Race/Blackness and Humanity: Intercultural Translations between Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa

Seminar 1905

Chair: CLACSO
Coordination: José Gandarilla and María Haydeé García Bravo (UNAM, Mexico)
Home:02 / 05 / 2019 | Registration: 04/02/2019 al 22/04/2019

Workload: 12 weeks – 90 hours.

Payment methods
If you have a link with a CLACSO Associated Center:

Paying in one payment: USD 95 (includes issuance and shipping costs of the digital certificate).

If you do NOT have a link with a CLACSO Associated Center:

Paying in one payment BEFORE 16/02/2020: USD 150 (includes issuance and shipping costs of the digital certificate).
Paying in one payment: USD 190 (includes issuance and shipping costs of the digital certificate).

Course presentation:
The question of the “Black man,” of his “Blackness” and humanity, lies at the heart of contemporary debates on racism and colonial and (post)colonial violence. In discussions of the “Negritude” movement led by Aimé Césaire, there is undeniably a “mythical” dimension to the imaginary of the return to Africa, which would later be challenged by Afro-Caribbean authors—Creole writers—such as Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, among others. For Glissant, the only possible extension of this concept was the act by which it is transcended and “self-possession” begins. In the 1950s, Frantz Fanon problematized the racial character of Eurocentric epistemology, which constructs and situates the Black person (and their lived experience) in the “zone of non-being.” Across the Atlantic, in Africa, the colonial question has also been framed as a critique of Eurocentrism and the centrality of African/Black people in world history. Debates on African philosophy, among other things, are either unknown in Latin America and the Caribbean, have only recently been incorporated, or are trapped by Eurocentric representations. A conversation among intellectuals who challenge the hierarchical and unequal North-South relations, based on a monocultural capitalist logic, invites us to consider the historicity of these dialogues, which are shaped by intercultural translation practices that confront and subvert the colonial projects that materialized in what Valentin Mudimbe defines as the “colonial library.” Such practices announce the difficulties but also the possibilities of embarking on the “beyond” modernity, one of whose dimensions could consist of the mutual understanding that we must enter a new age of the world, transmodernity, and it must demand a certain ethics and a discourse of inter-philosophical dialogue.

Contents:

Questioning North Atlantic Universals: Towards a New World History from the Perspective of Atlantic Triangulation (Modernity, Capitalism, Slavery, Racialization)
Towards a phenomenology of the colonial in Frantz Fanon.
Modernity, race, and Caribbean discourse
How can we, from the Global South, recognize the multiple roots of colonialism, whose legacy we still feel?
Race, bodies and coloniality
Ubuntu, Creole Ubuntu and the Tojolabal Mayan worldview

General Bibliography of the Seminar

Grüner, Eduardo, The Darkness and the Lights. Capitalism, Culture and Revolution, Buenos Aires: Edhas, 2012, pp. 147-214.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event” in Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, pp. 70-107. (There is a Spanish edition, translated from the original English by Manuel Talens).
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, “North Atlantic Universals: Analytical Fictions, 1492-1945” in Dube, Saurabh. The Enchantment of Disenchantment: Histories of Modernity, Mexico: El Colegio de México, Center for Asian and African Studies, 2011, pp. 49-72.
Fanon, Frantz, “The lived experience of the Negro” in Black Skin, White Masks, Madrid: Akal, 2009, pp. 111-132.
Gandarilla Salgado, José Guadalupe and Jaime Ortega Reyna, “All the Scars: Towards a Phenomenology of the Colonial in Frantz Fanon”. Mimeo. Forthcoming (30 pp.).
León Pesántez, Catalina, “Frantz Fanon and the ontology of 'non-being', in The color of reason. Critical thought in the Americas, Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2013, pp. 131-166.
Césaire, Aimé, Discourse on Colonialism, Madrid: Akal Editions, 2006, (221 pages).
Mezilas, Glodel, The colonial trauma between memory and discourse. Thinking (from) the Caribbean, Florida: Educavision, 2015, (305 pages).
Mbembe, Achille, Chapter 1. “The subject of race” and Chapter 3. “Difference and self-determination”, in Critique of Black Reason, Buenos Aires: Futuro Anterior Ediciones, 2016, pp. 39-82 and 137-171.
Meneses, Maria Paula, “A black quest between continents: possibilities of intercultural translation from das práticas de luta?”, Sociologias [online], vol.18, n.43, pp.176-206, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/15174522-018004307
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, “Intercultural translation”, in Justice between knowledges: epistemologies of the South against epistemicide. Madrid: Morata, 2017, pp. 263-287.
Bidaseca, Karina, “Where is Ana Mendieta? Afro-decolonial feminist aesthetics and Caribbean and Antillean erotic politics”, in Campoalegre Septien, Rosa and Karina Bidaseca (editors), Beyond the Decade of Peoples of African Descent, Anthologies of Latin American and Caribbean Social Thought Collection. Silenced Thoughts Series, Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2017, pp. 117-134.
Glissant, Édouard, Treatise on the Whole World, Barcelona: El Cobre, 2006.
Lorde, Audre, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, in Campoalegre Septien, Rosa and Karina Bidaseca (editors), Beyond the Decade of Peoples of African Descent, Anthologies of Latin American and Caribbean Social Thought Collection. Silenced Thoughts Series, Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2017, pp. 103-107.
Mama, Amina, “Historical sources tell us that even white women have always looked to Africa to find alternatives to their subordination”, in Africana. Contributions to the decolonization of feminism, Pescando husmeos Collection nº 10 Barcelona: oozebap, 2013, pp. 7-21.
Lao-Montes, Agustin, “Empowerment, decolonization and substantive democracy. Refining ethical-political principles for Afro-American diasporas” Retrieved from: http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/recs/n12/n12a03.pdf (31/07/2016)
Lenkersdorf, Carlos, Philosophizing in Tojolabal Key, Mexico: Porrúa, 2002 (Chapters 7-8, pp. 111-149).
Ramose, Mogobe B., “A ética do ubuntu”, in Coetzee, Peter H.; Roux, Abraham PJ (eds). The African Philosophy Reader, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 324-330.
Ramose, Mogobe B., “A Filosofia do Ubuntu e Ubuntu como uma Filosofia”, in African Philosophy through Ubuntu, Harare: Mond Books, 1999, p. 49-66.

FAQ

What do I need to take a CLACSO virtual seminar?

The basic requirements for taking a seminar are:

Availability of at least 4 hours per week to dedicate to the seminar course.
Internet access.
Reasonable handling of communication and computer tools.
Language proficiency in the language in which the course will be taught. The official languages are Spanish and Portuguese.

What is the length of a CLACSO virtual seminar? What is the total number of hours?

The seminars last 12 weeks, plus the completion of a final project. A total of 90 hours of dedication will be credited.

What is the work modality and dynamics?

A course consists of twelve classes, each accompanied by required readings, supplementary readings, discussion forums, and learning activities proposed by the teaching team, as well as partial submissions and a final project. The course is delivered online and asynchronously. Some instructors may propose synchronous activities. In these cases, the time and date will be agreed upon in advance between the teaching team and the students to ensure everyone's participation. To pass the seminar, students must participate in at least 80% of the discussion forums and activities proposed by the instructors, complete all scheduled partial submissions, and pass the final project.