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Latex:Critical Inflections on (Neo)Extractivism in Latin America
Get PDF‘The things that white people work so hard to extract from the depths of the earth, minerals and oil, are not foods’, as shaman and Yanomami spokesperson Davi Kopenawa pointedly observes in The Falling Sky. Extraction has been historically associated with the removal of underground materials, whereas extractivism is a broader notion connoting a primarily white, colonial mode of accumulation of the West. For most Latin American countries, their natural wealth became their curse, permeating both the material and the symbolic realms. The extractive regime binds the environment and rules the lives of those subjugated to it by transforming them into mere commodities.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rubber exemplified particularly well the devastating consequences of extractivism. Latex fulfilled the industrial dream of an ‘extraordinary substance’, the first material whose plasticity made it suitable to become everything else: waterproof garments, automobiles, communication infrastructure, mechanized warfare. Throughout its extraction boom, the Amazon Rainforest supplied around 60% of the world’s rubber demand. This hunger for rubber reflected the expanding omnipotence of global capitalism with ruinous consequences for the environment as well as for the local populations. During the overlooked genocide along the Putomayo River, according to John Tully, for every ton of rubber extracted and dispatched to the Global North, seven indigenous lives were lost.
The removal of large quantities of natural resources from the Global South has been foundational for meeting the increasing demand for goods of the centers of nascent capitalism. This logic never ceased and what one calls today neo-extractivism reproduces the colonial and subordinated condition of the so-called peripheral countries. Yet, this extractive rationality does not only secure the production of goods but extends itself to the production of knowledge and to the import of epistemic frameworks that explain local realities. Cognitive extractivism, claims Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, privileges the ‘center’ as the producer of theoretical and interpretative models whereas the ‘periphery’ remains relegated to the status of the illustrative case. Exported raw material are subsequently converted into concepts and shipped back to their places of provenance with added value.
The symposium seeks to examine and question the different modes of extractivism that have marred and marked the histories of Latin America and the Caribbean. The distinctive qualities of rubber (plasticity, isolation, expansivity, erasure) are the starting point for a contemporary inquiry of (neo)extractivism. Its political, environmental, cultural and social facets are to be analyzed, in particular as they are critically undertaken by literature and the visual arts. Artists and scholars will explore this mode of accumulation in its intimate relationship to the production and circulation of theory and cultural capital; to epistemicide and necropolitics; and to a restrictive worldview of ‘nature’ as an inert reservoir for economic exploitation.
Graciela Goldchluk: Writers’ Archives in Latin America (Pdf in English)
The symposium includes the sound installation Radio Amoa hi by úuu collective (Lucas Maia, Victor Negri, Luiza Novaes, Lea Taragona)
‘Las cosas que los blancos extraen de las profundidades de la tierra con tanta avidez, los minerales y el petróleo, no son alimentos’, denuncia el chamán y portavoz yanomami Davi Kopenawa en A queda do céu, palavras de um xamã yanomami. Mientras que la extracción se asocia por lo general a las actividades que remueven recursos naturales del suelo, el extractivismo hace referencia a un modo de acumulación colonial primordialmente blanco y occidental. Para la mayoría de los países latinoamericanos, la abundancia de riquezas naturales se convirtió en una de sus peores maldiciones, tanto en términos materiales como simbólicos. El régimen extractivista despoja al medio ambiente y transforma en mercancía a las vidas que gobierna. A finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, el caucho fue el caso paradigmático que mostró las consecuencias devastadoras del extractivismo. Con el látex se creyó alcanzar el sueño industrial de obtener una ‘sustancia extraordinaria’, el primer material cuya plasticidad lo hacía apto para convertirse en casi todo: prendas impermeables, automóviles, infraestructuras de comunicación, armamento de guerra. En el auge de la extracción del caucho, la selva amazónica abasteció alrededor del 60% de la demanda mundial. Esta fiebre extractivista reflejó la omnipotencia voraz del capitalismo global, así