This episode presents Professor Farish A. Noor and Caio Santos building a bridge between Southeast Asia and Latin America. Caio Santos shed light on his research in Brazil on environmental catastrophes. Part of Caio’s exploration regards how mourning and ecological disasters are intertwined in discourse and expression. To Caio, when individuals lose the environment they belong to, they also start questioning the existence of capitalist extractivist measures while mourning. Caio uses the idea of public mourning to recognize life, human beings, and the environment as individuals express through new forms of communication. Thus, in the 21st century, digital media play an important role. In this sense, environmental denialism can block mourning, especially through social media. Professor Farish A. Noor also reflects on how colonial models of extractivism and Westernised capitalist development norms have been influenced by colonial models in Southeast Asia.
Caio Santos is a communication scientist and journalist. Caio has published many journals and papers and a book on communication, politics, and aesthetics: (Não) Sou Ninguém: O Uso Político de Máscaras na América Latina. He graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG - Brazil) with an exchange period at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. He has a master's in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Today he is a visiting scholar at the University of Essex (UK) and a Ph.D. candidate at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He is also part of MARGEM - a Research Group on Democracy and Justice at UFMG. His research is focused on Latin America's subjectivities and political performances, with a particular interest in public grief and denialism around environmental catastrophes.
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