Necessary but Never Sufficient: Rethinking Facts from Latin America

Alexander Schimmeck at upsplash.com. Graffiti at Fernando Márquez de La Plata 194-130, Providencia, Chile.

This collection is a reflection on the changing nature of facts, written by authors who do their thinking from Latin America. Conceived during a time where facts were thought to be in crisis in North America, we invited authors to think facts otherwise by starting from situations that never assumed facts to be stable and self-standing in the first place. Instead, what emerges are a series of stories in which facts never walk alone, since they are profoundly embedded in material circumstances. They prop up empires, hint at the absurd, and inspire art. This isn’t to say though that the facts in these stories cease to be tethered to an idealized approach to truth. No matter how stretched and flexible they become, they are continuously shadowed by a normative epistemology, sometimes as a horizon of hope, at other times as a colonial shadow. The collection complements a recent thematic cluster on The Future of Facts in Latin America in the journal Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology, and Society.

Necesarios pero Nunca Suficientes: Repensando los Hechos desde América Latina

Esta colección es una reflexión sobre la naturaleza cambiante de los hechos, escrita por autores que piensan desde y con América Latina. Concebida en un momento en el que los hechos se concebían en crisis desde Norteamérica, quienes editamos esta colección invitamos a un grupo de autores a pensar los hechos de otra manera, partiendo de situaciones que nunca supusieron que estos fueran estables o autosuficientes. Lo que surgió es una serie de historias en las que los hechos nunca andan solos, ya que están profundamente arraigados en las circunstancias materiales. Estos hechos apuntalan imperios, insinúan lo absurdo, e inspiran el arte. Sin embargo, esto no quiere decir que dejen de estar ligados a una concepción idealizada de la verdad. Por muy estirados y flexibles que sean, estos hechos se mantienen bajo la sombra de una epistemología normativa de la verdad, algunas veces como horizonte de esperanza, otras como sombra colonial. Los ensayos aquí publicados complementan la publicación de un número especial de la revista Tapuya: Ciencia, Tecnología, y Sociedad Latinoamericanas, titulado El Futuro de los Hechos en América Latina: Los Hechos nunca Andan Solos.

Translations by José Miguel Neira.

Posts in This Series

Introduction: Los Hechos Nunca Andan Solos

Introduction: Los Hechos Nunca Andan Solos

(Spanish translation below) In 2018, North American media was obsessed with the problem of disinformation, alternative facts, and what was being dubbed the dawn... More

Imagined Invasions: Between Facts and the Fantastic in Latin American Literature

Imagined Invasions: Between Facts and the Fantastic in Latin American Literature

(Spanish translation below) Latin American literature has long explored the constructed nature of reality. While the way in which facts are entities that have a... More

Sugarcane Poetics and Pleasures

Sugarcane Poetics and Pleasures

(Spanish translation below) The facts of sugarcane’s history are hard to digest. While sugar itself is usually easily metabolized by the human body, the enormit... More

Hard Data, Soft Facts?

Hard Data, Soft Facts?

(Spanish translation below) Often when I discuss my research on car theft in Chile with someone the conversation gets to a point where we use a word that evokes... More

Toxic Mediation

Toxic Mediation

(Spanish translation below) In Nicaragua’s sugarcane zone, agrochemicals are everywhere, but toxic exposures—specific moments where chemicals meet bodies—often ... More

The Facts are Not Enough

The Facts are Not Enough

(Spanish translation below) Does knowledge about climate change necessarily lead to action? Is overcoming denial of those facts the primary challenge of climate... More

The Fact Is Yet to Come

The Fact Is Yet to Come

(Spanish translation below) In January 2022, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Secretariat of Science and Technology of the Brazilian Ministry of Healt... More

Borrowing Facts on the Street

Borrowing Facts on the Street

(Spanish translation below) What can we do with our facts in the era of environmental decline and right-wing populisms? The answer sits beyond scientific or tru... More

“En carne propia”: Truth, Facts, and Black Bodies in the Early Spanish Caribbean

“En carne propia”: Truth, Facts, and Black Bodies in the Early Spanish Caribbean

(Spanish translation below) In 1756, Petrona Paula Bernal, an enslaved Black woman living in Cartagena de Indias, New Granada (today, Colombia), brought a lawsu... More

Forensic Facts that Matter

Forensic Facts that Matter

(Spanish translation below) The smell of oil boiling inside a huge pot; the sound of a blender repetitively turning on and off; and the voice of a caged parakee... More

Tracing Rainforests (Or a New Condition of Facticity in Amazonia)

Tracing Rainforests (Or a New Condition of Facticity in Amazonia)

(Spanish translation below) The first time I became interested in traceability was the day Roberto, a Peruvian civil servant specialized in transparency, sent m... More

Afterword: The Promise of Facts

Afterword: The Promise of Facts

(Spanish translation below) If we were to do a ranking of the most vilified concepts in the social sciences, that of Facts would surely come on the top five—may... More