De(s)colonial assemblages • life drives

Valderrama, Ana Maria

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130176 Copy

Description

Title

De(s)colonial assemblages • life drives

Author(s)

Valderrama, Ana Maria

Issue Date

2025-07-16

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Hays, David L.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Hays, David L.

Committee Member(s)

• Davis, Jennifer L
• Miraftab, Faranak
• Monson, Jennifer

Department of Study

Landscape Architecture

Discipline

Landscape Architecture

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Decolonial-Coloniality-Modernity-Peripheries-Latin America-Intersectionality-Bodies-Lands-Subjectivities-Urban Acupuncture-Community Design-Participatory-Correlation of Forces-Scores-Maps-Emancipatory

Abstract

My dissertation explores correlations between de(s)colonial body-artefact assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/2020) and socio-political dynamics in Latin American peripheries. I take the periphery as a personal, theoretical, and geopolitical positionality; a conceptual ethical-political category; and a physical territory shaped by a growing tension between, on the one hand, the hegemonic, multidimensional, dynamic, and fluid apparatus of the colonial-modernity project (Segato 2013/2021) and on the other hand, the ecologies of resistance, dissidence, and insurgency. Through the study of representative cases, I show how power dynamics specific to those peripheries are catalyzed and take form within representative assemblages that incarnate in their material and symbolic consistency, latent historical and political processes that are otherwise invisible. I use the term assemblage to refer to a multiplicity in which ideas, bodies (human and non-human), natural phenomena, materials, energies, and agencies with differential degrees of codification and territorialization encounter, entangle, interact, and transform each other with different intensities and velocities. I argue that the colonial-modernity project is a multidimensional, dynamic, and fluid machinery operating through four components—capitalism, racism, heteropatriarchy, and pollution—and over three targets—bodies, lands, and subjectivities. The de(s)colonial assemblages included in this study emerge from the colonial-modernity project’s cracks, fragments, remnants, and ruins. However, their agency is not fenced or entirely defined by the rules of the colonial-modernity project. As African-American Studies scholar Saidiya Hartman (1997, 56) points out, “strategies of domination don’t exhaust all possibilities of intervention, resistance, escape, refusal, or transformation.” The de(s)colonial assemblages explored in depth in my dissertation present alternatives to hegemonic discourses and hierarchical powers through their active participation in the correlation of forces, helping to unearth, visualize, and germinate critical alternatives and adding new conceptual layers to ongoing counter-hegemonic practices in the Global South. The assemblages selected for study in this dissertation have emerged from participatory, dialogic, and collective methods and actions undertaken by groups of designers and artists in collaboration with grassroots, religious, and/or political organizations, as well as members of communities in need. The processes of conception, production, expression, and reception of the selected assemblages beyond their construction have contributed to reinforcing social bonds within disregarded communities and to strengthening grassroots and social organizations. These assemblages can be considered de(s)colonial since they have been conceived as in-situ, in-vivo collective practices that reconnect bodies, lands, and subjectivities intentionally dismembered by the colonial-modernity project. Those practices are aimed at thwarting the colonial-modernity project, but they do not have enough capacity to accomplish that in one fell swoop, nor do they constitute definitive, heroic, or performative fulfillments of structural struggles. Thus, they cannot be conceptualized as revolutionary in the orthodox way. Yet they constitute a constellation of quotidian manifestations of life that disturb the trajectory of the colonial-modernity’s devices. We may conceive them as noises, holes, pricks, or as experiments in perpetual inconclusiveness. The practices in question negotiate, deflect, distort, twist, and even cannibalize the devices of the colonial-modernity project itself while triggering new scenarios within a swarming correlation of forces. Given their vitality and ingenuity, I conceive them as life drives: ecologies of resistance, dissidence, and insurgency. Understanding the complexity of these assemblages requires both epistemological and ontological reflection, focusing at once on their and my own positionality and political and cultural directionality and their being itself—that is, their processes of conception, expression, and reception. The research strategy for this work consists of constructing a relational map of de(s)colonial assemblages in which the correlation of forces in the historical present of Latin American peripheries resonates. To that end, I have applied a maximum variation sampling strategy (Patton Quinn 1987) in which I have selected eleven representative cases: Colectivo Pico in Venezuela; Escuela Radical and Taller Experimental in Mexico; Arquitetura na Periferia, A Rocinha Resiste, and Grupo Eco in Brazil; Arquitectura Expandida in Colombia; and Arquitectura del Sur, Matéricos Periféricos, CAPA, and A77 in Argentina. The cases have been selected as they represent well a particular form of association and specific forms of resistance, dissidence, or insurgency relative to symbolic or material components of the colonial-modernity project: capitalism, racism, heteropatriarchy, and pollution. Among the many assemblages produced by these groups, I have selected a total of twenty-two for this study. From a methodological viewpoint, these assemblages can be understood as philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes’ punctums (1980/2010) since they constitute little rebel details that disturb the apparent uniformity and coherence of the general picture while exposing latent historical and political processes that are otherwise invisible. To study the selected assemblages, I have applied a situated qualitative method involving a succession of distinct iterative stages that inform one another. Data have been collected through direct observation of the sample cases in the form of bodily immersion and in-situ, in-vivo engagement guided by scores, in-person structured and unstructured interviews, and the recording and transfer of sensory experiences in various media. Data have been collected under IRB protocols, systematized, and intersected with literature review and consultation of historical archival materials. The research findings described above are then synthesized and disclosed in a non-linear set of narratives (Ch. 4: Findings. Constellation of Parables). Critical reflections on the implications of the findings are offered in chapter 5 (Ch. 5: Implications. Glossary of Life Drives), and further discussions are provided in the form of scores (Ch. 6: Discussion. Scores for reconnecting bodies, lands, and subjectivities) for people to perform in similar situations. The contents of each section are presented in a non-linear way. Readers are encouraged to explore and discern constellations of meaning from their individual and shared perspectives. The aim of this approach is to leave the conclusion of the dissertation open, blurring any attempt to achieve a totality or a unique truth. Through this dissertation, I expect to contribute to the debate on de(s)colonial thought in Latin America and the Global South. Amplifying the voices emerging from the de(s)colonial assemblages included in my study is a key objective of my dissertation. Critical reflection on those “life drives” and their agency, imagination, goals, and capacity for organization may help re-connect vital bonds among bodies, lands, and subjectivities. Also, this dissertation can help build and support reciprocal and solidarity networks among communities, organizations, scholars, and activists. Nurturing intercultural coalitions in which individuals and groups from different ontological origins and identities get “together (yet) distinct” (Chadwick 2012, xiii) may help trigger future emancipatory projects in defense of life in all its forms.

Graduation Semester

2025-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130176

Copyright and License Information

© 2025 Ana María Valderrama. All rights reserved.

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