como sus efectos arrolladores para el medio ambiente y las poblaciones locales. Según John Tully, durante el genocidio del Putumayo, por cada tonelada de caucho extraída y enviada al Norte Global, se perdieron siete vidas indígenas. La extracción en masa de recursos naturales del Sur Global fue fundamental para satisfacer la creciente demanda de bienes de los centros del capitalismo naciente. Esta lógica nunca cesó y lo que hoy se llama neoextractivismo reproduce la condición colonial y subordinada de los llamados países periféricos. Sin embargo, esta racionalidad extractiva no sólo se vincula a la producción de bienes sino que se extiende a la producción de conocimiento y a la importación de marcos epistémicos para analizar las realidades locales. El extractivismo cognitivo, afirma Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, privilegia al ‘centro’ como productor de modelos teóricos e interpretativos mientras que la ‘periferia’ queda relegada al estatus de ejemplo ilustrativo. La materia prima exportada se convierte luego en conceptos y se envía de vuelta a sus lugares de procedencia con un valor agregado. Este simposio busca examinar y poner en cuestión los diferentes modos de extractivismo que han marcado las historias de América Latina y el Caribe. Las cualidades distintivas del caucho (plasticidad, aislamiento, expansividad, borrado) serán el punto de partida para un diálogo colectivo sobre el (neo)extractivismo. Se analizarán sus facetas políticas, medioambientales, culturales y sociales, en particular a partir de las formas en que son abordadas por la literatura y las artes visuales. Artistas y académicxs explorarán este modo de acumulación y sus entramados con la producción y circulación de teoría y capital cultural; el epistemicidio y la necropolítica; así como con el paradigma preponderante que considera a la ‘naturaleza’ un depósito inerte destinado a la explotación económica
The Spectacle of Dysmorphia:in Moara Passoni’s film Ecstasy
No full textCinematic narratives of eating disorders run the risk of presenting their characters as largely passive — a risk compounded by the fear of ‘contagion’ that haunt the images of bodies affected by these disorders. Paradigmatic examples are not only the images produced by the fashion industry but also the controversial photos posted online by ‘pro-ana’ communities (often presenting anorexia as a lifestyle). The mimetic aspect indeed plays an ambiguous role in drawing the contours of both the definition and the proliferation of eating disorders. For instance, after having diagnosed ‘bulimia nervosa’ in 1979, the psychiatrist Gerald Russell worried that his description of the symptoms had contributed to the dramatic spread of the pathology itself. This is a question for all newly introduced medical categories: do the symptoms proliferate or the diagnosis? But what is, in this respect, the role of cinema in recirculating both highly visible and hidden aspects of eating disorders forming such a prominent part of today’s visual culture? Moara Passoni’s Ecstasy (2020, 80 min) tells the story of the development of the film’s protagonist Clara’s anorexia, from her childhood to her late teenage years, against the background of the political changes of 1990s Brazil. In order to find a language that speaks against visual stereotypes of eating disorders and their spectacularization, Moara shows the way Clara perceives and tries to control reality through her relationship with food. Instead of overexposing the anorectic body, or protecting it by leaving its frailty outside the frame, the Brazilian filmmaker puts the audience in front of the ecstatic spectacle Clara witnesses: her phantasies and desires, her idiosyncrasies and her fears. Thus, in Ecstasy, the overused and often obscure word ‘dysmorphia’ takes multiple forms. It does not only correspond to the discrepancy between the way one looks and the way one perceives oneself. Body dysmorphia here also takes the shape of two imaginary friends/enemies of Clara, a blue dot and an egg, revealing how magical thinking is part of eating disorders. And visually most poignant is Moara’s use of both close-ups and extreme close-ups that mirrors Clara’s morbid need to re-redit reality by cutting it into little pieces according to what she calls ‘the geometry of hunger’. Moara Passoni is a writer-director from Brazil. She graduated from the University of São Paulo in sociology, anthropology, and political sciences, studied dance and performance at Universidade de São Paulo (USP-SP), and philosophy & aesthetics at Université de Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. After finishing a master’s in film and documentary at, she earned an MFA in screenwriting and directing from Columbia University. Êxtase (2020) is her first non-fiction film and premiered in the CPH:DOX main competition. The film was screened, among others, at MoMA ‘DocFortnight’ and at Visions du Réel in Nyon and was awarded several prizes, including the Prix D’Innovation Daniel Langlois at the Festival du Cinema Nouveau and the Jury Award for best newcomers at the São Paulo International Film Festival. Passoni co-wrote and associate produced The Edge of Democracy (2019) by Petra Costa. In addition to the Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, the film was nominated for best narration/writing by The Critics’ Choice Awards and the International Documentary Association
