Abstract

CERVIO, Ana. Afrodescendants, racialization and politics of sensibilities in Argentina. Universitas [online]. 2020, n.32, pp.19-36. ISSN 1390-8634.  https://doi.org/10.17163/uni.n32.2020.01.

This article examines some connections between politics of sensibilities and racialization practices. Taking the problem of afrodescendants in Argentina as a case study, the overall objective is to discuss sensibilities, understood as structures of feeling that translate the plots of social domination into everyday life. From this perspective, we analyze how the sensibilities intercede in the racialization practices that accompany and make capitalist development possible in its neo-colonial aspirations. This theoretical position implies considering that sensibilities regulate, among other aspects, racialized ways of observing / feeling / perceiving the world that subjects have, and that they are radically put into play in intercultural contexts.To achieve this objective, first, a set of analytical inflections that connect the practices of racialization with the politics of sensibilities is presented. Then, based on document analysis, the racial and social classifications operating in Argentina are explored, investigating the subalternity processes configured around the figure of the “Black” from the emergence of the Nation State until today. We conclude that the “categorical manichaeism” prevailing in racial classifications, and the “negrification” of the subaltern world that has been consolidated since the mid-twentieth century, makes the discussion on interculturality relevant as an epistemic problem and political project.

Keywords : Afrodescendants; interculturality; racialization; sensibilities; negrification.

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