Dr Alejandro Flores

CSMCH-IASH Postdoctoral Fellow, 2021-22

Biography

Photo of Alejandro

Alejandro holds a Diplom soziologe (sociology) degree from the Freie Universität Berlin and a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin.   He works on a video-ethnography with indigenous former guerrillas from Maya-Ixil country (north-western Guatemala). This project has been supported by the Wenner-Gren’s Fejos Postdoc in Ethnographic Film. His research originated with an experience carried out with indigenous intellectuals and students from the Ixil-University, where he has been teaching ad honorem on visual methods, memory and history since 2015. Between 2015-2016, Alejandro developed a collaborative research project to carry out a reconstruction of memory from the perspective of Ixil elders who staged an armed revolt against the coffee-plantation economy in the 1970s and 1980s, when Guatemala’s counterinsurgent “scorched earth” policies were deployed.

His current project, Raised Gaze in Ixil Time: Towards a Minor History of War, builds upon that experience. Alejandro is working on an ethnographic film-essay, and structuring a hypertextual, multimedia memorial repertoire composed of video portraits—life stories of Maya-Ixil former guerrillas. The goal is to develop a comprehensive co-reconstruction of memory of indigenous rebellion in the Ixil territory that builds upon the transdisciplinary research he has been assembling in partnership with the Ixil University and the Ixil Ancestral Authorities. He explores how Ixil politicization processes were complex and multidirectional in terms of circulation and exchange, with non-indigenous actors, of world-building practices.

Research Interests

His research interests include transdisciplinary, decolonial, collaborative research methods, sensorial and visual anthropology of memory, Cold War—counterinsurgency—infrastructures, and indigenous—ontological—subversions.

Publications

Books

2020 Políticas Encandenantes: Sobre Cuerpos y Violencias en Centro América. CLACSO. Co-edited with Clara Arenas, Paula Fernández, Juan Pablo Gómez & Laura Sala

2014 Seguridad y Racismo: Pensamiento Crítico Centroamericano. Nicaragua: AVANCSO, CLACSO, INHCA. Co-edited with Clara Arenas and Juan Pablo Gómez.

2014 Sexo & Raza: Analíticas de La Blancura, el Deseo y la Sexualidad Guatemala: AVANCSO (coord.)

Articles

2021 Entre Ilom y el bicentenario. Revista Eutopía. Número especial del Bicentenario. Guatemala. Forthcoming

2020 Arquitecturas de abyección e inmunización en los nuevos ritmos de la vida cotidiana. Journal of Latin American Geography. 19(3) 314-322 doi:10.1353/lag.0.0142.

2020 Aseguramiento de lo sensible. Lenguaje, infraestructura y estética en la post-contrainsurgencia. En: “Políticas Encandenantes: Sobre Cuerpos y Violencias en Centro América”.

2018 Violencia originaria, Aporía y la apropiación del “No”: Francisco de Vitoria. Revista Eutopía, (5), 173–191.

2018 Defender la Sociedad. Textos para el Análisis y la Reflexión Política, (3), 8-24

2017 Doce viñetas sobre la seguridad: lugar y espacio de las élites capitalinas. Guatemala. In: Revista de Plaza Pública: Seguridad y Violencia, (4), 40-53.

2017 They didn’t win the war: Aesthetics and infrastructure in post- counterinsurgency Guatemala. Austin, TX. University of Texas at Austin. (Dissertation)

2016 Los retratos de estilo documental de Daniel Chauche: Hacia una fotografía no-representacional. Revista de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, (33), 5-13.

2016 Lo político: más allá de la construcción (inter)mediática de la política. Cifras y Voces, Perspectivas de Cambio en la Sociedad Guatemalteca. Pgs. 109-114.

2016 Lo popular. Una alternativa al elitismo y al populismo. In Plaza Pública. Retrieved from: https://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/lo-popular-una-alternativa-al-elitismo-y-al-populismo.

