Methodology

The methodology will be transnational, multi-epistemological and multidisciplinary.

• Transnational because it will think beyond the borders and academic, socio-political and artistic interests circumscribed by the idea of the nation-state. The perspectives of the former European colonizers involved in the colonial formation of Brazil (Portugal, Holland and France) and Africa, Brazil itself, the Native peoples and, above all, the African peoples and countries will be taken into account, but not seen as definitive. Bringing together and dialoguing the various perspectives, agendas and interests in order to develop a common contemporary horizon that can shed light on the current challenges resulting from colonial formation will be a fundamental purpose.

• Pluriepistemological because it will consider the cosmologies involved: the practices and ways of knowing of a Judeo-Christian or Euro-Christian orientation that developed the colonial enterprise as a modern-capitalist project; the cosmologies, or ways of knowing and acting, of the Native peoples still in force; the cosmologies of the kidnapped African peoples, as well as their adaptations, incorporations and reformulations in the diaspora. The aim is to understand each epistemology as equally important, thus questioning the idea of multiculturalism. While Euro-Christian epistemology has developed, based on its culture and cosmophobia, the idea of civilizing in order to subalternize, African, Native and Afro-descendant cosmologies and epistemologies and their ethical and artistic principles will be brought to counterbalance the universalist and, in terms of morals and ethics, unilateral European interpretation.

• Multidisciplinary because critical thinking on and reparation of the modern colonial-capitalist formation, which used slavery and racism as its driving forces, needs to include the most diverse disciplines in order to arrive at a holistic view of the complex universe of problems created in the past and present, and to think about their solutions. The disciplines involved in this discussion are:

  • • Anthropology - questioning the Eurocentric perspective, altered cosmological knowledge and practices; structural and institutional racism and racism as a social form; the production of memories, differences and inequalities;

    • Archaeology - the investigation of evidence, or buried remains, as well as cultural and cosmological elements (art, gastronomy, music, medicine, etc.) that can bring new perspectives to a story that has so far been told by the colonizers;

    • Arts (visual arts, audiovisual, etc.) - art as part of cosmologies; art as an expression of resistance; art and healing; decolonial contemporary art;

    • Law - the legal and criminal dimension of the colonial-capitalist formation; the manipulation of law; the breaking of divine, civil, human and natural laws; reparation for kidnapping, buying and selling, exploitation; the return of stolen and seized objects;

    • Economics - the implications of capitalism for the monoculturalist colonial project, the critique of capital, the costs of exploitation and reparation;

    • Ecology - cosmological knowledge; sustainability, racism and environmental violence;

    • Education - pedagogy of the crossroads; anti-racist education, confluence of knowledges;

    • Philosophy and Political Theory - necropolitics, Eurocentrism, epistemicide, cosmophobia, non-hegemonic epistemologies, epistemic relations, self-management, quilombism, cognitive justice, gender equality or non-existence, intersectional thinking;

    • History - of slavery and colonialism, of resistance and its silencing, of genocides, ethnicides, epistemicides;

    • Art History - decolonization of the colonial project of Art History; decolonization of the imaginary constructed during colonial formation; colorful and multi-epistemological Art History; expression of resistance; return of stolen art;

    • Psychology and Medicine - mental health and the traumas of the kidnapped, the colonized and the enslaved; racism and its psychic and physical consequences; traditional knowledge; healing;

    • Linguistics - the creation of the Portuguese language, which reflects the presence of different languages and ways of thinking and expressing oneself; Brazil, a plurilingual country; concepts and language.