LAST POST Goodbye Tarragona… or better saying: Adéu Tarragona

Friday was my last day in Tarragona before starting my long trip back to Brazil. I spent a little bit more than 2 weeks talking about Decolonial Knowledge. The name is impressive, but it can be summarized to an attempt to change our parameters of what is fair, honest and wise to think and do. This think and do is not only, but also related to what and how we teach in the classroom. For me, this was one of the most important aspects learned/shared here. But there are more.

I was lucky for being placed in an apartment with extraordinary people. All my roommates (Mark, Robert, Pablo, Juan Jose, Atman, Francisco and Adrian) helped me in a way or another. They have wonderful stories and great intelligence, which they’ve shared without asking anything in exchange.

Adding to them, I must confess that the women present in this summer school were amazing. I’m not referring to their beauty, but to their character, their ability to learn through moments of pain and anger and transform it into something beautiful, something inspiring to us, men, that eager to have women by our side, not behind us. Thank you Rosalee, Citlali, Sandrine, Cynthia, Ana Lúcia, Allison, Francesca, Marlou, … They were so many (from the 50 participants, I think 40 were women). I’d have to name them all to be fair with all of them, but I lack time (flight is about to depart). But I cannot forget to mention that, yes, they were also very good-looking, which made the discussions pleasant to the mind and to the eye.

Also I can’t forget the excellent lectures we had, that in a way or another made me think more about the world we live in: Prof. Grosfoguel, Prof. Patterson, Prof. Sandoval, Prof. Sayyid and Prof. Nimako. To all of you, to the extra lecturers and to Roberto (who worked so much to make it all as smooth as possible), thank you!

I have to thank my school, for funding me too, right? But I must say that the most important people I should thank are my students. It was because of them that I decided to come, it is because of them that I sacrifice myself sometimes, it is because of them that I don’t give up from the struggle.

(…)

On Friday night, the two last men standing in the fort, Adrian and me were invited to a small get-together at the next-door undergrats apartment. Two girls invited us to go. And suddenly, all the discussions, all the ideas, all the disturbance caused during this course came out in our minds. As we used to do every afternoon in the 5B, we sat and discussed about what we had experienced.

Funny… now I remember what we just did. We were witnessing to each other how the brown folks were trying to fit in with the white folks in that get-together.

And we witnessed for 2 hours.

And we cried.

There is a lot of work to do. And I won’t give up. I won’t be left behind. I won’t be another corpse left in the battlefield. I decided to fight. I decided to look up high in the sky, to be proud, to feel the pain and anger of my comadres and compadres, hermanos in color and history. I decided to be beside the strongest women and the ones that feel weakened. To the other forms of sexuality. To the other forms of oppression. Side to side of the racial struggle. Incorporate myself in the others, the otherness.

I am the other in me.

And I need to decolonize the time and the space too. Thinking beyond the borders of clock-controlled time and meter-measured space. Rethink the sciences, the methodology of education. Rethink goals and objectives. Rethink evaluation processes, grades, and standards. Rethink everything.

And if one, just one of my students learns that… I’ll be realized as an educator.

Now I go back to my world. I won’t have this wonderful people everyday to help me to think what is going on. I’ll have to do it by myself. But I’m a grown up – I guess I can do that. It’s my battle against me and the ones I need to make see. I can do it.

And then my Tarragona buddies come back again to see me, in my mind… to help me to stay decolonized and to decolonize another person. You all come here anytime I need you.

Thank you for coming back.

SAYYID – Lecture 2 – From Kemalism to the Islamic States

The break of Westernized/Westphalian state in the Muslim World started with the creation of Pakistan. It hosted 33% of the Muslim population in the world until 1971. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution added more elements into the Muslim State configuration. The Iranian Revolution happened in a place which was mostly urban, living in the profits of oil exploration, which made it almost impossible to predict (and then, allowing the Western World to stop it).

