GSSC Seminar Series
29 October 2024
Ontological conflict and the aquatic space: Black mobilization on Colombia’s Pacific coast
Ulrich Oslender (Florida International University)
12:00-13:00
Debates on decoloniality in Latin America have proposed the concept of the “pluriverse” as an epistemic challenge to the perceived universality of Western epistemology and hermeneutics that have underpinned processes of colonial domination and exploitation. The pluriverse calls for a co-existence of many worlds as an acknowledgement of the entanglements of diverse cosmologies. The often-conflictual nature of these entanglements has been referred to as “ontological conflict” over different ways of being in the world. In this talk I will look at the Pacific coast region of Colombia as an example of what a pluriverse might actually look like in particular places. I suggest that this pluriverse is constituted through what I call the “aquatic space” – an assemblage of relations resulting from human entanglements with an aquatic environment characterized by intricate river networks, significant tidal ranges, and labyrinthine mangrove swamps. This aquatic space, I argue, can be regarded as embodiment of both the radical difference enacted by the social movement of black communities and of the ontological conflict resulting out of this struggle. Such an interpretation suggests a new, more complex way of addressing what are often portrayed as mere struggles over land.
Ulrich Oslender is a political and cultural geographer with regional interests in Latin America. He gained his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Glasgow and is currently Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University in Miami. He has published over sixty articles and book chapters in both English and Spanish, mostly in relation to social movement theory and political geography. He has authored two books, most recently The Geographies of Social Movements: Afro-Colombian Mobilization and the Aquatic Space (Duke University Press), and co-edited Bridging Scholarship and Activism: Reflections from the Frontlines of Collaborative Research (Michigan State University Press). He has also frequently worked with the media and produced, amongst others, programs on Black cultural politics in Colombia for the BBC World Service.