2016 Primavera 2015 y la crisis de la izquierda guatemalteca. De la democrática despolitización de las protestas a una política del deseo. En: Revista del Itsmo #31 (Guatemala, 2015: (Pre)sintiendo el futuro). Retrieved from: http://istmo.denison.edu/n31/articulos/03_flores_alejandro_form.pdf

2016 Notas mínimas sobre la primavera 2015: Liberalismo político, democracia y despolitización. Estudios Digital Numero Especial. Retrieved from: http://sitios.usac.edu.gt/revistahistoria/index.php?id=149

2015 Contrainsurgencia, lo humano y el aseguramiento de lo sensible: lenguaje, infraestructura y estética. In: Cultura de Guatemala, Editorial Cara Parens Vol. I. (pp. 171-194).

2014 Ontología de la Raza y Racismo S&M. Guatemala: AVANCSO

2014 Tres semióticas de subjetivación: racismo deseante en Guatemala. In: Seguridad y Racismo: Pensamiento Crítico Centroamericano. Nicaragua: AVANCSO, CLACSO, INHCA.

2011 Autoridad, violencia y descolonizacion del pensamiento. Apuntes desde la sociologia y la filosofia politica, URL/UNESCO, Guatemala.

2010 Nacionalismo o descolonizacion de la imaginacion academica Introduccion a una genealogia del poder del enunciado en Guatemala. Boletin del AFEHC.

Conferences & Presentations

2021 Teorías Sociales, Luchas Territoriales, y Resistencias Ixiles ante las crisis globales. Session organizer & chair. LASA

2021 Tiempo y resistencias: Entre la infraestructura del horror, la guerra de guerrillas y el Tiichajil Tenam. Presenter: LASA

2019 Houses, Things, Biotopies and Cosmopolitics: Infrastructure and Capitalism in the Post-counterinsurgency. Sumer School, Violence and Social Conflict. LAI – Freie Universität Berlin.

2019 Discussant for the book “el Pensar Decolonial Intercultural”, by Juan Blanco

2018 Necrotopías: infrastructures of dispossession and death in the post-counterinsurgency. CLASCSO Conference, Buenos Aires.

2018 Defender la Sociedad: Violencia de Estado entre el derecho penal del enemigo y la justicia premial. Semana Científica URL.

2017 Foundations of the community: a dialog between the gift theory and Heidegger’s ontology. Discussant for the book: “Comunar”, by Professor Amilcar Dávila.

2017 Social imaginaries, the media and the political. Round table: hegemonic power, social imaginaries and the media, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.

2016 AAA Conference. Writing History with Light at Round Table: Writing with Light Collective.

2015 CLACSO Conference: Infrastructures in the post-counterinsurgency: Security and affective labor in urban Guatemala.

2015 CLACSO Conference: A summary of Guatemala’s 2015 protests.

2012 CLACSO Conference: La Violencia de los Muertos: Guatemala Después de la Masacre de Totonicapan.

2011 Abriendo Brecha VIII: Activist Scholarship Conference: Activist research, social struggles and political organizations in times of neoliberal desire: AVANCSO and Plataforma Agraria.

2011 Is Ethics Possible? Discussant for the book: “La subversion ética de nuestra Realidad by Andres Perez Baltodano.

2010 Cartografía y Filosofía Latinoamericana. Discussant for the book: “Cartografía del Pensamiento Latinoamericano contemporáneo: una introducción” by Juan Blanco.

2009 The Social Construction of Racism and the Secret of Creole-Whiteness Among the Guatemalan Political Hegemony, Maya studies Congress URL, Guatemala.

2009 Introduction to the Analytics of Racism: How to Criticize Racist Ideology, Congreso de Estudios Mayas, Universidad Rafaél Landivar, Guatemala.

2009 Five Ideological Fantasies of the Racist Thinking: Comment to the book Mas que un Indio, by Professor Charles Hale.

Grants, Fellowships & Awards

2022 CSMCH-IASH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh

2020-2021 Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology, UT-Austin.

2020-2021 Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnographic Film, Wenner-Gren Foundation.

2016 Rhonda L. Andrews Memorial Fellowship Award (in recognition of academic excellence).

2015-2016 Wenner-Gren Dissertation Grant.

2013 Tinker Field Research Grant pre-dissertation research. Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

2012- 2014 Fulbright/LASPAU Ph.D grant.

2011-2014 Brot für die Welt, three-year research grant for the Social Imaginaries Team at the Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala.

2011-2015 Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO). Central America work group: Security and Racism in Central America. (2011-2012, extended for another two-year period 2013-2015).

External Profiles

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