Oris Jesús Donoso-Agudo
idu044519@usal.es Universidad de Salamanca, España
Abstract:
This article challenges the epistemological grounds of Panamanian historiography in the 20th century, as built according to European positivist paradigm, and proposes a decolonial approach: Afro-descendant aesthesial history. We argue that the Panamanian historiographic canon has operated as a symbolic whitening device by turning archive into the only legitimate source of knowledge, excluding oral, bodily, and emotional memories of Afro-descendant peoples. Drawing from a dialogue with social history as viewed from the grassroots of society, decolonial thinking, and the philosophical notion of aesthesia, we argue that sense perception, inherited pain, and collective memory are—in situated and heterogenous ways— legitimate ways to get historical knowledge. This article concludes that decolonizing Panamanian historiography calls for expanding their epistemological boundaries to integrate sensing as a source of knowledge and acknowledging Afro-descendant individuals as the authors of their own memory.
Keywords: historiography, Afro-descendant people, decoloniality, aesthesia, collective memory, Panama.
