Moderator: Lior Zisman Zalis (CES)

About

It is true that since Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx (1993), social sciences have been increasingly concerned with the figure of spectres and ghosts. Such has been the attention that some literature has come to call this field “hauntology”, in its Anglophone version, or “spectrology” in Lusophone contexts. Whether used as a metaphorical resource, or referring to non-human political, social and historical subjects, entities that we may generically identify here as spectres or visages have heuristically multiplied the socio-political and temporal dynamics in the most varied fields of cultural and social studies. Especially in the field of literature, but not exclusively, the phenomenological arc of these figures and beings has disturbed certain rationalisms intrinsic to the foundations of social theories. On the other hand, the disturbance in the foundations accompanies the building of others, since “taking seriously” the spectral presence has allowed the dynamization of new potencies of the role of memory, the transmission of the past and the construction of futures. It is not accidental, therefore, that memory studies, with its wide disciplinary range, have increasingly incorporated the figure of these entities as a cognitive cipher of the analytical possibilities of the dialogue between the inhabitants of multiple times. Nor is it accidental that, in anthropology and sociology, the varied spectres, entities and divinities have guided to new onto-epistemic horizons and the visibility of pluriontological communities.

However, in what has been called the “spectral turn” in the social sciences we see, as in many of these concentrated plateaus of theory, a predominance of analyses that start from certain cartographies in which English-language vocabularies and concepts predominate. One of the consequences of the political economy of knowledge dynamized by certain languages is, among others, the invisibilization of certain contexts that could contribute to the construction of this field. Identifying and filling this gap would not only allow an oxygenation, but also the expansion of the figure of the spectres as socio-cultural and historical-political subjects.
In order to pave the way for a debate that brings spectral contexts from the Global South, a debate in Portuguese, we also seek to dynamize our own vocabularies, concepts that guide plots and incarnations singular to these experiences. Based on the research of Inês Nascimento Rodrigues on the context of São Tomé and Príncipe, and Gabriela Lages Gonçalves, based on ethnographic research developed in São Luís, Maranhão (BR), we will analyse recent concerns in the field of social sciences that seek to decentralise the human from analytical perspectives, finding other existential refluxes that emerge when we see beyond the neurosis of anthropocentrism. Questioning the ontology of these intangible beings, their manifestations, contributions to the construction and reconstruction of the past, present and future, as well as their active role as political subjects develops a field of its own that deserves greater attention in the humanities. 
 

Bio notes

Inês Nascimento Rodrigues is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra in the research line "Europe and the Global South: heritages and dialogues". She is part of the coordination team of the Trauma Observatory at CES. Between 2020 and 2022, she co-coordinated the research group NHUMEP - Humanities, Migrations and Peace Studies. Presently, she develops her investigation within "CROME - Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence: The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times", coordinated by Miguel Cardina and funded by the European Research Council. She holds a PhD in Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship from CES/FEUC, in which she produced a study of the «Batepá Massacre» in São Tomé and Príncipe, winner of the 11th edition of the CES Award for Young Portuguese-speaking Social Scientists. Her current research interests include memory and cultural studies, postcolonial theories and the debates about the representation and commemoration of the Colonial-Liberation wars. She is book review editor and member of the editorial board of Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past and is part of the editorial board of e-cadernos CES.

Gabriela Lages Gonçalves  is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the Postgraduate Programme in Social Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP). She holds a Master's degree and a degree in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA). She is currently a collaborator of LEAP - Laboratory for the Study of Anthropology of Politics (UFMA) and of ASA - Arts, Knowledges and Anthropology (USP). She has been dedicated to the analysis of narratives, artistic manifestations and expressive forms, heritages, (i)materialities, human and non-human agencies

Lior Zisman Zalis is a PhD candidate in Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship at the Center for Social Studies, the University of Coimbra with the project "Insurgent Spiritualities and Enchanted Politics", funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). He holds an MA in Comparative Studies of Literature, Art and Thought from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra (2019), a degree in Critical Theory and Museum Studies from the Independent Studies Program (PEI) of the Museu de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona, and a degree in Law with a speciality in "State and Society" from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He is also a collaborating researcher of the POLICREDOS Working Group and of the Laboratory for the Study of Anthropology of Politics (UFMA). He has worked as a researcher at the Center for Human Rights at PUC-Rio (NDH) in projects in the field of memory studies and monitoring of human rights violations and has collaborated with spaces such as MACBA, Hangar, La Escocesa, among others. He moves in the interdisciplinary field between Cultural Studies, Anthropology, History, and Sociology namely in its articulations with conceptions of religion, politics, post-colonialism and materiality.

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