Overview

Modern Academia has historically been built as a privileged space for the production of knowledge, that is, space that holds the power to certify and evaluate knowledges that each subject possesses and that defines their place within society.

As several authors have emphasized, the development process of the Eurocentric-inspired academic culture, which has sought its globalisation, was one of the partners of colonisation and of the establishment of Eurocentric reason as benchmark for distinguishing between knowledges considered valid and knowledges not recognised as such; in this context, modern knowledge has become an instrument to promote the domination of some segments of society over others.

The Epistemologies of the South, a radical proposal of tendentially horizontal dialogues between knowledges, was established by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. As a theoretical and methodological proposal, the Epistemologies of the South propose to reverse these dynamics, broadening absent knowledges and simultaneously supporting emerging knowledges. In essence, Epistemologies of the South, through ecology of knowledges, promote cross-cultural dialogues (including scientific knowledges and other knowledges not recognised by Eurocentric reason and therefore undervalued and wasted). From these dialogues, they seek to strengthen knowledges born and validated in struggle, deepening resistances and proposing strategies for reinventing social emancipation.

The Universidade das Quebradas, a UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) outreach project coordinated by Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda, is grounded on similar assumptions, and proposes to bring together academic knowledges and knowledges produced by the peripheries and favelas, mainly from Rio de Janeiro. Its goals are twofold: to support communities that are producing culture but do not have access to the intellectual production of the University and to the academic community, which endure a similar lack of access to other knowledges and cultural trainings outside the University. In this sense, it intends to establish itself as a space for interaction between the various knowledges that make up the texture of contemporary Brazilian culture, stimulating production of knowledge and artistic creation in the city and promoting policies of access and representation.

This event is thought as an encounter between several concrete realities that the Epistemologies of the South have delivered, and the Universidade das Quebradas a dialogue on the challenges of the occupation of the Eurocentric academic space by other knowledge production dynamics to think together the instigation of processes of political imagination.

 

Bio notes
Marcos Cesar Fernandes Barros Junior (Marcos Aganju) is a musician and educator. Graduated in Pedagogy by UERJ in 2014, he joined the University of Quebradas in 2017. He has been researching sonorities and electronic musical devices since 2005. He has been an activist for the rights of blacks in Brazil since 2001. He participated in the Programme for Creative Processes in Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Culture of Afrotranscendence in Brazil at Red Bull Station (SP). His current work is the Amalá Duo with Emerson Costa. He has produced soundtracks for theatre, dance and cinema since 2001. He collaborates with bands, artists and cultural projects on the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo axis.

Dea Merlini is a PhD student in the Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship program at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. The title of her thesis project, supervised by Catarina Martins, is Não identidades que definem: para uma leitura da antropofagia a partir da literatura afro-brasileira. She graduated in comparative literature at the Università degli Studi di Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore. She actively participates in the post-doctoral PACC (Advanced Culture of Contemporary Culture) activities, under supervision of Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda and its outreach programme, Universidade das Quebradas.

Activity within the Doctoral Programme «Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship»