Dossier

Other views and knowledge, movements, theories and social, cultural and museum practices

Submission until April 30th.

Organized by:
Diogo Jorge de Melo (UFPA - Faculdade de Artes Visuais e Programa de Pós-Graduação em Cidades, Territórios, Identidades e Educação)
Maria Terezinha Resende Martins (Ecomuseu de Belém, Secretaria Municipal de Educação e Cultura-SEMEC-Belém/PA)
Álvaro Campelo Martins Pereira (Universidade Fernando Pessoa - Centro da Rede de Pesquisa em Antropologia)
André Villa (Universidade Paris 8 - Departamento de Música - Laboratório Musidanse)

When we refer to other perspectives and knowledge, we understand them as the constitution of epistemic practices and exercises carried out in favor of the complexity of cultural diversity. Diversity is approached as an agent in the struggle against what is understood as a world system [1], contextualizing the structures of coloniality as a referenced monological pattern. In this sense, Britto, Melo, and Monteiro (2023), searching for different ways of thinking about and understanding “becoming other”, talk about museum possibilities. This approach is directed mainly at the Amazonian context. It aims to establish a dream of the future, “recognizing potential and, above all, viable singularities for the so-called museum phenomenon” (p.45). In this respect, we seek a diversity of positions critical of colonial and imperialist structures in this volume of Margens, focusing mainly on new epistemic possibilities.
In this way, we bring up the idea of movement as a myriad of actions that, in their search for transformations, as a plural category of becoming possibilities, get out of inertia mode. A rupture that is especially potentiated if added to perspectives of a decolonial nature, which we can consider as serpentine movements - in analogy to the mythopoetics of the large snake that causes tremors in various Amazonian cities. Sinuosities, entanglements, and constrictions are always taking us to a place of instability - or oscillating stability - while at the same time allowing us to move around in different ways since both the centers and the margins are always shaken in reaction to movement, even if this occurs in other ways between one and the other.
This dossier aims to problematize the different relationships between colonialist and imperialist visions and the decolonial process per se, thus exploring the quantities of positions on these structures of thought. It is precisely by listening to the voices of indigenous peoples and other ethnic identities - in addition to gender and racial issues - that we believe it is possible to learn how to break out of inertia through a non-uniform movement. So, to add places of speech [2] to the argumentative possibilities about this process and promote critical debates about processes of domination, a huge range of approaches and propositions are envisioned in this proposal for a dossier in the Margens. Mainly because this journal occupies a distinctive social and academic place, having been founded and managed in the Amazonian territory.
We intend to expand the issues of social movements by winding and leading knowledge that can be established from contemporary thinking, seeking structural breaks in the social, political, philosophical, and epistemic spheres. Proposals come to dialog with diverse and complex knowledge, especially around cultural issues, museums, and other pertinent circumscriptions. Circumscriptions can also involve the artistic, poetic, and aesthetic spheres in the search for possibilities for writing experiences [3], whether in terms of pertinent writing “against the grain”, as Benjamin (1996) would tell us, or from a program of absolute disorder, according to Vergès (2023). Here we are looking for new ways of thinking about museums and cultural and institutional manifestations, for current propositions linked to social museology or socio-museology that can interact with the concepts of community, Indigenous, quilombola, black, ribeirinhos, LGBTQIA+, and Amazonian museologies, among other diverse possibilities. And, in line with this dynamic of plural thinking, contributions from different areas of knowledge that want to share their theories and practices will be very welcome, whether in terms of information science, archives, the arts, librarianship, social sciences, education, history, or psychology.
We call everyone to this reflective practice with the conviction that this debate will be fertile and bring surprising results, which will help us to dream and contribute to postponing the end of the world, as Krenak (2017) would tell us. We believe museums and other related spaces should be free, critical, and political. As places of possibilities, interpretations, and the creation of autonomy, museum spaces cannot foster liberation strategies that reverberate at the construction of new systems of domination to be imposed.
Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication in another journal. Contributions will be received in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese until April 30, 2025, and authors must observe the journal's style rules available on the submissions page.(https://periodicos.ufpa.br/index.php/revistamargens/about/submissions#authorGuidelines)

References

BENJAMIN, Walter. Magia e técnica, arte e política: ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1996. Versão em francês: Sur le concept d'histoire, IX, 1940. Gallimard, Flolio/Essais, 2000. Edição em inglês: Sobre o conceito de história. In: Walter Benjamin: Escritos Selecionados, Volume 4: 1938–1940. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2006.
BRITTO, Rosangela; MELO, Diogo Jorge de; MONTEIRO, Lidiane da Costa. “Museu é o mundo”: um devir outro dos museus da Região Amazônica. In: BRITTO, Rosângela; MELO, Diogo; GOMES, Luzia; POLARO, João. Outras narrativas sobre museus: contribuições da Amazônia paraense para os debates sobre a nova definição de museu do Conselho Internacional de Museus (ICOM). Belém: Programa de Pós-graduação em Artes/UFPA, 2023, p.41-50.
KRENAK, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017.
QUIJANO, Aníbal. Colonialidade do poder, Eurocentrismo e América Latina. In: A colonialidade do saber: eurocentrismo e ciências sociais. Perspectivas latino-americanas. Buenos Aires: Conselho Latinoamericano de Ciências Sociais, 2005.
RIBEIRO, Djamila. O que é lugar de fala? Belo Horizonte: Letramento; Justificando, 2017.
SOARES, Lissandra Vieira; MACHADO, Paula Sandrine. "Escrevivências" como ferramenta metodológica na produção de conhecimento em Psicologia Social. Revista Política Psicologia, v.17, n.39, 2017, p. 203-219.
VERGÉS, Françoise. Programa de desordre absolu: descolonizar o museu. Paris: Edições La Fabrique, 2023. English version: Descolonizar o museu: programa de desordem absoluta. São Paulo: Ubu Editora, 2023. Edição em inglês: Um Programa de Desordem Absoluta: Descolonizando o Museu, Londres: Pluto Press, 2024.

Footnotes

 [1] Concept by sociologist Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, widely used in decolonial studies (Quijano, 2005).

[2] A concept developed within black feminism (Ribeiro, 2017).
[3] Reference to writer Conceição Evaristo's concept, based on the term used in her book “Becos da Memória”. She understands that stories are invented when they are told, even real ones, so writing to live means telling stories that refer to collectivized experiences, integrating the author, the protagonist, and their social markers (Soares and Machado, 2017).