The White Revolution (1963-73) was a reaction to the rise of the Muslim States. For them, there was a dichotomy:

“True Islam” = Shadow of God = “Social Justice” = WHITE REVOLUTION

Opposite of

“Black Reaction”= Backward Iran = “Red Destruction”

A more complete relationship is:

Pre-Islamic Aryan Persia = Shah/”Spiritual Leader” = Great Civilization = White Revolution = USA / Free World = Resurgency Party = SAVAK

Opposite of

Arabic occupied Semitic Persia = Black Reaction = Backward Iran = Red Destruction = TRAITORS

The expanding logic of Great Civilization can be defined by the quote of General Iberico Saint Jean

“First we must kill the subversives, then their sympathizers, then the indifferent and finally the timid.”

But how to destroy a determination built so strong in our minds? Freud can give some answers. It is called OverDetermination: if you dream about a person it does not follow that you are dreaming about that specific person. It can be interpret as anything, which is not exactly what it looks in a first moment, because actions and actors carry meanings. “The meaning of signifier cannot be read back to its signifier”.

Another way is to use Intertextuality, which says that:

One is never in one discourse;

The impossibility of denotation means the social is always a connotative field;

Denotation is the last connotation.

And to think:

“Mohammed of Arabia ascended to the highest heaven and returned, by God. If I had reached that point I should not have returned.” Abdul Quddus of Gangoh in Mohhamed Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought.

Lecture of DAPHNE TAYLOR-GARCIA: “Newly Discovered Countries”: Sexuality, Print Culture and Colonialism

Prof. DAPHNE V. TAYLOR-GARCÍA is a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her article (“The Discursive Construction of "Women" in the Americas: An Analysis of 16th Century Print Culture” ) is available here.

“Pedro Alvares Cabral is also from a wealthy family. He was chosen by the Royal Family to continue Vasco da Gama’s work. […] The description of people in Brazil […] is like arabs, by their color […] they were very sexualized […] girls by the age of 8 would be looking for partners, because they knew they wouldn’t be able to hold a husband without their virginity. […] All descriptions are very sexualized.”

SAYYID – Lecture 1 – Introduction of Decolonial and Postcolonial Muslim Studies

Prof. SALMAN SAYYID is a Reader in Postcolonialism and Racism Studies and Director of the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK (click here to visit the page). Here, a Amazon search of his publications. Here, Prof. Sayyid in the Lecture List (“Mirror, Mirror: Western democrats, oriental despots?”). Sayyid and Barnor Heese’s article “A war against politics?”, published at OpenDemocracy.net in 2001 here.

Sayyid started remembering us of the X-Files Affirmation:  “The truth is out there”. As it may sound funny, he calls our attention to the truth that is supposed not to be based in our common sense of what is the Orient, the Islam, the Other. Below, some of his slides.

“The Scandal of Islam

How can we explain the appearance in the Modern World of something which is pre-Modern?

The disclosure of ‘Islam’ is experienced politically, since the political is sign of disruption of what is considered to be natural or conventional.”

The development of the world is just one: the Western model.

The enemy is the one that prevents you from being yourself.”

“Politics

A politics without difference is not possible, but differences are not permanent.

A politics without decisions are not possible, but all decisions are provisional.

Politics is about formation of identities

All identities are about exclusion and inclusion”

“Geopolitical Challenge

‘War Against Terror’ as grammar of international relations

Internal Security and Surveillance of ethnically marked”

Audio removal

To the readers,

As asked by the lecturers, I took off the audio from the posts. The links will be there, but they will take you nowhere. I cannot publish them, nor share them. I'm sorry, but to know what happened here word by word, you should have spent some time with us, here.

NIMAKO – Lecture 1 – Introduction to (Post-) Colonial African Studies

Prof. KWAME NIMAKO teaches International Relations at the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences (ISHSS, lectures here), Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands. He introduced us to some new ideas related to the African Studies, mostly into a (post-) colonial perspective. Amazon book search about Prof. Nimako here. His article available here (Designs and (Co)Incidents : Cultures of Scholarship and Public Policy on Immigrants/Minorities in the Netherlands)

Sandoval – Lecture 5 – Conclusions

From a self-evaluation, the construction of the meta-witnessing becomes more visible, more palatable to the decolonized individual. Here, a video from In Lak’Ech.

