LACLxS Lecture: Arturo Chang

Description

Arturo Chang, an assistant professor of political theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, will be in conversation with Alonso Burgos, a doctoral student in the Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology, on "Indigenous Sovereignty and the Construction of Citizenship During Peru's Post-Independence Period." This event is hosted by the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLxS) and the Department of Political Science.

During the Age of Revolutions (c.1775-1830), people living in the Americas witnessed the emergence of hemispheric republicanism as a tool for dismantling colonial powers in the region. From the U.S. to Argentina, Pan-American discourses centered on shared experiences of subjection, popular sovereignty, and the novel conditions of the so-called New World to envision varied conceptions of postcolonial emancipation. This lecture situates this discursive and political phenomenon from the other side of the same coin—namely, as a potentially assimilationist and regulatory enterprise which both adopted and problematized its links to imperial power. I suggest that this facet of hemispheric republicanism is most apparent in the 19th-century Andes, where Indigenous communities held long-standing avenues for making sovereign claims on material, social, and landed interest, which in turn led them to reject the project of Pan-American emancipation. As such, this lecture contends that studies of Andean republicanism must account for the convergence and contention of Indigenous, American, and nationalized citizenship as competing postcolonial standpoints, as well as their precarious reconciliation in the nation-building project.

Arturo Chang's research focuses on postcolonial thought, decolonial politics, and comparative political theory. Within these areas, he centers on Indigenous studies, revolutionary movements, nation-building, and race and ethnicity in the Americas. He is currently working on his book, 'New World' Nation-Building: Hemispheric Revolution and the Postcolonial Dimensions of American Political Thought, which examines the importance of hemispheric vernaculars among Indigenous, Black, and Mestizo revolutionaries conceptualizing nation-building projects throughout the Americas.