Workshop “Aesthetics of Extractivism in Latin America: when marked bodies talk”
Place: Auerbach Institut, Cologne, Germany (Third Floor)
Weyertal 59
Date: 11.12.24, 14h-16h30
Organization: Dr. Tomaz Amorim (Mecila/Universidade de São Paulo)

Latin America is a region historically characterized by the violence of Colonialism and
Extractivism on its territories and their human and non-human inhabitants. Its literature and cinema
have continually shifted in its relationship to this violence: actively denouncing or even endorsing it
in public discourse; bearing witness to the destruction of its ‘pluriversos’ (Escobar); and expanding
aesthetic boundaries beyond European conventions. The colonial violence that constructed the
white man as a universal reference also inscribed others as “marked bodies”. Not only human and
non-human bodies but this violence has scarred the territory itself, dismembering its water bodies,
displacing beings from their forests and coastlines, hollowing out its “Cordilleras” and “Geraes,”
and engraving national borders and monolingual norms imposed by alien civilizations.
However, twentieth- and twenty-first-century literatures have begun to position these
marked bodies not anymore as mere landscape elements or objectified characters but as narrative
subjects, with distinct positionalities and/or fictional perspectives. Both human and non-human
entities have started to narrate their own (hi)stories, creating a counterpoint to Anthropocentrism,
Colonialism, and their extractive gaze (Gómez-Barris). These narratives also propose alternative
philosophies of history (Oswald de Andrade), in which diverse cosmovisions, epistemologies, and
political ontologies (De La Cadena) suggest alternatives to the ecocidal paradigm of the
Anthropocene. How can we avoid (post-)apocalyptic scenarios and the multiple “ends of the world”
(Krenak; Viveiros de Castro & Danowski)?
The workshop offers examples of modern and contemporary writing and audiovisual
practices in Latin America artworlds—understood beyond the fiction-nonfiction divide—that
engage with the coloniality of (neo)extractivism in its territories. These works address both
traditional forms of exploitation, such as (mega)mining and plantation economies, and newer
demands for “green energy”, cultural and epistemic extractivism. By bearing witness to these
catastrophes, they propose alternative perspectives on neo-developmentalism, rooted in the
experiences of marked human and non-human bodies.

Panelists:
Dr. Tomaz Amorim (Mecila- São Paulo University)
Dr. Jörn Etzold (Ruhr-University Bochum)
Dr. Cecilia Gil Mariño (CONICET-University of Cologne)
Dr. Fernando Nina (University of Heidelberg)

Invited Artist:
Dr. Carola Saavedra reads excerpts from her novel “O manto da noite” (2022)