Memories of mozambican elders from Chinhamapere

in search of “other” epistemologies, knowledge and narratives

Abstract

This article is the result of a dissertation developed in the Postgraduate Program in Public History at UNESPAR – Campo Mourão campus, whose structure was permeated by discussions  problematize the prevalence of colonialities of power and knowledge, inherited from the colonial system, which, even with administrative “independence,” continue to classify and exclude African knowledge and expertise, based on the geopolitics of Eurocentric knowledge. In this article, we focus on questioning  the colonialities (Quijano, 2005) that continue the colonial project by subordinating native knowledge and expertise and their protagonists, and, consequently, point out some possibilities of insurgency and overthrowing colonialities of knowledge through combative and resistant actions, which, in the context of the research, were established and concretized in the process of producing historical knowledge with “other” protagonists (elders) from the Chinhamapere community, through Benjaminian remembrance practices (1985). Listening attentively to memories allowed us to embrace knowledge and understanding produced daily in rural areas of the African continent that encompasses rationality and sensitivity. This is a dialogic weaving with Mozambican elders in a production of historical knowledge to confront and combat the geopolitics of Eurocentric knowledge and in the search for “other” narratives.