Tiffany's goodbye

Tiffany Ruby Patterson

Ella's Song, by Sweet Honey in the Rock

This was the song she played in the end of her last lecture. Here, a video that includes the lyrics. 

Tiffany Ruby Patterson – Lecture 5 - Conclusion

What if we found the guilt in ourselves?
What if things are not as we were taught?
What if we could bring the fault of all our ancestors to ourselves?
What if?

What if now I could change that?
What if now I understand what was done in the past?
What if now I can change the future of my descendants?
What if?

What?
What if?
No more if
No more

More
Now, more
More now
Now

Sandoval – Lecture 4 – Practicing the Conocimiento

The artists mentioned during the lecture were:

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Aztlan Underground

Tiffany Ruby Patterson – Lecture 4 - The Human Cost of Slavery (Discussions)

"Don't underestimate the power of a small act." - T. R. Patterson

Today we had to discuss and (try to) digest last lecture's findings. It was a clearing process, which allowed us again to think. More. Deeply.

She is an amazing woman!

A Poem... to think and reflect other ideas

Identity, by Rukhsar Ahmed

Of myself, what do I preach,

As I walk the worlds many streets?

How does my Identity actually speak?

Through my eyes, my words, my deeds?

Beneath the layers of olive skin,

Who am I inside, deep within?

Over hearts, will my Identity ever win?

Despite my wrong deeds, my evil, my sins?

Behind the eastern cloak that I wear,

What would you see should you stop and stare?

What thoughts does my Identity share

To a world who is free not to care?

In what way can I explain,

Who I am and from where I came?

Why must my Identity remain,

A subject of scrutiny, an issue of blame?

In what way can I define,

The mere word; I?

Tell me! Where must my Identity lie?

In my blood, my past, my eyes?

Lecture with Houria Bouteldja*, translated by J. Cohen – The Colonial Subjects and the Colonial Condition today

H. Bouteldja is the spokesperson for the Party of Indigenous People of the French Republic. Below, some of her words.

“The second story involves the discovery of my own race: I knew I was Algerian, I knew I wasn’t white, but one day a friend told me Algeria was in Africa. I couldn’t believe. I had already internalized that Africa was an inferior place.”

“I live myself as an indigenous. This is a political decision. […] France today hasn’t digested Algeria independence. […] How their defeat, and our victory, lead us to live together? On the same place? This is the equation we need to resolve as a party. Because I cannot leave in a place where people cannot see their defeat and the Algerians this form. […] What is France? France is the place where the most sophisticated forms of racism exist. […] France is universal. France and the French, French people and French language.”

“To be an indigenous person is to be a relevant being. To be a relevant being is to be around, on the side. […] Zidane’s goal promoted us back to the level of humanity. Then September 11 happened, we were again demoted.”

The complete audio of this excellent and clarifying lecture here. We were shown a video of an interview of H. Bouteldja on French TV. The link is here. Another interview at Baraka TV here. I've found another one, named "Houria Bouteldja 
L'Interview des Blogueurs" here. A last one, in the Indigenous People page, here.


The word? She pronounced "souchien"as to "pure French", 
but they've listened the dash ("sous-chiens"), changing it to
"sub-dogs".

Sandoval – Lecture 3 – The Feminist Third World Liberation (The Conocimiento)

How to create InterCultural Coalitions?

THE CONOCIMIENTO = Inner Work / Public Acts

- To change negativities into strengths; to heal the traumas of racism and other systemic desconocimientos. You look beyond the illusions of separate interests to a shared interest – your in this together, no one’s an isolated unit.

Tu camino de conocimiento requires that you encounter your shadow side and confront what you’ve programmed yourself & been programmed by your cultures to avoid (desconocer), to confront the traits more from a militarized zone to a round table --> To develop the courage to witness yourself.

The extension of consciousness -->  Systemic change across all fields of knowledge

The binaries … are collapsing:

Mind                                            Body

Colored                                       White

Male                                            Female

                   NEPANTLA

                    (3^rd Space)

• ·      interconnectivity
• ·      enact a retribalization by recognizing
• ·      new tribalism

Based on the literature in the sillabus of Gloria Anzaldúa (2002). “Now Let Us Shift: The Path of Conocimiento...Inner Work, Public Acts,” from This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, New York: Routledge.


