disturbing decolonization is a site of movement building. It is a space populated with academics from Abya Yala, the diaspora, and beyond who read people and debate ideas from those same places. Movement refers to the spirit or disturbio/disturbance that characterizes the political landscapes of so called “Latin America.” What is being built at this site is a repertoire of ideas, concepts, notions, and imaginations to challenge all that which “decolonization” has numbed, obscured, and dumbed. This is a meeting place for people to find each other, to encounter new books, articles, readings, etc. by fellow academics and writers whose ideas circulate little or never in the institutions where we were trained, currently work, or might work in the future. Although the starting point is Abya Yala, this space is open for academics beyond the region but whose commitment is to engage with Abya Yala in its intimate intersections and relations with other lands and oceans. We hope you can join us! If you need to know more to make a decision, please read on.

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The forces behind disturbing decolonization are two academics in the “islita” (S. Rivera, 2018) that is higher education. Ligia and Gioconda are Caribbean and Andean. They were both raised academically in North America or rather Turtle Island, in public US institutions where they received an excellent education! ...but without reading their very people. They are here to rectify that! We are talking about the people who have been thinkers of ideas, makers of life, inventors of shifts for thousands of years before books were even invented and after books were made syllabi in postgraduate classes across the globe. As doctor and soon to be doctor, Licho and Gio are keen to read and discuss ideas with other academics from Abya Yala and its diaspora across the planet.

 

Initially the academics in this space will meet fortnightly for a reading discussion for 1.5 hours. Although we are starting with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (of Aymara ascendance), the readings will be proposed and decided by the very people of the group (you!). If this description raised more questions than answers to what this site is all about, please reach out!