In this introduction the coordinators of the First Congress of Postcolonial Studies (Buenos Aires, 5th, 6th, 7th December 2012) review some of the main questions and guidelines which characterized the workshops. Starting from a heated debate on the categories and the epistemological proposals developed by postcolonial studies and decolonial feminism, the Congress accepted the challenge of producing a South/South dialogue through the consolidation of a space of interdisciplinary discussion in the different theorical fields inquiring post-colonial experience.

This essay focuses on two questions. On a general level: the relevance of postcolonial studies, after Twentieth century's second half, in the historical processes and the political cultures of the global South - concentrating on the exploration of the Argentinian position related to its Latin American regional context. More specifically, the article stresses the comparative perspective's importance to analyze the tension between postcolony/postdictatorship and the democratic transition. These questions are read within contemporary violent processes of primitive accumulation of capital, with (...) its specific death's technologies. (shrink)