In recent days, the 9th Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Social Sciences was held in Mexico City, organized by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). It was an event that articulated militancy and analysis. With broad participation, so necessary after the most critical phases of the pandemic, it was a continental meeting, and in some way a position (due to the worked agenda and the general inclusion) against the pragmatic “The right of admission is reserved” of the Summit of the Americas (held in the United States of America).
Very broad event, I stop at a small part of it. On June 8, 2022, in a “Master Dialogue” -several were held-, the Challenges of democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean were addressed: crossroads and threats. Nicolás Arata, more in the role of coordinator of the Dialogue, demanded “That the social sciences help us to reflect on the great problems… what are the ways to build fairer societies.” Regarding the participation of Manuela D’avila, I highlight two problems that she underlined: in Brazil, her country, the consistency of a far-right that has a consolidated electoral presence –which is part of the political reality and, a nuance, mainly with male participation-, and the strength/weakness of relying on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a charismatic leader, with extensive labor and popular work, to win the vote, and thus defeat the Brazilian right (and the continental right under the Bolsonaro/ Macri/ Uribe/ Duque/ Vargas Llosa/ Trump/ Almagro/ and, as Les Luthiers would say, etc.).
Another guest at the Dialogue was Boaventura de Sousa Santos. In his speech (shared over time with militants of La Powerful, an organization of Argentine neighborhood assemblies), he alluded to the need to talk about North American imperialism. And consistent with what he has systematically raised, his argument pointed out that capitalism cannot be separated from colonialism, racism, patriarchy, that is, the fight against capitalism must be broadened and confront any form of domination, which gives meaning to what de Sousa himself stated that “Domination works in an articulated way, resistance in a fragmented way.”
Constructing the agenda, he proposed: “We must not talk about progress, we must talk about Good Living”, which requires a complete change of concepts of nature, in the understanding that “Nature does not belong to us, we belong to nature ”, sustaining the narrative in the dialogue of knowledge and the epistemologies of the South, under the assumption that scientific knowledge is not the only valid knowledge. After this, an auction also systematic in de Sousa, the task of “decolonizing the university” and rethinking spirituality, recognizing, indicates, that there are things that are not resolved by science. Reviewing the chat of the session, the comments applauded the initiative to decolonize the university, the dialogue of knowledge, to think about nature outside the conventional channels of science, the relief of spirituality. In a society that seeks his direction, that needs hope, as Manuela D’avila suggested, de Sousa is like a rockstar, since young people gathered to take a photo with him. But just as there are applause and enthusiasm for what de Sousa raised, on the other side there are critical positions.
For example, Guillermo Sheridan (Bad Scientists and the Supreme Good, El Universal 10/20/2020) directs his battery to de Sousa, and to the arc that is related to him: “The Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, whom the TV host John Ackerman calls the ‘visionary beacon’, he is the ideological guru and fashionable spiritual leader leading Mexico out of the ‘neoliberal capitalist system’.
He is a thinker with the typical ingredients of the holy man in non-conformist churches, a kind of Latin American and Christian Noam Chomsky (Illich trend)”. His criticism of Eurocentrism “inflames the souls that love the poor.” Science, it seems to him, must be open to “non-scientific forms of knowledge”, learning outside the spaces established for it, questioning the argument of spirituality and the role that universities are subordinated to as reproducers of capital.
Personally, I think that the contributions of Chomsky and Illich, keeping distances, seem very important to me. Chomsky’s last reflections on Ukraine (by the way, descendant of Ukrainians) are unmissable for the understanding of the present time.
However, the unidimensional vision of the university requires review, regardless of where we stand, and a good example is the event organized by Clacso, in which a large number of academics from institutions throughout the continent participated. On another edge, of many, H. Dieterich (1996), in a text reviewed by each student who enters the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, by the modalities of the modular system – not at all an incendiary suggestion that the text of Dieterich-, pointed out: “Faced with the deficiencies of magical thinking, of common sense, and, in general, of all forms of natural interpretation, the following question becomes imperative: why does man not try to abolish them in order to only think objectively?”
Beyond the criticism of the liturgy, and in the understanding that this reflection must continue, it is worth concluding with a suggestive note by JF Chanlat (2022) that is linked to the content that “Nature does not belong to us”: “We are taking awareness, perhaps still too slowly, of what we should have learned from the wisdom of other so-called primitive peoples, as Claude Lévi-Strauss forcefully reminded us in one of his last texts: ‘Through wise customs, which we would do wrong to relegate to the rank of of superstitions, limit man’s consumption of other living species and impose a moral respect for them, associated with very strict rules to ensure their conservation. However different these last societies may be from each other, they agree that man is a participant in creation, not its owner. This is the lesson that ethnology has learned from them, and we hope that when these societies join the concert of nations, they will keep it intact and that we will be inspired by their example’”.