Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond)

#8 2025 Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 1 LEON GABRIEL Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) The quest for Indigenous epistemologies has gained increasing importance in the arts over recent years – even more so regarding the challenges of the Anthropocene and the climate catastrophe. This article dives into the ambivalence of visibility as a core element of the Anthropo(s)cene and asks for the promises, assumptions, and desires at play in the search for non-Western thought. It brings together several scenes where the resurgence of ways of thinking that have long been over-looked by those living in the colonial metropoles connects with political struggles. How can disavowed epistemologies be taken seriously, beyond a (once again) mere appropriation and Othering? Aesthetics Anthropo(s)cene Coloniality Contact Zone Epistemic Critique Performative Arts Post-/Colonialism Situated Knowledges Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 2 Introduction Knowledge is never innocent. At the heart of our current planetary crisis lies an order of viewing, thinking and knowing the world as something to consume – “epistemic-political processes”1 that way too often seem natural. As this entanglement becomes more and more apparent today, an urge for ‘other epistemologies’ can be observed, especially in the humanities and the arts: ways of engaging with humans, animals, more-than-humans and environments which are not forms of mere appropriation.2 In this context, the traces and layers of other worldviews become evident, as they clash with the logic of the so-called developed world. Such other epistemologies have long been ignored by colonial modernity. As different and specific as they are, Indigenous forms of knowledge stand as encompassing cosmologies in close relation to the respective environment and the planet. These epistemologies can be called ancestral knowledge or ancestrality, as they are passed on from generation to generation. But this “memory of the elders” nevertheless “inspires today’s struggles”: “far from an intransigent attachment to the past, ancestrality stems from a living memory that orients itself to the ability to envision a different future”.3 Meanwhile those ways of relating to our surroundings and to planet earth indeed offer chances to change the dominant modes of thinking and to inhabit differently this planet; however, the newly arisen interest in them also bears downsides. Accordingly, my own knowledge is not innocent, either. It is clearly situated in and trained by academia of the Global North. Bearing this in mind, I visit several, seemingly heterogenous scenes in the following: from the South American Andes and the Peruvian Pacific coast to several artistic performances. One scene, the Peruvian north coast, is linked to my very own situated knowledge. It was here that my interest in overlooked, disavowed epistemologies started. My contribution stems from my limited perspective, and it must be understood as a critical view, albeit one coming from within Eurocentric thought which is simultaneously questioning the assumptions of Eurocentrism – even the assumption of contacting the alleged Other.4 The (In-)Visibility of Ancestral, Indigenous and Other Knowledge There has been a significant rise in interest regarding modes of seeing and experiencing the world ‘differently’ over recent years, not only in activism and academic discourse, but even in the daily news and pop culture. It is striking that in most cases, Indigenous life receives attention only when it gets in conflict with the industrialized, globalized world. Two examples: In May 2025, an American YouTuber trespassed on the strictly isolated North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean in order to make contact with the Indigenous population who have lived in self-imposed isolation for centuries. When this failed, he left a can of Coca-Cola on the beach. This outrageous case prompted an immediate Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 3 and enormous uproar on social media worldwide. In 2024, international newspapers widely reported about another so-called uncontacted peoples – the Mashco Piro in Peru, who, after being threatened by illegal loggers, started to contact the outer world after years of self-chosen isolation. Meanwhile, organisations such as Survival International have been warning for years that Indigenous peoples are being threatened and deprived of their livelihoods – such as the Mbuti and Baka in Central Africa as a result of massive deforestation, but also shockingly due to what have been termed Ecological National Parks.5 In the arts, many recent exhibitions and biennales feature or are even fully dedicated to Indigenous artists. As a very prominent and important example, the magnificent photo exhibition Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle, about the fight of the Yanomami