Event details

Colonialism and its enduring iterations continue to shape the contours of everyday life. From ongoing genocides and the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism entwined with White supremacist and misogynistic ideologies to the ceaseless devastation of ecosystems, we are confronted with an unsettling question: Where to escape? This lecture moves beyond conventional interpretations of fugitivity—often dismissed as avoidance or an inability to face a problem—to engage with the radical legacies and living knowledge of quilombo. Historically, quilombos emerged through acts of refusal and fugitivity by Afro-diasporic subjects who escaped plantations and forged new ways of living together in defiance of colonial slavery in the territory now known as Brazil. Reading colonial archives and legal reports against the grain, this lecture reframes quilombo tactics not merely as historical ruptures that sabotaged the colonial order but as enduring forces of generative redress and world-making otherwise in the afterlives of slavery. Challenging the boundaries of disciplinary scholarship, this work engages critical Black studies, Indigenous epistemologies, and legal studies to learn with quilombo’s vital technologies for imagining collective resistance in catastrophic times.

Isadora Moura Mota, Assistant Professor of History , will serve as the discussant.