The poetics of Relation and cities: perspective for a decolonial urbanism

Abstract

This essay is a theoretical-conceptual construction that problematizes the notions of modernity and coloniality in the urban context. It is a confrontation between elaborations regarding colonial and hegemonic ideas and urban practices, as well as the reflections of the Martinican thinker Édouard Glissant regarding blackness and Afro-diasporic culture, illustrated, above all, in notions such as Relation, creolization, and nomadism. The objective is to relate to the urban field concepts and references that lead to the problematization of the notions of modernity, coloniality and decoloniality; and the role of subjectivities before the phenomena of subordination. As a result, we realize that Glissant's ideas, which are dedicated to reflecting on the effects of colonization and the transformative possibilities that emerge from the relationships of an identity that is permanently displaced towards the Other, offer clues to tension the field of urbanism in a historical perspective and its effects on present dynamics in colonized cities.