Arturo Escobar
Location: Warren B74 and Zoom
Registration: https://bit.ly/DesigningforthePluriverse

This talk examines emerging narratives of life that differ significantly from dominant anthropocentric perspectives of the world and their associated extractive modes of global development. Based on the notion of radical interdependence, these narratives propose a new foundation for social life and for designing worlds relationally, which is indispensable for confronting the terracide produced by mono-humanism. The talk will focus on one such emergent narrative – centered on notions of territoriality, communality, autonomy, re-existence, and pluriversality.

Arturo Escobar is an activist-researcher from Cali, Colombia, working on territorial struggles against extractivism, post-developmentalist transitions, and 'ontological design'. He was the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Political Ecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and is currently affiliated with the PhD Program in Design and Creation at Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, Colombia; and the PhD program in Environmental Sciences, Universidad del Valle, Cali. Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked closely on these issues with several Afro-Colombian, environmental and feminist organizations. Professor Escobar is the author of the celebrated study, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, 2nd edition, 2011). His more recent books include Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018), and Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (2020). He is currently working on a book, Designing Relationally: Making and Restor(y)ing Life), with Michal Osterweil and Kriti Sharma.

Featured image: "Energías Libres" by Angie Vanessita

Sponsors:

Polson Institute for Global DevelopmentLatin American and Caribbean Studies Program