Decoloniality is the topic of the Special Week of the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies at the SciELO in Perspective Blog | Humanities

Gilberto Icle, Editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

A Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença [Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies] was created in 2011 by GETEPE-Group of Studies in Education, Theater and Performance at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Since its inception, the journal has achieved a very strong development, positioning itself as one of the leading journals of Latin American Performing Arts and the sole in this area to be included in the SciELO collection.

The main purpose of the journal is the dissemination of artistic and scientific researches in the field of Performing Arts and in the interface areas that support and maintain a dialogue with the different languages and multiple contexts of the arts and sciences of living spectacle, Education, Anthropology, Philosophy and History.

From 2011 to 2018, the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies (RBEP) published 229 articles online, of which 113 were by researchers from foreign universities and research centers. This shows the journal’s fast internationalization process, which receives about 150 to 300 articles per year, especially foreign studies that currently make up about 20 to 30% of this total.

This data shows the power of the RBEP and its dissemination abroad, since the Scenic Arts constitute a smaller area, both in Brazil and in several countries of the world, accounting for a very small share of the world’s scientific output.

Even so, RBEP has attracted a considerable number of readers, who are interested in topics as diverse as those published by the journal. The organization of dossiers and regular thematic sections has made it possible to publish works focusing on themes already consolidated in the field of Performing Arts as well as emerging ones. Let’s look at some examples: Ethnocenology, Performance, Politics, Theatrical Genetics, Post-dramatic Theater, Neurosciences, Somatic Education, School, Drama, Technology, Ethical-Racial Relations, Image. Moreover, the journal organized dossiers on scene artists such as François Delsarte, Pina Bausch, Jerzy Grotowski, and Gordon Craig.

For the SciELO Blog special week, we will present our edition number 4 of 2018: “Poetics and Decolonial Pedagogies” – an interdisciplinary subject of profound relevance in present times, proving especially central to the field of the Scenic Arts placed in the foreground of the debate on epistemological positions against hegemonic ones (MIGNOLO, 2003, QUIJANO, 2000).

The edition has five bilingual articles on decoloniality and, as usual, three articles in the ‘Other Themes’ section.

The cover theme opens with the article by Lîlâ Bisiaux, entitled “Epistemic and aesthetic displacement of decolonial theater” in Portuguese and French versions. This work is based on the case study of the play Kay pacha, by the playwright and Ecuadorian militant Juan Francisco Moreno Montenegro. From this study, the French author puts in check the colonial relations in Theater Studies and Theater Aesthetics.

The second article, in Portuguese and English, is entitled “Body and decoloniality in scenic poetic composition” and is signed by the Brazilian researchers Marina Fazzio Simão and Juliano Casimiro de Camargo Sampaio. The research seeks to question whether the artistic process could be taken as a means of decoloniality and does so from a theoretical intersection in the fields of art, anthropology and philosophy.

The following article is a text of Miki Seifert, entitled “Representing the Hyphen” with Portuguese and English versions. The New Zealand researcher proposes a kind of methodological matrix with a decolonial accent as a research possibility for the performance area.

The penultimate article, with versions in Portuguese and in English, is authored by the Brazilian researchers Maria Aparecida Bergamaschi and Dannilo Cesar Silva Melo. It is called “Karaí Arandú at the Mercosul Biennial: Guaraní education as a possibility for a decolonial aesthetic” and reflects on an experience called (inter)cultural mediation in a Guarani school and an art exhibition at the 10^th Mercosul Biennial, using indigenous peoples’ own vocabulary.

The section ends with the article “Decolonizing the curriculum? Possibilities to destabilize the formation in performance” by the American researcher Janet O’Shea. In Portuguese and English versions, the text proposes a kind of decolonization of dance and performance curricula in higher education.

The Other Themes section is formed, in turn, by three instigating works that, in effect, relate to different themes.

The first one is called “Poetics of the body in the artistic creation in Marina Abramović and Elke Hering” and is signed by Carla Carvalho, Leomar Peruzzo and Pedro Gottardi. The second is by Weslley Fontenele and is entitled “On not folklore the popular: reinterpreting popular cultures via Torquato Neto.” The issue closes with the article “Between illusion and theatricality: Rosalind Krauss, Michael Fried and minimalism” by Manoel Silvestre Friques.

Following on, Professor Gilberto Icle comments on the origins of the journal, the challenges to keep it up, the invitation to contribute to the Special Week on the SciELO Blog and the theme of the current edition.

Reference

MIGNOLO, W. Historias locales / diseños globales: colonialidad, conocimietos subalternos y pensamiento fronterizo. Madrid: Akal, 2003.

QUIJANO, A. Eurocentrismo y América Latina. In: LANDER, Edgardo (Org.). Colonialidad del saber y eurocentrismo. Buenos Aires: UNESCO-CLASCO, 2000. p. 122-1

To read the articles, access

Rev. Bras. Estud. Presença vol.8 no.4 Porto Alegre out./dez. 2018

External links

Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença – RBEP: www.scielo.br/rbep

About Gilberto Icle

Gilberto Icle

Gilberto Icle holds a PhD in Education from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. He is a tenured professor at the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and at the Postgraduate Program in Performing Arts at the Universidade de Brasília. He is a 1D productivity fellow at CNPq. e-mail: gilbertoicle@gmail.com