Postconflict Utopias

About the Book

Black women in the department of Choco, Colombia, imagine the end of the armed conflict through activism and storytelling. Tania Lizarazo focuses on members of COCOMACIA, Colombia’s largest Black peasants’ association that defends the collective territories in the Pacific lowlands. Drawing on the life stories of members and their local, regional, and transnational networks, Lizarazo explains how Choco’s Black Colombian women survive through everyday collaborative practices—from showing up to caretaking. As rehearsals of peace-building, these stories and practices exemplify the embodied practices that make survival possible. Day by day, the women imagine what memory, peace, and justice could look like alongside violence. Though peace may seem impossible, wishing and working to materialize a postconflict in Colombia is part of worldmaking practices that center Black women’s knowledge.

A merger of storytelling and theory, Postconflict Utopias explores the links between lived knowledge and survival while revealing the power unleashed when women ask the simple question, “Why not?”