Indigenous Modernities CFP at CAA
I’m chairing a session at the College Art Association 115th Annual Conference:
Indigenous Modernities
In her reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization, Bolivian and Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui points to the construction of an indigenous modernity in which Indigenous groups reclaim their right to self-determination and to their own historicity. Renewed attention to narratives of colonization and domination have made important contributions to the fields of art and architecture history. However, these narratives have sometimes foregrounded the violence of colonization over histories of resistance, in what Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck has described as "damage centered research." This session seeks papers invested in spatial narratives of Indigenous self-determination that complicate and challenge traditional definitions of modernity. Latin American scholars Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo have argued for the co-constitutive character of modernity and coloniality, Indigenous modernities challenge this formulation. The entanglement of these modernities with the encounters of colonization and settler colonization foregrounds our incomplete reading of these histories. Furthermore, Indigenous modernities complicate Eurocentric definitions of modernity by claiming a non-linear notion of history, one in which (thinking with Rivera Cusicanqui) "the past-future is contained in the present." How do Indigenous modernities unsettle North Atlantic notions of modernity? What historiographical methods are needed for their research and writing? And what is left outside of the disciplines of art and architectural history? This session looks for research invested in the historiographical challenges of histories of Indigeneity as they reshape and challenge more established definitions of modernity.
Indigenous Modernities
In her reflection on the practices and discourses of decolonization, Bolivian and Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui points to the construction of an indigenous modernity in which Indigenous groups reclaim their right to self-determination and to their own historicity. Renewed attention to narratives of colonization and domination have made important contributions to the fields of art and architecture history. However, these narratives have sometimes foregrounded the violence of colonization over histories of resistance, in what Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck has described as "damage centered research." This session seeks papers invested in spatial narratives of Indigenous self-determination that complicate and challenge traditional definitions of modernity. Latin American scholars Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo have argued for the co-constitutive character of modernity and coloniality, Indigenous modernities challenge this formulation. The entanglement of these modernities with the encounters of colonization and settler colonization foregrounds our incomplete reading of these histories. Furthermore, Indigenous modernities complicate Eurocentric definitions of modernity by claiming a non-linear notion of history, one in which (thinking with Rivera Cusicanqui) "the past-future is contained in the present." How do Indigenous modernities unsettle North Atlantic notions of modernity? What historiographical methods are needed for their research and writing? And what is left outside of the disciplines of art and architectural history? This session looks for research invested in the historiographical challenges of histories of Indigeneity as they reshape and challenge more established definitions of modernity.