Grupo Vivências: Rehearsing resistance to abyssal thinking in business schools

Abstract

The objective of this study is to point out ways of resisting abyssal thinking in business schools based on the practices of the “Grupo Vivências,” a teaching, research, and extension group that originated in the business course of an academic center located in the peripheral region Agreste, in Pernambuco, a state in northeastern Brazil. The theoretical discussion in this article is anchored in the decolonial thinking developed by the Epistemologies of the South through the notions of “abyssal thinking” or “colonial thinking,” “engaged pedagogy,” and “pluriversal methodologies.” The discussion is based on the narrative of one of the group's coordinating professors and the first author of this article, which brings together different narratives referring to the practices of the Grupo Vivências, carried out between 2018 and 2022. The research and extension proposal of the group has questioned the colonial hierarchical divisions of mind versus body, theory versus practice, subject versus object, as well as knowing versus doing. Thus, the group's practices have shown resistance to abyssal/colonial thinking when: (1) they have sought to recognize the differences that make up the participants in the projects and, based on this, have elaborated possibilities of resistance to perceived oppressions mediated through the use of art; (2) they have encouraged values contrary to modern rational‐instrumental logic such as care, embracement, sharing, and collective construction; and (3) they have sought to insert the ecology of knowledge into their practices by creating spaces for dialogue between different fields of procedural knowledge.