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DISSERTATION

Life Politics: Race, Ecology and Dissident Aesthetics in Colombia

"Life Politics: Race, Ecology and Dissident Aesthetics in Colombia" critically reinterprets the cultural politics of human rights in the Americas through a study of Colombian artists and intellectuals working within Black, Indigenous and campesino movements since the 1970s. Focusing on a multimedia archive of activist writings, films and visual art, this project examines how the language of peace and reconciliation has been instrumental to the construction of the Colombian racial state and its reconfiguration in the era of human rights. It then outlines a theory of “life politics” to describe dissident reckonings with political violence that seek to correct the racial, ideological and ecological exclusions underpinning North Atlantic conceptualizations of what it means to be “human” and hold democratic “rights.” In doing so, this study proposes that life politics offers a useful framework for understanding contemporary alliances among antimilitarist, antiracist and environmental justice activisms across the Americas, from the transnational movement in defense of Black life to Andean struggles for the rights and liberation of Mother Earth.

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