Paper short abstract:

The paper explores what a decolonial, post-humanist aesthetics may constitute. It takes female domestic drawings in Tamil Nadu and the performative engagement with an indigenous understanding of matter it entails as focal point and references the work of de Santos Sousa and Deleuze & Guattari.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores what a decolonial, post-humanist epistemology that engages performatively with an indigenous understanding of matter may constitute, taking the female, pan-Indian tradition of drawing threshold as focal point. The traditional domestic visual practice which is carried out twice daily by Indian house wives in front of their homes and other buildings, has been marginalized by the hegemonic understanding of art in the Global North as well as the post-colonial nation state of India. This disregard demonstrates the effects of what the sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has termed the 'epistemological cartography' of the abyssal . Created by the 'abyssal line', a metaphorical boundary which divides social reality into zones of visibility and invisibility, it positions 'Western' hegemonic knowledge on the side of the visible, while other life practices based on popular, plebeian, peasant and indigenous knowledges are relegated to its other, invisible side. For de Sousa Santos the present-day challenge is to develop post-abyssal conceptual and cultural frameworks that bridge the nature-civilization divide that mark the abyssal, as there can be no global social justice without global cognitive justice. Drawing on Deleuze-Guattarean aesthetics and its grounding in the non-human and Guattari's ecosophy which posits of a fundamental unity of the social, the animal, vegetable and the cosmic, the paper seeks to reframe this ancient yet contemporary visual practice which, so far, has been considered a quaint, superstitious folk practice of little significance, to allow it to gain visibility within a differenced, post-abyssal epistemology of value.