CESAM Talks: Politics, Resistance and Collective Action in Latin America

This first edition of the CESAM Talks brings together researchers from different fields of social sciences and cultural studies to share their work on Latin America with students, staff, NGOs and society at large. Seeking to contribute to the critical discussion of Latin America´s past, present and future in Ghent, the series of talks offers an approach to politics, resistance and collective action in the region. Each of the three sessions will be presented by two scholars with different backgrounds and experiences, and will be moderated by Lisa Couderé, freelance journalist writing for MO* magazine and cofounder of the Latin American Cultural Center Mundana.
The first session will focus on Venezuela´s oil culture in the 20th century and will connect the development of the petrostate to current extractivist projects. It will also reveal the links between the international and the domestic arenas in extractivist societies like Venezuela in order to understand how plans for economic transformation are made in rent-dependent, oil-exporting countries. The second session will reflect on the practices of Guatemalan communitarian feminism facing patriarchal, colonial and extractive violence, followed by a talk on the embodied/enfleshed resistance to the erasure of ways of knowing-being and racialized-gendered-feminized bodies in Mexico. The last session will discuss the political challenges posed by the massive protests that took place in Chile in 2019 –also known as “social explosion” –, and will draw attention to the political activism of women in Chile by focusing on the agency and strategies of female nurses as a specific form of collective action.

The CESAM Talks are organized by the Department of literary Studies at Ghent University, in collaboration with the CESAM Platform.

Session 3: Political Activism and Social Explosion in Chile
20 October 2022, 18h – de Krook, Ghent
Speakers:
Patricio Silva (Leiden University)
Ricardo Ayala Valenzuela (Ghent University, University of the Americas)
Moderator:
Lisa Couderé (MO* magazine, Mundana)

The sessions are open for everyone and can be attended in person or watched via live stream.
Participation is free but registration is required!