Decoloniality and film Aitana

Session 2 (jan.23)

Indigenizing the Anthropocene by Zoe Todd

Concepts

Indigenization

- aboriginal, originally from, native

- here is used as a synonym for decolonisation.

- decolonisation revolves around the unmaking of the perception and thinking structures imposed under the violence of colonization

- Concern that it is a form of reverse assimilation or colonization (University of Saskatchewan, CA)

- Indigenization is the act of making something more native; transformation of some service, idea, etc. to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more indigenous people in public administration, employment and other fields. (Wikipedia)

- (Spanish translation) Acquiring a mestizo or ladino the customs and ways of life of an indigenous group. cult (ASALE; Span, Equatorial Guinea, Colombia, Philippines)

Metis people

- Independent ethnic group in Canada primary formed by descendants of people born by First Nation Women and European Men (freeman) who later began to identify as a separate group around the region of the Great Lakes (present Ontario, around 1700)

1993 - The Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) is established as a Métis-specific governance structure.

Michif language

Anthropocene

- popularised by Paul Crutzen in 2002, the Anthropocene references an epoch in which humans are the dominant drivers of geologic change on the globe today. Here is used as a gentrified term (-> tornado). Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg highlight the manner in which Anthropocene erases the distinctions between the nations and people who drive the fossil-fuel economy and those who don't.

- (Spanish translation) Said of an epoch: That is the most recent of the Quaternary period, spanning from the mid-20th century to the present day and characterised by the global and synchronous modification of natural systems by human action. (RAE, ES)

- The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. (Wikipedia, EN)

Postmodernism

- Postmodernism is a mode of discourse that is characterized by philosophical skepticism toward the grand narratives offered by modernism; that rejects epistemological certainty and the stability of meaning; and rejects the emphasis on ideology as the means of maintaining political power. (Wikipedia, EN)

- (Spanish translation) Postmodern philosophy or postmodernism is a philosophical current that assumes that the ideas that characterised modernity and the Enlightenment have been surpassed. Postmodern philosophy emerged mainly in the 1960s, especially in France. This name groups together thoughts that develop a strong critique of the tradition and rationality of Western Modernity.(Wikipedia, ES)

- Reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, associated with scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality. (Tate Galrrey, UK)

Ethnocentrism

- (Spanish translation) Ethnocentrism is an ideological estimation through which individuals analyse the world according to the parameters of their own reality. It is a concept developed by anthropology to refer to the tendency of a person or social group to interpret reality on the basis of their own cultural parameters. Ethnocentrism often involves the belief that one's own ethnic group is the most important. (Wikipedia, ES)

Gentrification

- (Spanish translation) Renovation of an urban area, usually popular or run-down, through a process that involves the displacement of its original population by a more affluent one. (RAE, ES)

- is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses (EN, Wikipedia)

- as a new expression of colonialism

Decolonization

- in the text it is used as a synonym for indigenization.

White supremacy

beliefs and ideas purporting natural superiority of the lighter-skinned, or “white,” human races over other racial groups

Heteropatriarchy

system of political and social organisation based in the supremacy of men over other genders and sexualities

Eurocentrism

thinks and vision centred in western European cultures and visions, western-eurocentric world, mainly based on the knowledge of the base

Agency

the ability to take action or to choose what action to take

locus

the place where something happens or the central area of interest in something being discussed

Ontology

- in metaphysics concerns the nature of being

- Ontological turn: The ontological turn is an increased interest in ontology within a number of philosophical and academic disciplines during the early 2000s. It generates interest in being in the world and accepts that different world views are not simply different representations of the same world.

World as, well as worldviews may vary

(related to) Juanita Sundberg - human geographer

• Posthumanism

- Broadly speaking, posthumanism is a philosophical framework that questions the primacy of the human and the necessity of the human as a category. While humanism appeals to our shared humanity as a basis for creating community, posthumanism criticizes this way of thinking as being limited and full of implicit biases.

- here Sandberg says that this term erases other cultures ontologies and epistemologies

• Pluriverse

- synonym of multiverse

- the world as conceived according to a theory of Pluralism

- the philosophy that stands that there is no one order of things but several, seen diversity and difference as a strenght

• Pluriverse by Sandberg

- as a decolonial tool

• Zapatista movement

militar Mexican movement from 1994-2006, later a political movement inspired in liberty socialism, marxism and mainly in Zapatista principles. Zapatista principles refers to the revolution of Emilio Zapata in Mexico in 1911 based on the principle "the land is for those who work it".

• "Walking the world into being"

(related to) Sara Hunt - geographer (kwakwaka'wakw, Kwagiulth)

• "Ontology of dwelling" by Tim Ingold
• Ontology/ontological/indigenous ontologies
• Potlatch

A potlatch is a highly complex event where people gather in order to commemorate a specific event

(related to) Zakiyyah Jackson

argues as well that western eurocentrism concepts as post humanism sidestepped other concepts like race, colonialism and slavery and continues with the "order of rationality" that shapes Euro-western institutions

(related to) Vanessa Watts - Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe scholar

* "Indigenous place thought"

land is alive and thinking

can stand in place of or alongside:

* "Ontology of dwelling" by Tim Ingold - British anthropologist

both as Place-Thought

* "Hierarchies of agency"

* Actor Network Theory

Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships.

(related to) Sara Ahmed

• "citational relational"
• "buildings" or "white men as buildings"

(related to) Karen Brodking, Sandra Morgen and Janis Hutchinson - anthropologists

• "white public space" term 1994 article by Page and Thomas
• "white men" as an institution and a place of conduct

(related to) Rebecca Belmore and Jolene Rickard

• Material-as-bridge
• Non-human agents

(related to) Dwayne Donald - Papaschase Cree scholar

• "ethical relationality"
• "ecological imagination"
• "ecology"
• "Indigenous Métissage"
• "Ethic of historical consciousness"