Challenges of a political-academic project in Patagonia

Interview with Claudia Briones in the context of the seventy years of the journal Runa

Abstract

In the context of the 70th anniversary of the journal Runa. Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre, during this interview Claudia Briones reflects on her trajectory from the Universidad de Buenos Aires to the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, as well as on the challenges involved in the creation of the degree in Anthropological Sciences. Taking four articles published in the journal between 1985 and 2007 (two of them co-authored) as a starting point, she reviews the articulations between teaching, researching, academic management and extension. By taking into consideration her intellectual itinerary, which covers concerns and commitments that are intertwined with the struggles of the Mapuche-Tewelche People, she questions the labels that set processes, and reflects on the disagreements that arise in daily coexistence, on the indigenous peoples’ proposals regarding how to be-together while being the Other—proposals that point to inter-existence, rather than to inter-culturality—and she wonders why some of their political demands are inaudible or invisible, whereas others are criminalized.