Submerged perspectives: the arts of land and water defense

ABSTRACT

It is through specific genealogies of scholarship on race and coloniality, Indigenous feminisms, and Black feminisms that we can escape the well-rehearsed trope of ‘land as body’. Within a comparative hemispheric American studies framework, I consider the centre of struggles over empire and extractivism that show the unravelling of the binary between embodiment and territories. I also consider submerged perspectives and forms of solidarity by those who refuse the material and symbolic infrastructures of racial and extractive capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial capitalism
• extractive capitalism
• water defense
• Indigenous
• Latin America
• art and politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I was one of three programme co-Chairs for American Studies Association 2019, alongside Hokulani K. Aikau and David Palumbo-Liu. Scott Kurashige was ASA President. See programme preface, https://asa.press.jhu.edu/program19/preface.html, viewed July 15, 2020.

2 See Macarena Gómez-Barris’ (2019) book review essay: ‘The Colonial Anthropocene: Damage, Remapping and Resurgent Resources’, https://antipodeonline.org/2019/03/19/the-colonial-anthropocene/, viewed June 21, 2020.

3 See Cedric Robinson’s classic work that expands upon the notion of racial capitalism or the dependence upon slavery, genocide, imperialism and dispossession as central tenets of the modern world system.

4 Sylvia Rivera Cusicanqui describes ‘there is no post or pre in this vision of history that is not linear or teleological but rather moves in cycles and spirals and sets out on a course without neglecting to return to the same point. The Indigenous world does not conceive of history as linear; the past-future is contained in the present’. I highlight the idea of cyclical anti-colonial struggle in this essay (2012, p. 97).

5 See Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s ‘Introduction’ to Sovereign Subjects (2007), May 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/our-story-is-in-the-land-indigenous-sense-of-belonging/11159992, viewed June 30, 2020. Also see Jodi Byrd’s discussion of sovereignty and intersubstantiation (2011).

6 See ‘Pipeline Opponents Strike Back Against Anti-Protest Laws’, by Alleen Brown, https://theintercept.com/2019/05/23/pipeline-protest-laws-louisiana-south-dakota/, viewed July 15, 2020.

7 For a longer discussion of Carolina Caycedo’s body of work on damming see Chapter Four of The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (2017).

8 See ‘Defending Tomorrow: The Climate Crisis and Threats against Land and Environmental Defenders’, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/, Global Witness, July 2020, viewed October 12, 2020.

9 See my book Beyond the Pink Tide (2018) for a longer analysis of Galindo's performance. Here is a link to Regina Galindo's website and images from La Sombra: http://www.reginajosegalindo.com/en/la-sombra-2/, viewed November 6, 2020.

10 See Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon edited volume on Standing Rock for an extended discussion of how this operates in present struggles and victories (2019).

11 Also see Melamed (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Macarena Gómez-Barris

Macarena Gómez-Barris is Professor and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She is also Director of the Global South Center (GSC), a research centre that works at the intersection of social ecologies, art/politics, and decolonial methodologies. She is author of Where memory dwells: Culture and state violence in Chile (2009), The extractive zone: Social ecologies and decolonial perspectives (2017), and Beyond the pink tide: Art and political undercurrents in the Americas (2018). Her forthcoming book is At the sea’s edge: Coloniality in times of extinction (Duke University press).