Francisco Carballo

Francisco Carballo joined the Politics Department at Goldsmiths in 2012. Since 2014, he hase held the position of Deputy Director of The Centre for Postcolonial Studies. His formal training is in sociology, political theory and cultural studies. He previously taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.   

His current research addresses three different yet interconnected areas of inquiry: 1) Latin American politics from below (especially in Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico). 2) Decolonial and postcolonial theory. 3) Rough politics. This is understood as an effort to trace the murky contours that separate politics from lawlessness, political activism from sheer violence, and social bonds from criminal complicity in certain areas of the Global South. 

Francisco Carballo is currently preparing a book on decolonial politics with Argentinean theorist Walter Mignolo.  In both his teaching and his research, he pays close attention to the way in which the language of politics is periodically reinvented through culture and the arts. 

Aside from publishing according to academic conventions, Francisco Carballo actively participates in wider public debates through regularly contributing to mass media platforms. 

Teaching

Year 1: Politics of Other Cultures 

Year 2: Rough Politics 

Year Three: Rethinking Latin America: Power, Politics and Ideas

Postgraduate programmes:  Latin American Dictionary: Art and Politics 

Areas of supervision

• Latin American Politics
• Modernity/Coloniality 
• Decolonisation
• Development and De-Growth 
• Radical Politics
• Global Social Theory 
• Violence
• Decolonial Aesthetics 
• Current Political-Intellectual Debates in Latin America 
• Political Ethnography 
• Documentary Filmmaking in the Global South

Publications and research outputs

Article

Carballo, Francisco. 2020. Niklas Luhmann as a Theorist of Exclusion: A Journey from the Greek Polis to the Brazilian Favelas. Transtext(e)s transcultures, 2019(14), 1263. ISSN 2105-2549

Carballo, Francisco and Pravdenko, Inna. 2020. Introduction & Appendix: Latin America in the Time of the Coronavirus. Transtext(e)s transcultures(14), ISSN 2105-2549

Thesis

Carballo, Francisco. 2010. A Critique of Normativity: Towards a Theory of Savage Democracy. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London