Published by Jester (formerly known as FLACC), the publication compiles the writings and research developed during the production of the film As Far As The World Reaches.
The essay navigates through themes related to museum studies, science fiction, Dutch Golden Age paintings, climate change denial and philosophy of science.
By concealing the subjectivity and the place of enunciation of the one who thinks, science detached knowledge from the geopolitical positioning of the bodies responsible for its production and dissemination. In this way, an illusion of neutrality was systematically created for what conventionally has become the standard universal point of view, meaning the point of view of the European coloniser, called “point zero” by Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez. In the name of universality other knowledges were denied, so that the bearers of reason became spokespeople for everyone. All manner of domination and violence arising from colonial expansion were thus justified and in time, as Ramón Grosfoguel pointed out, “we moved from the characterisation of ‘peoples without writing’ in the sixteenth century to that of ‘peoples without history’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ‘peoples without development’ in the twentieth century and more recently, ‘peoples without democracy’ in the twenty-first century.”
Colonial scientific expeditions such as the one led by Johan Maurits in Pernambuco therefore played a role that goes beyond their merely documentary character. They contributed to the foundation of a Eurocentric cultural hegemony and were complemented by subsequent museological practices, whose objective was to institutionally preserve and reproduce the ‘point zero’ of Western knowledge. Nowadays, European memory institutions find themselves hostage to mea culpas when confronted with their colonial pasts. Acrylic boxes pile up on reception desks requesting people to “leave your comment or suggestion here,” as a pacifying attempt to avoid getting rocks thrown at their vitrines. However, the attempts by European museums to incorporate dissonant narratives and open up to critique sometimes remind me of the strategy adopted by bus companies in Rio de Janeiro. Despite calamitous driving habits, each vehicle has a sticker on the back with a phone number and the protocolic – if not provocative – question: “How am I driving?”.