Marlou Kummu (from Netherlands) suggested to compare this work with The Kübler-Ross Stages of Grief, which can be seen here and here.

The complete audio for this session is here.

Tiffany Ruby Patterson – Lecture 3 - The Human Cost of Slavery

This is just a little part of what I heard today:

“Capture. Capture. They (the slaves) didn’t walk to the slave ship. They were captured. They were captured by other African folks. […] Africans did participate in the capture of slaves.”

“Imagine (yourself as a woman) being captured from your village, in the middle of night, put in chains, collars made with the purpose of chaining people to each other […] taken to a fort, a military fort that then was transformed into a slave fort/post […] you have your clothes taken off […] imagine yourself as a woman, with your breast, your genitalia, exposed to all people, to your siblings, to your family members […] placed to sit on the floor for months, without any care about your period times […] you haven’t seen the ocean, you were scared of the ocean, and you were placed on a ship to cross the ocean, when ships weren’t design to carry human beings […] there were no latrines, and people used to defecate on another […] many of them were abused, and arrived in the New World pregnant, which doubled their price.”

Suggested reading: Orlando Patterson's work (Amazon.com Search). Here, his interview in the NYTimes. An audio interview extract here and his opinion about Obama's victory in Democracy Journal here.

Complete audio of the lecture here.

Chela Sandoval, Lecture 2

Little by little we are starting to express ourselves the way Prof. Sandoval intends us to do.


A quick note:


Syncopation

in music, the displacement of regular accents associated
with given metrical patterns, resulting in a disruption of 
the listener's expectations and the arousal of a desire for 
the reestablishment of metric normality; hence the characteristic 
"forward drive" of highly syncopated music. Syncopation 
may be effected by accenting normally weak beats in a 
measure, by resting on a normal accented beat, or by tying 
over a note to the next measure.
Source: Dictionary.com


Here, the complete audio.

Tiffany Ruby Patterson – Lecture 2 Day 4

“Not to allow you to be oppressed”. To womanize, to be a womanist, is to have the ability to fight for women’s rights, knowing your objectives as a social actor, but at the same time, not losing any feminine characteristic, as care and respect as an individual and as a human being. It is to look for justice and equality for women and men, universal justice for all, independently of all differences.

The complete audio of this lecture is here.

Lecture of Alejandro Villegas

Alejandro Villegas is a Professor of University of Oregon, and lectured us (and was lectured by us) about Colonialism – from the Latin American liberation of ways of thinking, and then on. Philosophy does not come from above, but from the social-cultural aspects surrounding the thinker. This project is a consequence of cultural domination that makes us think there is no, or little, space for thoughts. Prebisch and Wallerstein thought the world in a “world-system dependency”, echoed in Latin America by the CEPAL group. Enrique Dussel (articles, click here) changed this aspect, adding to the “I and the Other”(where “I” is the Western Modern Culture and its agents, and “the Other” as the periphery system), the Total Exteriority (the life of the marginalized, the marginal), allowing a dialogue “south-south”. This allows a self-critical behavior, an articulation of the structures and an articulation of identities. Castro-Gomes, for example, shows there are some articulations in South American societies that classify and determine social structures.

However, how to understand identities without a European concept? Starting from where you are: by Castro-Gomes example, society of Colombia is stratified in four levels, which correspond to a space in the city, to a degree of scholar year, to a level of employments and to a step in salaries and earnings.

Villegas suggests checking Juan Carlos Mariategui, philosopher, Anibal Quijano (other articles here and here), who creates the term “coloniality” (there is something besides colonialism: it has a distinctness that become categorized towards the race issue – Santiago Castro-Gomez wrote about it, too). Walter Mignolo designs the “Coloniality of Power” and Nelson Maldonado-Torres develops the “Colonization of Being”. Check the blog of the Latin American Critical Group here.

There is also the “Coloniality of Time” (by Rolando Vázquez): while the Time would just move from Past to Future, the Rational Western Mind would create a distinct Present Time, which will hold the Future.

