(Dis)Possessing the Human

This essay aims at fleshing out onto-epistemological and political implications of more substantive notions of territoriality provided by Global Southern accounts in order to unsettle—to sentipensar—the notion of the human. What happens to the notion of the human when we consider that the territory-land that (more-than-)humans inhabit are not exclusively grounded on the logics of possession, property, and border-making? In particular, this question is addressed through the territorial-based concept of quilombo proposed by the Afro-brazilian poet, historian, and activist Maria Beatriz Nascimento, which are the implications and the contributions of her notions of quilombo as historical continuum, of quilombo as ocean, and of the Black body as quilombo to the understanding of what is human and the possibilities of living together.