Inverting Colonial Worlds… description, details and reading list!

Written By Danae Kontou

Inverting Colonial Worlds 

Conference and creative methods workshop 

Durham University  

February 24th, 2023

This is an open call for a one-day symposium “Inverting Colonial Worlds” part of Durham University, Human Geography Politics-State-Space Cluster program for the 2022-2023 academic year. The purpose of the event is to critically engage with the way that knowledges are situated by colonial representation and how can critical cartography help us as academics/activists to consciously move away from unitary models of citizenship, civilization, and development helping our research praxis in an active role of decolonization  (Rodriguez, 2020; Kontou, 2022) reflecting different local economies, politics and cultures, epistemologies and forms of knowledge, being and becoming that can lead to emancipation.  

The symposium will be focusing on the (de)coloniality of knowledge for and from the Americas. Indigenous scholars in the geographical North have highlighted the way that liberal frameworks of justice can become problematic in their settings. Their work is in close dialogue with the decolonial turn in Latin America, which has not only expanded on this problematic view, but has also linked the emergence of modernity with capitalism and how this has been globally instituted through what Anibal Quijano called the Coloniality of Power. Drawing these ecologies and knowledge together has led to a fruitful dialogue in the Global South as to how, following Álvares and Coolseat (2020) to effectively contest the ‘coloniality of justice’, embedded into the coloniality of knowledge, power, and being. 

This focus on decolonization marks an important divergence in the persistent form of coloniality of justice and its interaction with the epistemology of development (Santos, 2014; Escobar, 2016). From a Latin American decolonial perspective, thinking about environmental, social, energy or climate justice entails developing a politics of difference that is not based on the search for recognition or inclusion into dominant structures, such as the liberal nation-state or global economic systems, but on different relationships to land, landscape and territory (for a critique see, Tornel, 2022).

This one-day symposium will seek to question where and how decolonial research/praxis begins? How can we, as academics in Northern institutions, contribute to the active task of decolonization? and how do matters of representation, knowledge and extraction operate through the coloniality of power, being and knowledge, and ultimately how does this inform our understanding and dealings with the coloniality of justice?

The full-day symposium will consist of the keynote discussion, which will feature 4 invited discussants, followed by a space for questions and answers with the audience (which will be physically present and online). Afterward, participants will continue to a workshop using creative methods and critical cartography in dialogue, decolonial methods and issues of representation, extraction, and knowledge.  

We are calling for contributions open to early career scholars working on issues over decoloniality including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Decolonizing justice research (such as environmental, climate, or energy).

  • Engaging with issues over representation, extraction, and knowledges in your research.

  • Dealing with creative, alternative and/or imaginative methods to map and/or represent (de)coloniality.

  • Represent other forms of being, doing, and knowing with (non) traditional cartographic tools. 

  • Contribute to decolonial thought and praxis by doing research.

If you would like to take part in the workshop, please send a contribution of an abstract of no more than 300 words to inverting.worlds@gmail.com, or fill out the form below, by February the 10th, 2023.
Workshop applications are for in-person participation only (the keynote discussion will be open to the public and broadcast online).
We also encourage visual/audio and other ‘creative’ methods as abstracts.
In the abstract, please try to describe how your work would benefit from thinking about alternative methods and how this can contribute to your own work doing decolonial scholarship 

Danai Kontou and Carlos Tornel <- Organizers.

https://twitter.com/InvertingWorlds 

References

Proposed reading:

Latin American Studies:

Danae Kontou
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