Overview

According to the proposal developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the “Epistemologies of the South” are a set of procedures that seek to recognise and validate the knowledge produced by those who have suffered the injustices, oppression and domination caused by colonialism, capitalism and by hetero-patriarchy.

Underlying the proposal of Epistemologies of the South, is the idea that in the global North there is a feeling of intellectual and political exhaustion that translates as an inability to face, in an innovative way, the various challenges confronting the world in the first decades of the 21st century: social, environmental and inter-generational, cultural, historical cognitive justice.

Epistemologies of the South put into question, on the one hand, the epistemological interventions that have generated the suppression of knowledges over the past centuries, as a result of the imposition of the dominant epistemological norm; on the other hand, they value the knowledges that successfully resisted and the reflections that these have produced and research the conditions of a horizontal dialogue between knowledges.

In this sense, summoning various themes, research and struggles, the seminar series “Consolidating the Epistemologies of the South” aims to promote a space for the exchange of knowledges and mutual learnings. The intention is twofold, on the one hand, aiming towards a  dialogue capable of problematizing silences, absences and incommunicabilities, and on the other, aiming towards a space capable of creating acknowledgements, translations for the sake of an alternative thinking of alternatives.

This initiative is organised under the “Epistemologies of the South Research Programme” which stems from the project ALICE – Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons: Leading Europe to a new way of sharing the world experiences.

The seminars will consist of a dialogue between one of the members of the "Epistemologies of the South" Research Programme” and a guest, followed by a Q&A. 

Organisers: Bruno Sena Martins and Cristiano Gianolla