(Re)activations of Tricontinentalism in the Past and in the Present

Abstract

Remembering a Tricontinental Past was a one-day, online symposium held in April 2022, in no precise time or place. Inspired by the notion of tricontinentalism-solidarity and social movements based on the concept of a collective Latin American, Asian, and African identity-, the symposium set out to explore how different artefacts of the past, including testimonies, documents, photos, political ephemera, and repertoires of contention, are called upon in the present. We believe that the contents of such artefacts and the particular ways they are called upon matter when it comes to understanding the situated knowledges and collective identities of activism today. Understanding such artefacts, however, is no easy task: social movements employ a vast range of cultural practices and a universe of forms of expression through interactions, rhetoric, embodied modes of communication, and other signs and symbols. Ultimately, we were guided by the following three questions: How do we, as activists and researchers, approach these artefacts theoretically and methodologically? How do we locate, access, and collate artefacts that have been produced and exist within transnational and translocal spheres? And, how did activists of the past handle the visual and the textual differently, and how do activists of the present relate to them?