Language Follows Labour:Nikolai Marr’s Materialist Palaeontology of Speech
Get PDFThis chapter invites the reader to rediscover Nikolai Marr’s scientific work, which is situated at the intersection of archaeology, linguistics, and anthropological language theory. Marr’s linguistic models, which Sergei Eisenstein compared to a reading of Joyce’s Ulysses, underwent however multiple waves of critique. His heterodox materialism, originating in an archaeological vision of history and leading to a speculative ‘palaeontology of speech’, reveals a complex vision of time, one traversed by ‘survivals’ and anachronisms
A Modern History of Caste
No full textThe theory of caste and the antecedent hierarchical system has received growing interest in the past two centuries. In contemporary times, there has been a surge among researchers and scholars to locate the category of caste. Various theories have tried to base the ‘origins’ of caste in religion, society, or Indian culture since the arrival of Aryans in the Indian subcontinent (2000 BCE). This talk will look at the episodes of making caste a category of modern interest during colonial times. By centring attention on the experiences of Dalits and untouchability it reframes the approach and examines the development of anti-caste body-politics through the rise of popular Dalit social and political movements. This version of caste history departs from the reliance on the orientalist and occidental interpretations of Indian society, and inserts new theories of caste politics. Suraj Yengde’s recent appointment was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School He is currently a research associate at the department of African and African American Studies, and a non-resident fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and as well part of the founding team of the Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability (IARA) at Harvard University. He has studied on four continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, North America), and is India’s first Dalit PhD holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). Suraj Yengde is an International Human Rights attorney by qualification from India and the UK, and has published over 100 essays, articles, and book reviews in multiple languages in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies, and labour migration in the global south. Named one of the ‘25 Most Influential Young Indians‘ by GQ magazine and the ‘Most influential Young Dalit’ by Zee, Suraj is the author of Caste Matters (2019) and co-editor (with Anand Teltumbde) of the award winning anthology The Radical in Ambedkar (2018). His forthcoming books are Caste: A New History of the World (2022), and a biography of B. R. Ambedkar (2022)
Theory’s Method?:Ethnography and Critical Theory
Get PDFThis chapter addresses the use of ethnographic methods in critical social theory, and the assumption that such methods prove to be useful because they allow the researcher to be closer to ‘matter itself’. Instead, I argue for ethnography from within a framework of historical materialism and social critique, marking the difference between such ‘materialism without matter’, based on Marx’s ‘fetishism of the commodity’, and some strategies of New Materialism. My goal is to situate the uses of ethnography for a transformed consideration of the relation between theory and practice
Transcontextual Gestures:A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature
Get PDFWhat if one thinks not in terms of shared meanings or contents, but rather in terms of iterable gestures available for re-enactment in different times and places in order to conceive of a cross-cultural world of literature? This essay sets out to explore, within the discursive mode of the lyric, whether the notion of gesture could be more helpful than meaning-based translation to account for the transferability of literary texts and for envisioning a form of community based on the shareability of certain gestures. To do so, it will look at how the act-event of reading described by Derek Attridge is processed in two cases in which poems are transferred from an earlier authoritative tradition into a new one