In recent years, the global North has witnessed intensified calls to decolonize anthropology and reimagine knowledge making more broadly. This "decolonial turn" has spurred a surge in scholars, events, and projects that claim to be decolonial. Yet, amid this growing interest, what does it truly mean to decolonize knowledge making—especially in the current climate of decolonial bandwagonism, on the one hand, and demonization of decoloniality, on the other? Moreover, what does it mean to take seriously, within the context of our institutions in the global North, the critical assertion by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang that "decolonization is not a metaphor"? I confront these questions through my experiences as a Southern anthropologist and curator based in Germany. I focus in particular on the challenges and insights from my involvement with the Affect and Colonialism Web Lab and my research on the ethical and political ontology of photographs of violence and resistance to reflect on the (im)possibility of decolonizing our practice as anthropologists and curators working on and with media.

Short Bio

Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is a public anthropologist and curator working on social justice issues through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and multi-media knowledge transfer and praxis. Straddling academic, artistic, and activist practices, her work spans critical areas of memory, imagination, media and politics, political emotions, solidarity, ethics, and decoloniality. Through an interdisciplinary lens, she explores the intersections of these fields, seeking innovative approaches to investigate, theorize, and address pressing social issues, with a particular focus on processes and dynamics of dehumanization and rehumanization that underlie violence, inequalities, and resistance. Rosa has given numerous international workshops and lectures as well as published extensively on these topics, among which is the book Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges (2023), which she co-edited. She has also led initiatives and projects on engaged scholarship. Currently a substitute professor in public anthropology at the University of Bremen's Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research, Rosa has held teaching positions at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin's Institute of Asian and African Studies, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, and the University of the Philippines' Department of Anthropology and Department of Behavioral Sciences, and is an incoming guest professor on Gender and Diversity at Freie Universität Berlin's Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. She was also a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and an indigenous rights advocate for the NGO Anthropology Watch, Inc.