"Sur o No Sur": Making Science and Colonialism in “The End of the World”

• In Event: Latin American Entanglements of Gender, Sexuality, Race, Ethnicity, Coloniality - II

Abstract

The increasing attention that 4S is paying to Latin America has been contested by the diversity of Latin American scholars. I engage with this debate by questioning the fetishization of Latin America as an obligatory passage point to analyze northern epistemic violences and ignorances.

My dissertation studies the environmental history of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of Argentina, through the history of its beavers: from their introduction from Canada in 1946 to their contemporary eradication as invasive species. During my fieldwork, I realized that not only beavers were questioned by their origins, but also myself and the scientists I collaborate with. Within a colonial matrix, the legitimacy of science in “The End of the World” is questioned in three ways. First, in relation to the Argentinian production of difference based not so much on race, as in the US, as in its regional disparities. Second, through the southernization of this region by the State and its practices of internal colonialism. Third, as part of the history of the Argentinian science and its (non)relations with the State.

These colonial forms of making knowledge demand a more complex North-South debate: colonialism is a discourse that affects all of us and not just a product of the North. To change the terms of this international dialogues in ways that transform who always sets up the agenda and elaborates the final academic materials we need all parts not only as objects of science, colonialism, and interest but also as subjects.

Author

• Mara Dicenta, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute