HIERARCHIZATION AND POSSIBLE DETOURS

WAYS OF TENSIONING AND SIDESTEPPING HEGEMONIC NARRATIVES

Abstract

Among the countless epistemic devices or political practices that support the oppressive processes imposed by capitalist colonization, we highlight hierarchization, for it is one of those practices-concepts that are presented in a moral guise, thus concealing their load of violence. Every hierarchy is based on a supposed higher value, establishing almost a synonymy with our practice of judgment, one of the founding pillars of the social and gnosiological aspects of Westernized cultures. Judgment creates binary divisions, responsible for structuring dichotomous thought that prevails to this day and is based mainly on the scientific division between true and false, a consequence of the moral and religious separation between good and evil. This work seeks to reflect on the various hierarchies hidden in our practices of living, connecting, working, knowing, looking, etc. The aim is to point out the harmful mechanisms that turn our differences into discrimination, devaluation, and subordination. The intentional analysis of six very distinct examples of these procedures – reflections on the concept of copying in Mesoamerican manuscripts and in the series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018); the question of the "other" in the audiovisual works The Double Day (1975, 54') and Black Goddess (1978, 95'); as well as the reappropriation in The Silver and The Cross (2010, 17') and From the Polo to the Equator (1986, 101') – seeks to enumerate and point out attempts of de-hierarchization, which are necessary if more equitable negotiations are to be established in the possible international relationships between cultures.