Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance

"From pre-Columbian Inca stone architecture, through colonial paintings and rituals, and continuing in 20th- and 21st-century Andean photography and painting, Omar Rivera uncovers a lineage of conceptions of cosmologies as they have been expressed aesthetically in Andean philosophical traditions. In discovering this lineage, Rivera manifests a conception of the cosmos that is organized according to elemental orders-of earth, light, and water in particular-and that underlies social forms. By providing the first aesthetic analysis of indigenous cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring two essential and interrelated concepts in Latin American decolonizing philosophies: racial embodiment and resistance. This systematic study of Andean cosmologies creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, theorists in Latin American thought and Anglo-American philosophers. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers such as María Lugones, Linda Martín Alcoff and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling our understanding of decolonial theory and opening the tradition as never before."--