people against their extinction in Brazil, toured the world with great press coverage and public interest.6 As the unknown corners of our planet become smaller, the alleged Others of modernity become more visible. Given the fact that the lives of Indigenous population groups have been threatened and erased for centuries, at least, their cry for attention through different platforms, also through art, is gaining a certain recognition today. The threat to the environment, animals and people coincide here: incidentally, the United Nations considers Indigenous peoples to be stewards of biodiversity as they live in ecologically abundant territories. Most of these steps of making-visible certainly should be welcomed (not the aggressive, intrusive ones of some Youtubers of course!); after all, there is a long tradition of making Indigenous fights for land, recognition and rights disappear. Even their participation in modernity itself was erased a long time ago. But a double understanding is necessary here regarding the interest in – and especially the making-visible of – Indigenous peoples and their struggles: Both an appreciation as well as at the same time a certain amount of caution. One core problem considers the fact that visibility is linked with colonial modernity, as I will discuss further on. Besides fine arts, the necessary caution also considers the field of theatre and performance where the abovementioned interest is particularly evident. As important as many artistic projects are, the generalized emphasis of non-Western ways of thinking is ambivalent. Overall, artistic productions and exhibitions relating to ‘Indigenous stories’ are currently in demand in Europe. Thus, political struggles and marginalised voices are certainly gaining visibility. This is legitimate and important considering the threat to Indigenous peoples, but it should raise question marks when it comes to merely proclaiming something like an ‘Indigenous turn’ in the arts (yet another buzzwordy turn that I heard some colleagues mention recently). The program-directors of prominent European theatres, festivals and biennales, even of the controversial Humboldt Forum in Berlin, have recognised that the plethora of different Indigenous worldviews are appealing nowadays that living on an unequally shared planet is perceived as overly complex. The sometimes-undifferentiated interest in ‘the’ Indigenous as something assumed Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 4 to be the total opposite of modernity’s discontents is questionable: Whereas the industrialized and especially Western world is being seen as sick, its Other is assumed to be natural, wholesome, and sane. To be clear, my critique does neither consider singular artistic productions that engage with specific forms of knowledge, nor the important fight for recognition and sovereignty by the people of First Nations. My concern is rather that trends in contemporary art pass by at breakneck speed and that all-too-often, art institutions participate in the extraction of resources and ideas. What gets left behind are the political issues that are being addressed: These are, first and foremost, the end to the violence perpetrated against Indigenous people, the recognition of their land rights, and the reconciliation of their historical oppression. But this form of extraction can become a point of reflection itself: At the moment of finalising this contribution, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris is hosting the encompassing exhibition Amazônia. Créations et futurs autochtones by anthropologist Leandro Varison and Indigenous activist/artist Denilson Baniwa. The exhibition is one of several contemporary attempts to not work about Indigenous people, but together with (accordingly, Claudia Andujar worked in close relation with the Yanomami and especially one of their spokespersons, Davi Kopenawa). Also, the exhibition Amazônia aims to show the Amazon not as ‘untouched’, but as formed by cultural practices; as at once an environment to protect as well as a zone of cultural exchange. For example, the photo-collages by Denilson Baniwa himself address objectification and extraction by mixing historical material with motifs from contemporary pop culture, especially from fictions about ‘alien contact’. FIG. 1 Denilson Baniwa, Caçadores De Ficções Coloniais , 2021, photo. FIG. 2 Denilson Baniwa, Contatos Imediatos de Terceiro Grau , 2021, photo. Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 5 FIG. 3–6 Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, AMAZÔNIA. Créations et futurs autochtones , 0/09/2025–18/01/2026, exhibition view. The Ambivalences of Decolonial Discourse With good reason, the historic and ongoing modes of objectifying living beings and things for their most often intertwined exploitation are being problematised today. This concerns, for example, the colonial heritage of archives or as mentioned the different forms of extractivism, as well as the very mode of scopic knowledge. Therefore, the universality of Western knowledge is being criticised and former ‘peripheric’ epistemes/epistemologies are being highlighted. Especially so-called Indigenous “ways of knowing”7 and cosmologies have been emphasised increasingly over the last decades, particularly those from the Amazon region as the world’s largest and highly endangered rainforest.8 Indeed, the importance of such approaches is undeniable as they search for change and trouble the status quo, but all too often, they are easily adopted into Western understandings of politics and society, without a deeper engagement with their more comprehensive philosophy. Examples from other regions of the world include the concepts of Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 6 ubuntu from Southern Africa and buen vivir (sumaq kawsay) from the Andes. Both are two of the most discussed, but also misunderstood and appropriated notions in this regard.9 The term ‘Indigenous’ is of course used as a description, also often in emancipatory ways. But at least partially, it carries a predicament. As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui criticises, the term often serves to demarcate those who seem to be living in a time bubble, supposedly unchanging, fixed in one place – in contrast to those who are mobile, part of modernity and have the possibility to change.10 But as Marisol de la Cadena formulates, a claimed “radical difference” is a political product and it “cannot be understood as the quality of an isolated Indigeneity, since there is no such thing: Indigeneity as a historical formation exists with the institutions of the nation-state.”11 As a historical as well as a critical figure, it is not separated from modernity. Thus, Indigenous does not describe an isolated quality. As it easily opens up “naturalized notions of difference”, the term must rather be understood “in relation to other discourses (like neoliberalism or modernity) and other categories (like gender or class)”.12 Indeed, in the case of isolated, so-called uncontacted communities, Indigenousness can refer to ways of life that, while not entirely without contact, have developed largely alongside colonial modernity – hence their radical, retrospective critical potential, for example with regard to the climate crisis, and the fascination they evoke. However, these cases are the exception rather than the rule. And even they have not remained entirely free of influence – such secluded communities are aware of the outside world and the extremely negative consequences of contact for them. Their seclusion is self-imposed due to the murder, disease, and exploitation that contact brought them. The Ivorian Beninese philosopher Paulin Hountondji proposed the term endogenous for a critical approach to Indigenous knowledges, referring to those positions that should not or cannot be reduced to a rigid traditionalism and are rather fed by heterogeneous sources: ancestral knowledge, as well as influences from contemporary conflicts. Thus, endogeneity rejects uniformed and ahistorical approaches as it opposes an “absolute interior” same as an “absolutely first origin”.13 Ultimately, Hountondji aimed for an understanding of solidarity. Engaging with ancestral knowledge while opposing an absolute first origin is therefore no contradiction, as also many artists prove. For example, the dance performance Combat des Lianes by Zora Snake (2025) is a project of solidarity between the Nku’ngang (Nkoungang) societies of Western Cameroon (where Zora Snake was born and raised) and the heavily threatened Baka people of the Forests of Eastern Cameroon. Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 7 FIG. 7–9 Zora Snake (and company), Combat des Lianes , 23/09/2025 (premiere), performance, Théâtre Wallonie Bruxelles. The performance is both a manifesto of resistance against deforestation with influences of contemporary HipHop dances and a ritual in homage to the Baka’s worship of the forest god Edzingui and their dances.14 The Anthropo(s)cene , the Planetary Condition, and the Claim for Visibility A central misunderstanding about the concept of the Anthropocene lies in the assumption of its generalisability. The Anthropocene discourse repeats the same fallacy that appears in talk of the global, as if the whole is represented in each of its parts. Rather, as the editors of this volume rightly emphasise in their introduction, the anthropo(s)cene consists of a multitude of scenes. And if we understand a scene as a fragment of a larger context, this fragment is not a miniature of the whole; one cannot zoom out and scale seamlessly. A scene is even a place that opens up a multitude of relationships to other locations. But it does so through its situatedness and specificity, not its general account. A scene is universal through its singularity. Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 8 Our present is characterised by what I, referring the distinction between the global and the planetary coined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, would describe as the planetary condition:15 the two-fold figure of one planet and many worlds at the same time. We are thrown back to living on a shared planet, but we are very unequally affected by the effects of its human-made destruction. Simultaneously, despite this situation, plural worlds are also opening up, offering different perspectives on how to relate to the planet. The anthropo(s)cene thus consists of a multitude of connected, but also partly contradictory, places. These scenes are affected differently by the consequences of the human-induced climate catastrophe and destruction. Many of these scenes are characterised by the conflict between ‘enlightened’ modernity with its promises for the future and that which has long been overlooked or excluded. Marisol de la Cadena calls this the “Anthropo-NotSeen”.16 This term encompasses both the historical exclusion or even extinction of those who did not fit into a very narrow category of ‘the human’, as well as the “disobedient” practices of those resisting the divide between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. For de la Cadena, “the not-seen does not mainly refer to a regime of visibility”,17 whereas I want to emphasise the connection that colonial modernity and visibility have maintained for so long. This brings me back to the dilemma in the attempt to create visibility. To put it bluntly, visibility is not just a part of racial and colonial modernity but is at its core. Racialisation and capitalist exploitation do not precede or follow each other but go together in the same way. ‘Human differences’ are therefore not first determined and then exploited – nor are they fabricated after exploitation. Similarly, it does not begin with the birth of capitalism followed by the construction of racial categories.18 Rather, both forms of exploitation and subjugation are mutually dependent; value is being produced through differences as well as subjection, creating a permanent structure of debt.19 This approach can be taken further: the exhibition of racialised people by human zoos, for example, is also not something that comes after the creation of exploitation. Rather, such visualisations of human differences are precisely at the core of subjugating people – exploitation is bound do ‘doing differences’ and ‘doing differences’ is bound to exploitation.20 What this means, however, is that the mere making-visible of Indigenous struggles alone, without questioning its means, remains for better or worse bound to the structure of difference and subjugation in its very own representation. Strategically, it can be a relevant choice to set aside this inherent ambivalence: In order to stop the killing of threatened people and the destruction of for example the Amazon, any means are more than valid. But epistemically, it also makes sense to question the very registers of experiencing the world, the ‘directed’, colonial, extractive gaze that might be even still inherent in benevolent forms of exhibition. Furthermore, it makes sense to test out modes of perception that deviate from the directed mode of experiencing the world – Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 9 other forms of seeing, but also to listen, touch, smell, etc. in non-directed ways. An example for questioning the gaze and engaging with different forms of experience is the performance The Vortex Nukak (La Voragine más alla) by Colombian collective Mapa Teatro, in co-creation with members of the Nukak people from the Amazon (2024). FIG. 10–11 Mapa Teatro, The Vortex Nukak (La Voragine más alla) , 09/10/2024 (premiere of original version, Bogotá), performance, Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac (2025-version). The performance invites the audience to question viewing habits and thus their own way of thinking. On the one hand, it takes the novel La Voragine by José Eustasio Rivera Salas from 1924 as a basis for a fabulation on the Amazon, but on the other hand, it undermines a mere projection onto the Indigenous peoples: the view is thwarted through gauze walls and the performance increasingly transitions into a deeply moving ancestral song by the Nukak performers. As the performance explores, different modes of knowledge can come into contact with each other. My task in the following chapter is to underline such moments of friction with an example that comes from my very own situated experience. A Situated Approach to Local Knowledge I am a white scholar from Germany, trained in western academia, working on pluriversal epistemologies in the arts. For my research, the question how to approach a position that I cannot assume to ‘inhabit’ or even ‘possess’ is crucial. I am convinced, that the ethics of research involve a questioning of the own standpoint, but especially an investigation of the moment where my own knowledge is being challenged. This results from a very formative personal experience: In 2004/2005, I lived and worked in the Peruvian coastal city Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 16 But a second level is added. Cruz asks his mother repeatedly for forgiveness (“Perdon!”) for having become part of the art system just by his accusations of art itself. And as the art world incorporates his very accusations and sacrificial gestures, this contradiction ultimately leads to Cruz’s monologue finally falling silent after about an hour. There is nothing more to say. The performance rejects the assumption that Indigenous peoples can only create nice-looking art but are not able to analyse their political reality themselves. Also, Soliloquío asks what place a racialised body can have in white art spaces if it is in turn consumed by the apparatus. Thus, the performance not only reflects on the struggle to become visible as a racialised body in racialised structures, but also the unavoidable impasse of searching for visibility itself as it is linked to exploitation. What can be taken away from Soliloquío, so to speak, through the silencing of the performer, if it is not exclusively about conquering places of visibility? There is indeed a hidden knowledge that the performance offers us: Tiziano’s monologue is an artful, poetic text that carries an ambivalent process of mourning, farewell and melancholy (of the internal migrant). At the same time, it reveals a deep connection with what characterises life in the village in seemingly small details: the blossom of the peach trees, bread in the clay oven, broken nutshells, flies in the soup, sheep gathered on the roof of the house in fear of wolves. All of this is mentioned with great warmth but not formed into a harmonious whole; the desire to encounter an intact world of closeness to nature is not granted. Rather, we hear about the traces of such a relationship to those things that surround us. However, this relationship to the world cannot be detached from the political grievances it finds itself in. Conclusion: Contradictory Identities Beyond Possession To conclude, I want to return to the caution that I mentioned in my introduction about the proclamation of other epistemologies by art institutions, especially about Indigenous epistemologies, and – building on the struggle for and impasse of visibility laid out in Soliloquío – make a claim for contradictions. Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 17 Rivera Cusicanqui pleads for the recognition that, firstly, Indigeneity must not consist of a sharp demarcation (against modernity); rather, it means the simultaneity of tradition and participation in modernity, thus a productive contradictory state of being. Secondly, she calls to recognise that there is always a political struggle behind what is described as Indigenous and that this is easily overlooked or ignored.42 At the heart of the confrontation with other knowledge is always an epistemic cut that has previously been made invisible. But there also exists the epistemic cut in the engagement with other epistemologies, which is then – in the ‘rediscovery’ – decoupled of political and social distortions in order to be harmonised. FIG. 20 Graffiti by artist Mundano in São Paulo. Painted with the ashes of forests destroyed by the company Cargill inc.43 What I hope to have made clear with regard to the performances analysed here and to the work of José María Arguedas is that there are alternatives to this epistemic cut – for example, by relating to the struggle for social justice. Considering the desire for stable positions and un-alienated identities, to radically challenge dominant modes of thinking entails complex, interwoven identities and thus asks us to deeply question the very understanding of ourselves – of subjectivity, possession and commonality. Marisol de la Cadena has famously elaborated on earth-beings and the state of the ayllu in Andean cosmology as a political onto-epistemology. Ayllu encompasses beings that are related instead of being isolated on their own. Earth-beings, also called tirakuna (for example, mountains) “compose what we Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 18 call the surrounding landscape”.44 But they do so not as separated entities; they are contradictory and ambiguous through their way of mutual affection with runakuna (humans). Different beings “activate each other as persons”.45 Thus, tirakuna and runakuna are both “not only” the landscape or humans respectively: they are earth-beings, but not only; and human, but not only.46 They are more and other at the same time. They are both part of ayllu as a relational mode. “[T]hey are inherently connected composing the ayllu of which they are part and that is part of them […]”.47 The decisive point about de la Cadena’s decade-long exchange with Andean communities is: one cannot voluntarily opt for such an epistemology (an assumption that de la Cadena explicitly contradicts). A ‘modern’ thinker remains in a modern epistemology. And such forms of being-with-the-world are environmental forms of thinking that go beyond a self-possessive identity that assumes to (potentially) appropriate anything. Instead of constructing otherness or even assuming to fully inhabit situated forms of knowledge that have been overlooked for a long time, we should engage with the friction between the “evolutionist development paradigm”,48 that we in the colonial metropoles have been exclusively informed of for so long, and the worldviews that focus on relations and relatability. Those frictions are already here. They arise in the contact zones or “force fields” of the Anthropo(s)cene.49 The search for other epistemologies involves the acceptance of contradictions, without again making it an academic virtue to just embrace any contradiction. The research undertaken for this contribution was conducted by the author as a white, cis-male, non-bodily disabled, German scholar who benefits from many privileges – up to a comprehensive research funding by the German Research Council (DFG) as part of the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence. Transnational Theatre Between Global South and North (Project number: 508024718). I am deeply grateful to the artists, activists, local guides and researchers whose work enabled my research in the first place. Please cite as follows: Leon Gabriel: “Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond).” In: INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries, no. 8, Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene, 2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17771758. This contribution is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-ND License 4.0 International (Creative Commons, Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivatives). The reuse of material from other sources may require further authorizations for use by the respective copyright holders. NOTES 1 De la Cadena 2010, p. 334. 2 The use of the term ‘other’ as a marker of difference from the hegemonic forms of knowledge is indeed problematic: It produces difference and stabilizes the norm. Even though using the expression ‘other’ (such as in ‘other worldviews’), I aim to keep this problematic side in mind. 3 Escobar 2016, p. 19. 4 I thank Balindile ka Ngcobo and Felipe dos Santos Boquimpani for our discussions on the topic of this article. 5 See Survival International, no date. 6 See Andujar/Nogueira 2020. 7 See Tuhiwai Smith 1999; Kimmerer 2013; Jamail/Rushworth 2024. 8 See Viveiros de Castro 2014; Krenak 2020; de Niemeyer Cesarino 2023; Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 19 Kopenawa/Albert 2023. 9 See Praeg 2014; Solón 2017. 10 Cf. Rivera Cusicanqui 2012, p. 99. 11 De la Cadena 2019a, p. 38, trans. by Leon Gabriel, italics in original. 12 Fabricant/Postero 2017, p. 140. 13 Hountondji 1997, p. 18. Cf. Dübgen/Skupien 2019, p. 77. As Dübgen and Skupien underline regarding the cultural nationalism of African liberation struggles in the 1960s: “Proponents of cultural nationalism constructed identities which had never existed in this pure form, such as ‘whiteness,’ ‘blackness,’ or ‘authenticity.’ The related narratives of return embraced ‘black authenticity,’ which expressed a desire for a lost age where immutable laws governed peaceful social interaction.” Ibid., p. 138. 14 The performance is also inspired by the author Dénètem Touam Bona’s work Sagesse des Lianes. Cosmopoétique du refuge, 1 , 2021. 15 Cf. Spivak 1999, p. 49, 79. 16 De la Cadena 2019b. 17 Ibid., p. 40. 18 Cf. Ferreira da Silva 2017, p. 98. 19 Cf. Ferreira da Silva 2022, pp. 66–70. 20 Cf. Balibar 2025, pp. 209–210. See for the racial regime of aesthetics as constitutive of the modern world: Bradley 2023, pp. 14–17. 21 Rivera Cusicanqui 2015, p. 98. 22 See Gabriel 2026. 23 Arguedas 2006, p. 58, trans. by Leon Gabriel. 24 See also Valero Juan 2012; Briceño 2023. 25 The Huarochirí Manuscript 1966 [1598?]. 26 Arguedas 2006, p. 64. 27 See Marcone 2014. 28 Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018, p. 20. 29 Spivak 2012. 30 Spivak 1993, p. 267. 31 See Táíwò 2023. 32 See de Sousa Santos 2014. 33 Mignolo/Walsh 2018. 34 Cf. Kastner 2022, pp. 157–162. 35 Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018, p. 26. 36 Rivera Cusicanqui analyses the case of Evo Morales in Bolivia, who focused his political campaign “on notions of sovereignty and dignity”, Rivera Cusicanqui 2015, p. 89. 37 Vergès 1997, p. 580. 38 Ibid., p. 593; see also pp. 594–595. 39 Rivera Cusicanqui 2012, p. 98. 40 Cf. ibid., p. 105. 41 Ibid., pp. 106–107. 42 Cf. Ibid., p. 101. 43 More information: https://burninglegacy.org/stop/ 44 De la Cadena 2015, p. xix. 45 De la Cadena 2014, p. 257, italics in original. 46 Ibid. 47 De la Cadena 2015, p. 44. 󰾬󰾬󰾬󰾬󰾬󰾬󰾬 48 Rivera Cusicanqui 2015, p. 98. 49 On “force fields”, see Pratt 2022, p. 135. BIBLIOGRAPHY Claudia Andujar/Thyago Nogueira: La Lutte Yanomami . Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, 2020. José María Arguedas: El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo . Caracas: el perro y la rana, 2006. Étienne Balibar: “Intersektionalität und anthropologische Differenzen.” In: Etienne Balibar: Rasse, Geschlecht, Gattung. Zur Frage der anthropologischen Differenzen . Berlin: Suhrkamp 2025, pp. 181–226. Rizvana Bradley: Anteaesthetics. Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Ximena Briceño: “Animal.” In: Jens Andermann/Gabriel Giorgi/Victoria Saramago (eds.): Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics . 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Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2014. Mary Louise Pratt: Planetary Longings . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022909. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: “Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization.” In: The South Atlantic Quarterly , vol. 111, no. 1, Winter 2012, pp. 95–109, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1472612. —: “Strategic Ethnicity, Nation, and (Neo)colonialism in Latin America.” In: Alternautas , vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 81–107, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31273/alternautas.v2i2.1018. —: Un mundo ch'ixi es posible. Ensayos desde un presente en Crisis . Buenos Aires: Tinta Limon, 2018. Pablo Solón (ed.): Alternativas Sistémicas . La Paz: Fundación Solón/Attac France/Focus on the Global South, 2017. Boaventura de Sousa Santos: Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide . Boulder/London: Paradigm, 2014. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization . Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2012. —: Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten. Imperative to Re-Imagine the Planet . Vienna: Passagen, 1999. —: “Reading The Satanic Verses .” In: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Outside in the Teaching Leon Gabriel Ancestrality as an Answer to the Anthropo(s)cene? The Promises of Indigenous Epistemologies (in the Arts and Beyond) INSERT Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries 21 Machine . London/New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 244–272. Olúfémi Táíwò: Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously . London: Hurst, 2023. Dénètem Touam Bona: Sagesse des Lianes. Cosmopoétique du refuge, 1 . Paris: Postéditions, 2021. Linda Tuhiwai Smith: Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples . London/New York: Zed Books, 1999. Eva Valero Juan: “Y Chimbote es el Perú. La Construcción Mítica de la Ciudad Costeña en El Zorro De Arriba Y El Zorro De Abajo .” In: América sin nombre , no. 17, 2012, pp. 95–103. Françoise Vergès: “Creole Skin, Black Mask: Fanon and Disavowal.” In: Critical Inquiry , vol. 23, no. 3, Spring 1997, pp. 578–595, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/448844. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: Cannibal Metaphysics: For a Post-Structural Anthropology . Trans. by Peter Skafish, Minneapolis: Univocal, 2014 [2009]. CREDITS Fig. 1 & 2: Courtesy of Nelson Baniwa/Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. © Nelson Baniwa. Fig. 3–6: Courtesy of Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. © Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Photos Léo Delafontaine Fig. 7–9: Courtesy of Zora Snake/Theatre National Wallonie Bruxelles. © Zora Snake/Theatre National Wallonie Bruxelles. Photos: Marin Dringuez. Fig. 10: Courtesy of Mapa Teatro. © Rolf Abderhalden. Fig. 11: Courtesy of Mapa Teatro. © Ricardo Rodriguez. Fig. 12 & 20: Courtesy of Leon Gabriel. © Leon Gabriel. Fig. 13: Public domain, BDH (Biblioteca Nacional de España: Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, http://bdh.bne.es/). Fig. 14 & 16: Courtesy of Tiziano Cruz. © Tiziano Cruz. Photos: Diego Astarita. Fig. 15: Courtesy of Tiziano Cruz. © Tiziano Cruz. Photo: Humberto Araujo. Fig. 17–19: Courtesy of Tiziano Cruz. © Tiziano Cruz. Photos: Matías Gutiérrez. AUTHOR Leon Gabriel is Junior Professor of Theatre Studies with a focus on transnational theatre at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum, where he leads the Emmy Noether Group Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence: Transnational Theatre Between Global South and North . Research and teaching focuses include theatre and globalisation, politics of representation, spatial arts, (de-)coloniality, forms of assembly, artistic working methods, and critiques of racism, as well as antisemitism. His monograph is entitled Bühnen der Altermundialität. Vom Bild der Welt zur räumlichen Theaterpraxis (Neofelis, 2021). His most recent articles include: “Wandering Through the Smell of the Capitalocene: Landscapes of Waste and the Remains of the Future in the Peruvian City of Chimbote” (2026) and “Infrastrukturelle Dramaturgien: Ästhetische Relationen im Nachleben der Gewaltgeschichte” (2023).