Onto-epistemologies of many worlds: the proximity of the diverse

Hybrid seminar offered as part of the Caribbean and Transatlantic Worlds on the Move program, with Isabelle Stengers (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Mabel Gisela Torres (former Minister of Science of Colombia) and Alejandra Jaramillo Aristizabal (University of Auckland), animated by Esteban Gonzalez.

In the field of post-colonial thought, philosophical and anthropological debates have insisted on the modernity / “non-modernity” dialectic, based on analyzes that describe the “plurality” of “non-modern” knowledges by the conceptual frameworks of science and so-called "western" ontologies. However, beyond these cleavages and the conception of onto-epistemological monolithic blocks which respond to a deterministic and unidirectional historical and geographical logic, the social distribution of knowledge and the manifestations of being within a society, bear witness of the latent presence of the diverse in spaces usually subject to the control of an authority over life and knowledge.

In all societies, even within those which call themselves "modern", the presence of alternative knowledges or counter-knowledges, makes possible the project set out by the Zapatistas. to build a world that integrates several worlds and that is manifested in the diversity of knowledge and ways of life historically denied and underestimated. In this world of several worlds, the forms of knowledge and the modes of being clash, overlap, reconfigure and form a complex network of interrelations that determine the appearance of a politics of being-in-the world. This latent presence of diversity in all geographies therefore insists on the need for a “decolonial” thought capable of amplifying and valuing onto-epistemologies that have been subjugated, minorized and persecuted by the oppressive force of forms of life with hegemonic universalist claims.

In this sense, the fundamental objective of this conversation will be to underline the interiority and the proximity of the diverse within any society, by identifying its multiple manifestations and by describing the forms of resistance which characterize its “minoritary” presence in a world of many worlds.