Contribution to the book “Utopia of alliances, conditions of impossibilities and the vocabulary of decoloniality”, edited by the Editorial Group for Writing Insurgent Genealogies (Carolina Agredo, Sheri Avraham, Annalisa Cannito, Miltiadis Gerothanasis, Marina Gržinić, Marissa Lôbo and Ivana Marjanović), Löcker Verlag, with the text: To Unmask the subtle misuse of symbols.

This book is the outcome of the processes of studying, learning and de-learning, established over the last six years in the Post-Conceptual Art Practices (PCAP) class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

What’s at stake here is to reflect not only on historical colonialism but also on the ways in which capitalism frames the world we inhabit here and now. The notion of decoloniality has provided a radical option with which to rethink learning processes coming from positions that are not exclusively Western-orientated but are instead formed by other political-social contexts and perspectives. The concept of decoloniality offers an insurgent position in the history of colonialism and in all its contemporary forms of colonial subjugation, exploitation and discrimination.

Reading writers such as Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Belinda Kazeem, Nicola Lauré al-Samarai, Walter Mignolo and Peggy Piesche and relating their ideas to the current state of capitalism, migration, racism, class, gender etc., the editors with the name “Editorial Group for Writing Insurgent Genealogies ” decided that it is necessary to reformulate the existing vocabulary and to re-propose new terminology and meaning connecting art and politics.

It is important to analyse the continuities of colonialism, Nazism and fascism in contemporary neoliberal global capitalist democracies. With these continuities it is possible to define present racism, Islamophobia, anti-Romaism and anti-Semitism without, however, forming competing histories of oppression and persecution. Many questions could not be answered here and now, yet it was clear that we wanted to reflect upon memory politics as well as upon how to make alliances between present forms of anti-racist, anti-colonial, political, theoretical, critical and artistic works.

CONTRIBUTORS:

AG Migration und Antirassismus, Carolina Ágredo, Jamika Ajalon, Aleksandra Aleksić, Tania Araujo, Teht Ashmani, Jin Haritaworn and Misster Raju Rage, Sheri Avraham, Sarah Binder, Imayna Caceres, Luzenir Caixeta, Annalisa Cannito, Eyal Danon, The Darker Side of the Academy, Petja Dimitrova, Lina Dokuzović, Vulcanita Erupziono, Coco Fusco, María Galindo, Christian Gangl, Miltiadis Gerothanasis, Marina Gržinić, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, du von jetzt-Muzaffer Hasaltay, Peter Haselmayer, Ana Hoffner, Festus Ikeotuonye, Njideka Stephanie Iroh, Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Tímea Junghaus, Ivan Jurica, Tatiana Kai-Browne, Kanak Attak, Belinda Kazeem, Grada Kilomba, Christoph Kolar, Kollektiv Recht auf Raum, Elisabeth Lnenicka, Marissa Lôbo, Renate Lorenz, maiz – Autonomes Zentrum von & für Migrantinnen, Sylvia Marcos, Ivana Marjanović, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Sophia Mídian Bagues, Movimento Sem Terra (MST), Mujeres Creando, Georg Oberlechner, Okenna Okafor, Plattform Geschichtspolitik, Beatriz Preciado, Jovita Pristovšek, The Research Group for Black Austrian History and Presence, Rubia Salgado, Sans-Papiers, Alessandra dos Santos Silva, Tomash Schoiswohl, Jude Sentongo Kafeero, Stephen Small, Aneta Stojnić, Madina Tlostanova, Reinhard Uttenthale, Regina Wuzella.