The Latin American Institute for Critical Animal Studies as a decolonial project

Iván Darío Ávila Gaitán
Orcid ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7318-4379
Universidad de los Andes, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Uniminuto
Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Críticos Animales – Ileca, Colombia
id.avila24@uniandes.edu.co / idavilag@unal.edu.co

Abstract:

This paper aims to introduce the Latin American Institute for Critical Animal Studies (Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Críticos Animales —Ileca—) as a decolonial project. In order to do that, a review of Critical Animal Studies and its pioneering promoter, the Institute for Critical Animal Studies —Icas—, is made. Then, Ileca and Icas are compared in terms of geopolitics and economic politics of knowledge, along with their individual approaches to Critical Animal Studies. Finally, several lines are drawn that aim to highlight Ileca’s infrastructural potential to have worlds, communities, and moving techno-bio-physical societies (made up by humans and non-humans) resound, and to rethink the concepts of criticism and animality.

Keywords: decoloniality, critical animal studies, critical theory.