In barely three decades, reports about the state of the world went from the euphoric “end of history” to the rather gloomy “end of humanity”. In between, globalization exerted an unprecedented pressure on natural resources, accelerating the Anthropocene, and tested local political and social arrangements. The Last Workshop analyses the manifold ways in which the idea of the end of the world materialized in Latin America.
What is the end? The Last Workshop is a conversation about different ends of different worlds in the social, cultural, natural, economic, historic and labor realms. The dialogue is organized around three broad clusters.
Upheavals: Historical and contemporary political and social manifestations seeking to put an end to a world, from rebellion to revolution and counter-revolution, wars, insurrections and renewed forms of coercion. Indigenous notions of “ends” and “worlds” throughout history.
Resources: Reflections about the Anthropocene and human pressure exerted over non-human nature, ushering in an era of unprecedented ends, tightly linked to the explosion of global trade and the liberalization of economic relations. Latin America during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a laboratory for a liberal reconfiguration of work and nature.
Voices: Literary and cultural representations of the end of the world and its evolution throughout history, focusing not only on human experience but on efforts to make non-human natures exposure to the end of the world intelligible.