Too many interesting things being produced in Latin America and I didn’t know it! Complete audio of the lecture (but the Q&A in the end) here.

Chela Sandoval, Lesson 1 - Methodology of the Oppressed

I've done a complete report on the first lecture of Chela Sandoval, which was a great one, but somehow it wasn't published the way I intended. Here is the audio for most of the class. Unfortunately I had to stop because my batteries were dying.

Tiffany Ruby Patterson, lesson 1 - Black Women Identity

Prof. Patterson, from Vanderbilt University, started her talk showing herself, her history, her views. In the audio, the complete lecture. Excellent ideas to be reviewed over and over, from time to time again.

There is a great conception of what a black woman must be. But who, or what, is a black woman? What are these categories that blind us to really see beyond the matters of color and gender, and sexuality?

"How do we talk who we are?", Patterson asks. "Men don't oppress because they are men. They learn to oppress." More of the lecture in the audio, here.

Today's class was based on "The Combahee River Collective" document, available here.

Today’s class: NATIONHOOD, Teacher: THE CATALUNYAN PEOPLE

I’m also having some time to go around. On Saturday, I spent the afternoon in Barcelona. The plan was to visit some touristic places, like the “Sagrada Familia” church and the “Parc Güel”. However, on the way to the second, something happened.

I was with other two mates of the course. We got the subway from the “Sagrada Familia” towards the “Parc Güel”, but we met a nice crowd. During this week, there was a review in the Spanish Constitution, which made lots of people angry. Around 1 million people gathered in the streets of Barcelona to protest.

The political system of Spain is kind of complicated. There is a Constitution, there is a King, and there are many other divisions in the country. After the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in 1975, the country has gotten a new system, monarchy reestablished and stuff. The main concept is that it was recognized then Spain is a country of different nations, which means, Catalunya would have the right to have its own ways, its own language, its own institutions. Spanish model created the possibility for other countries to do the same. For instance, Brazil recognizes the nations within the country, like many Brazilian-native and some quilombolas as part of the Federation. Other countries do the same, like Canada recognizing the Quebéc Nation as part of the country.

Catalunya, which capital is Barcelona, has asked that they should also have the right to manage some of their business without Spanish intervention. The process was long: Catalunyans voted for that, approving these changes, then Catalunyan Congress approved the public referendum, then Spanish Congress approved this demand, and then federal judges declared it was constitutional, and then…

Before it was finally approved and made law, there is an extra level of approval of some “Constituent Judges”, like they are the ones who say if something can be sent to the Constitution or not (at least that is what I understood). They declared: there is just one nation, the Spanish nation.

Well, that triggered 1 million of the 7 million Catalunyans to run to the streets on Saturday, not requesting some autonomy anymore, but asking for INDEPENDENCE! “Adió Espanya”, they said.

And with all generations on the streets, I don’t think this feeling will fade out anytime soon.

Small is big!

We just had an awesome presentation of Stephen Small, UCLA professor of African American Studies. His conceptions of racism and reparation are quite interesting. There are new articles and books to check now. Here, a link to the complete presentation. It's in MP3 format.

Cheers!

First classes

Buenos dias!

There are many things happening here. The classes are not light. Many of the people here are from the USA. Most of them study at UCLA, I guess Berkeley. I'm not.

But there are also some other people from other places. Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain... They are here because of their Masters, for their PhD program. I'm not.

Some of them do extensive research in ethnic studies, or in gender studies, or in sexuality studies, or something else. I don't.

They are dying coping, studying, rereading stuff. Well... I'm not as much.

I'm here to learn to think in a different way. I'm taking some nice lessons and ideas back home.

I intend to go for Masters next year. I intend to develop a research based on the ideas raised here. But I do not intend to go for Berkeley, nor Texas, nor Barcelona. I teach children now, and I intend to do that for a while. I like... I'd better say... I love what I do, and that makes me think twice (or more) in leaving them behind to lock myself in academia.

Besides, Tarragona is such a beautiful city! I'm also enjoying my time here. I'll post some pictures later.

Cheers!