Rolando Vázquez

Rolando Vázquez is Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Roosevelt and Cluster Chair at the University College Utrecht, both at the University of Utrecht. He is the author of Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary (2020). Together with Walter Mignolo he founded and co-directs since 2010 the annual Middelburg Decolonial Summer School now located at the Van Abbemuseum. He co-authored the report of the Diversity Commission for the University of Amsterdam in 2016 under the direction of Gloria Wekker. Through his work, he seeks to decolonize cultural and educational institutions beyond the dominant frameworks of contemporaneity, heteronormativity and coloniality. His research on the question of precedence and relational temporalities seeks to overcome the western critique of modernity and contribute to the ongoing efforts to decolonize knowledge, aesthetics and subjectivity. (2021)

Publications

Books

• Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial Aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary, Prinsenbeek, NL: Jap Sam Books, Jan 2020, 182 pp. Essay commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund as part of its essay series on current topics within visual arts and cultural heritage. Publisher. Book launch. Interview: Boven (Metropolis M). Reviews: Walsh (Art Monthly), Yakoub.

Journal issues

• editor, with Walter Mignolo, "Decolonial AestheSis", Social Text Online, Jul 2013. Dossier.
• co-editor, Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 20(3): "Decolonising the University", 2017.

Papers, essays, statements

• "Modernity Coloniality and Visibility: The Politics of Time", Sociological Research Online 14:4, Sep 2009. [1]

• "Questioning Presence: The Survival of the Past in Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt", Concordia 57, 2010, pp 57-74. [2]

• "Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Violence", Journal of Historical Sociology 24:1, Mar 2011, pp 27-44. [3]

• signatory, "Decolonial Aesthetics (I)", TDI+Transnational Decolonial Institute, 22 May 2011. Manifesto. Signed by Alanna Lockward, Rolando Vásquez, Teresa María Díaz Nerio, Marina Gržinić, Michelle Eistrup, Tanja Ostojić, Dalída María Benfield, Raúl Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet, Pedro Lasch, Nelson Maldonado Torres, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, Hong-An Truong, Guo-Juin Hong, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo and Walter Mignolo. [4] (English)
  • "Estetica decolonială (I). Un argument ca manifest", IDEA 39, Cluj: IDEA, 2011, pp 89-97. (Romanian)
  • "Estética(s) de/descoloniale(s) (I)", trans. Laura Judit Alegre, c.2013; repr. as "Apuntes sobre la formación y transformación del lado más oscuro de la modernidad: la colonialidad" in BE.BOP 2012-2014: El cuerpo en el continente de la conciencia negra, ed. Alanna Lockward, Buenos Aires: Del Signo, 2016. (Spanish)
  • "Estética Descolonial", contramare.net, 7 Jun 2017; repr. in Cultura: Jornal Angolano de Artes e Letras 152, Jan 2018, 9-11. (Portuguese)

• "Towards a Decolonial Critique of Modernity. Buen Vivir, Relationality and the Task of Listening", Capital, Poverty, Development, ed. Raúl Fornet-­Betancourt, Aachen: Wissenschaftsverlag Mainz, 2012, pp 241-­252. [5]

• with Rosalba Icaza, "Social Struggles as Epistemic Struggles", Development and Change 44:3, 2013, pp 683—704. [6]

• with Walter Mignolo, "Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings", Social Text Online: "Decolonial AestheSis", Jul 2013.
  • "EsteSica decoloniale. Ferite coloniali/riparazioni decoloniali", trans. Marta Calderaro, Psiche: rivista di cultura psicoanalitica 4:1, Jan-Jun 2017, pp 303-318. [7] (Italian)

• "Decolonial Practices of Learning", in Going Glocal in Higher Education. The theory, teaching and measurement of global citizenship, eds. J. Friedman, et al., Middelburg: UCR, 2015, pp 92-100.

• "El reto de decolonizar Europa", in BE.BOP 2012-2014: El cuerpo en el continente de la conciencia negra, ed. Alanna Lockward, Buenos Aires: Del Signo, 2016. (Spanish)

• "Precedence, Earth and the Anthropocene: Decolonizing Design", Design Philosophy Papers 15(1): "Design and the Global South", Mar 2017, pp 77-91. [8]

• with Daniel Brittany Chávez, "Predence, Trans* and the Decolonial", Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 22(2): "Tranimacies", Jun 2017, pp 39-45. [9]

• with Rosalba Icaza, "Diversity or Decolonization? Researching Diversity at the University of Amsterdam", in Decolonizing the University, eds. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu, Pluto Press, 2018, pp 108-128. [10] [11]

• with Hicham Khalidi, "A New Bauhaus? The Debate for a More Inclusive Europe", Rekto Verso, Jan 2021; repr., Eurozine, Feb 2021.

• more

Conversations, interviews

• Miriam Barrera Contreras, "Aesthesis decolonial y los tiempos relacionales. Entrevista a Rolando Vázquez", Calle14 11:18, Bogotá, Jan-Apr 2016, pp 76-93. Interview. (Spanish)

• with Leonie Ansems de Vries, et al., "Collective Discussion: Fracturing Politics (Or, How to Avoid the Tacit Reproduction of Modern/Colonial Ontologies in Critical Thought)", International Political Sociology 11:1, Mar 2017, pp 90-108. [12]
  • "Fracturer la politique. Ou comment éviter la reproduction tacite des ontologies modernes/coloniales dans la pensée critique", trans. Clara Lecadet and Isabelle Saint-Saëns, Vacarme 88, 2019, pp 4-37. (French)

• Kunstlicht (Aline Hernández and Rosa te Velde), "From Globalizing Towards Decolonizing: Art History and The Politics of Time. Interview with Rolando Vázquez", Kunstlicht 39:1, 2018, pp 98-105. [13]

• Carolina Rito, "‘What We Know Is Built on Erasure’. Interview with Rolando Vázquez", The Contemporary Journal 1, Nottingham Contemporary, Jan 2019.

• Rosa Wevers, "Decolonial Aesthesis and the Museum: An Interview with Rolando Vázquez Melken", Stedelijk Studies 8: "Towards a Museum of Mutuality", Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Spring 2019.

• Carolina Rito, "Critical Practices Talks #7 with Rolando Vázquez", Coventry University, Mar 2021, 55 min, Video.

• Michael Dieminger, "Translation as Erasure. Conversation with Rolando Vázquez", in Das Museum Sem Nenhum Caráter: Resisting the Universal, eds. Michael Dieminger and Thaís Mayumi Pinheiro, Rio de Janeiro: Goethe-Institut, 2022, pp 58-71.

Links

• Profile on Utrecht U