palimpsest

& insurgent:
proposals to interrupt the abyssal archive

de Sousa Santos, B. (2018). 9. Demonumentalizing Written and Archival Knowledge.

In The End of the Cognitive Empire (pp. 185-206). Duke University Press.
Boaventura de
Sousa Santos

rearguard intellectual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZbLjCz_mU

- position of support
- support and hope for the oppressed
- scare the oppressors
Neighborhood association, 1977 [Unknown author, 
http://jacarezinhorj.blogspot.com.br/]
• Portugal, 1940
• Coimbra Law
• Berlin  Philosophy
• New Haven  Sociology
• Jacarezinho, Rio de Janeiro
 • theories are anchored in experience;
• participatory methodologies;

• Portuguese revolution (1974);

• Social Sciences in Portugal from scratch;

Helio Oiticica, 1966. Mesa de bilhar, d'après

“O café noturno de Van Gogh“
The End of the
Cognitive Empire 
epistemologies of the South
• 1990
• represent forms of knowledge that are generally discredited, erased and ignored
by the dominant cultures
• arises from social and political struggles and which cannot be separated from
these struggles
• identifying and valuing what is often not even known to the dominant
epistemologies
• instrument of interruption of dominant policies and the knowledge that support
them
The dominant archive is the modern
abyssal way of producing knowledge
under the guise of storing it. p.197
 The dominant archive is the modern
abyssal way of producing knowledge
under the guise of storing it. p.197
Abyssal thinking
• 2007
• “the other side of the line” disappears
• distinctions between the visible and the invisible
• Nonexistent means not existing in any relevant or comprehensible
• „one side of the line“ x „the other side of the line“ way of being.
• Old and New World •  the monopoly of science on what is the truth
• internal colonialism
ecology of
knowledge • counter-epistemology
• plurality of heterogeneous knowledge(s)
•  highlights the dynamic interconnections
• knowledge-as-intervention-in-reality
Abyssal archive

Tunga, À La Lumière des Deux Mondes, 2005, Louvre

„collections of the museum as an ultimate graveyard of
civilization“
Specificitie • settled accounts: no going back, untouchable

s of the monumentality: objects and space reinforce each other,

causing distance and aggressiveness.

archive • docility: harmless, affable, and available. It is not contested

because it is not known or is declared nonexistent

• ambiguity: cannot make negated history and memory totally

invisible.
techniques to eliminate ambiguity: authorized versions of
the negated memories and histories
Natalia Rodríguez Ramírez , MUSEUM NULLIUS, 2019

would this be an
example of this
technique to „eliminate
https://decolonizem21.info/ABOUT
 The palimpsest archive
• marks and silences of what
was destroyed.
• counter-hegemonic
appropriation of a hegemonic
form
• specific “ambiguity“;
• It is about destabilizing the
dominant archiv from another
perspective.
Rosana Paulino, 2016, As gentes.
Today, this empty space is like a projection of a mirror, where
black women can see and recognise themselves in an immense
shared pain, in the wounds that refuse to heal.
 the return
of the
mantle
„Um outro céu“

https://anothersky.ufba.br/exhibition/tupin
amba-mantle/
 Making the mantle thus also has a strong political
Would that be significance. We know that there are Tupinambá mantles in
various places and that we have difficulty to gain access to
an counter them. Until now, we have had access to only one mantle, the

hegemonic one mentioned that is in the Musée du Quai Branly, in France.

It was essential to have access to this mantle so that it could
appropriation speak to me. The mantle was able to open up to me and I was
able to make my observations and have some perceptions so
of a hegemonic that I could make another mantle. It was important to bring
life to the mantle and show that it is not an obsolete object,
form? stored in a corner, just to be seen and deteriorate with time.
The mantles have a life and a purpose within their people.
This is the return of the mantle.
 Francisco Mallmann, AMÉRICA, 2019
„“You owe me a History, America” is the synthesis of a gesture
that demands the possibility of inscribing new imaginaries for
marked, stigmatized and silenced bodies“

The insurgent
archive
- dispersing it across many sites and types of practices
- unofficial and unauthorized present
- claiming a suppressed past.
- proposing new futures
social
museology
• committed to reducing social injustices,
improving the quality of life
• use of memory in favor of the communities
• memory oriented towards the future
Museu da
Maré
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVHrrtM9UD0
Habt Ihr Wollen wir zusammen
Kritik, das Museu da Maré
analisieren?
Kommentare vielleicht mit den
oder Fragen vier vorgestellten
zum Text? Kategorien: settled
accounts,
Und zur monumentality,
Präsentation? docility, and
ambiguity?
• https://decolonizem21.info/MUSEUM-NULLIUS
• https://www.selvatica.art.br/america
• https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-42405892
• https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/neues-kunstwerk-auf-der-humboldt-forum-baustelle-leerstelle-fuer-die-deutsche-kolonialge
schichte/25154948.html
• http://pinacoteca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AF_ROSANAPAULINO_18.pdf
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzecpSzXZOY

• Bruno Sena Martins e Boaventura de Sousa Santos, «Socialismo, democracia e epistemologias do Sul. Entrevista com

Boaventura de Sousa Santos», Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais [Online], Número especial | 2018, publicado a 05 novembro
2018, consultado a 05 julho 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rccs/7647; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rccs.7647
• Santos, B. D. S. (2007). Para além do pensamento abissal: das linhas globais a uma ecologia de saberes. Novos estudos
CEBRAP, 71-94.
• Santos, B. S., Jerónimo, H. M., & Neves, J. (2012). O intelectual de retaguarda: Entrevista a Boaventura Sousa Santos. Análise
Social, 47(204), 685-711.