Making the pluriverse: A cross-Atlantic colonial history

SPEAKER: Nino Vallen, Radboud University

DISCUSSANT: Dr. Matthijs Lok, University of Amsterdam

DATE: 6 March 2026

​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE

VENUE: VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

In the past two decades, Latin American academics and activists have adopted the concept of the pluriverse to challenge colonialism and capitalism, and advocate instead for the recognition of ontologies shaped by relational visions of life. Some of the questions raised by this pluriversal project are not exactly new. Already during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people on both sides of the Atlantic were grappling with the challenge of having to adapt the models they had traditionally used to think about, represent, and perform their worlds. New contacts between the Americas and the rest of the globe not only led to people rethinking the world order in texts and maps but to them reconsidering traditional meanings ascribed to the notion of “the world” as well. Examining these shifting notions in interactions between friars and Natives in colonial Latin America, this talk explores earlier tensions between the unity and plurality of the world to reflect on more recent notions of the pluriverse.