“Nuestro norte es el sur”: Mapping Resistance and Resilience in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian studies.

The Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian regions have long been witness to great acts of resistance and resilience: from colonial heritage to democratization of the regions, the historical record is replete with widespread protests of abuses inflicted by the state and non-state actors, yet their open veins have not bled out. Many of the issues at stake in the resiliency of the regions are particularly visible in the context of globalization: from overlapping matters of ethnic and national identities in the cultural or political sphere, to neocolonialism in the economic sphere and gross imbalances of political power in the social sphere. SALALM 61’s theme will focus on the many ways in which individuals, organizations, institutions are facing globalizing trends in social, political, environmental and academic realms. Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies have proven resilient as a multi- and inter-disciplinary field, resisting direct assaults on its integrity by adapting and innovating. At stake in the resiliency of this field of area studies are matters of hegemony in North-South power dynamics, the rise of global and interdisciplinary studies, as well as the impact of the digital age on scholarship. In this framework, and borrowing from Joaquín Torres García, the title of the conference “Nuestro norte es el sur” is an invitation to consider and question the privileged position of the Global North in the academic discourse of the area, especially as that discourse engages with other disciplines against the background of global studies.

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