overcome the characteristic Eurocentric model of modern thought, namely, abyssal thinking.

Knowing from and with the Global South requires a distinct political, pedagogical, and epistemic orientation, a prerequisite for post-abyssal thinking. The Global South, the central theme of this course, seeks to recognize and validate the knowledge produced by the oppressed, by women and men who have suffered and continue to suffer injustice, oppression, domination, and exclusion caused by capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. Epistemologies of the South, as a metaphor for exclusion, silencing, and the destruction of peoples and knowledge systems, seek to give form to the knowledge and experiences of the Global South. The dialogue among all participants in this course aims to develop context-sensitive debates relevant to the intellectual traditions and theoretical, empirical, and cultural realities of the Global South. The common purpose of those participating in this course is to demarginalize the Global South in relation to "modern, Eurocentric" knowledge, to ensure that the so-called margins cease to have space, thus guaranteeing that the knowledge produced by the Global South is an integral part of a world with several centers of (re)production of knowledge.

The struggles for the recognition of other ontologies as a political affirmation attempt to expand a potentially decolonizing social imagination; an imaginary in which other realities—beyond Eurocentric narratives—are articulated in a tendentially horizontal way; where the recognition of other forms of life and existence are prerequisites for the continued (re)existence of actors and actors hitherto silenced and invisible. The task is to take this challenge seriously and (re)learn to think with the people of the world involved in struggles for a better life. The task is to learn (ethically, politically, and epistemologically) to affirm plural realities in the process of construction.

The pluralistic Global South, built upon these premises, embodies a diversity of histories and experiences of struggle that are important to understand and acknowledge in solidarity, as forms of affirming other ways of being and existing in the world. The various classes will explore the affinities, divergences, complementarities, and contradictions among different forms of knowledge, as a way to maximize solidarity and the effectiveness of struggles against oppression, which finds expression in the utopia of a post-abyssal world.

Focused on promoting South-South interdisciplinary dialogues, this project seeks to document and interpret resistance to colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy in our societies. Simultaneously, it aims to study the Global South in all its diversity—a South that metaphorically represents a vast field of economic, social, cultural, and political innovation of increasing diversity, in which dialogues between different forms of knowledge reflect the conditions of pluriversality.

Researchers, from diverse geopolitical and epistemic perspectives, explore the conditions for horizontal dialogue among different forms of knowledge, for ecologies of knowledge. These dialogues reflect the innovations taking place in countries and regions of the Global South. This demanding approach presupposes a willingness to recognize one another, intercultural understanding, political and ideological convergence, respect for identity, and a celebration of diversity, as conditions for a more democratic dialogue in the Global South.

Building knowledge from the Epistemologies of the South requires different working methodologies. Learning from the South itself, in its diversity, means going beyond conventional academic knowledge. Constructing dialogues between different forms of knowledge and struggles seeks to give visibility to the peoples and social groups whose practices are built upon that knowledge. Only in this way will it be possible to develop alternative narratives that challenge the impossibility of considering difference (sexual, ethnic, racial, class, caste, religious, etc.) in conjunction with equality, the intimate connection between the local and the global, and the projects of other economies and other political societies.

Mapping, presenting and discussing a variety of work methodologies anchored in the body of knowledge developed from the perspectives of the Epistemologies of the South, privileging the ecology of knowledge and the possibilities of intercultural translation between knowledge born in struggles, become central aspects of our GT.