Julián Fernando Trujillo Amaya

Julián Fernando Trujillo Amaya is a renowned Colombian philosopher, professor, pragmaticist researcher, writer and critical thinker, primarily affiliated with the Universidad del Valle. His academic work is particularly prominent in the School of Language Sciences and the Department of Philosophy at that institution. He has a doctorate from UQAM and another from the Javeriana University of Bogotá, both about Peirce´s pragmatism. He is a Master in Philosophy, Specialist in DIH and Bachelor in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Valle, Cali, Colombia.

A decolonial semiotics of the cultural industry Julián Trujillo was part of The Quebec Node, a group of people, including survivors of the Colombian armed conflict, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women, university professors, doctoral and postgraduate students, activists, community leaders, artists, lawyers, journalists, writers, psychologists, and scholars, in the Acts of Listening Lab (ALLab). The Quebec Node has been entrusted by the Truth Commission of Colombia (CEV) with the task of collecting testimonies of people impacted by the Colombian armed conflict and who are in exile in Quebec. Julian worked on the collection, organization, and investigation of the testimonies of the Narco-World and Colombian victims, primarily immigrants from the city of Cali, Buenaventura, and Santander.

Julián Trujillo also researched about the Colombian television series on drug trafficking on Netflix: semiotic coloniality and narratives about the war on drugs. Julián was a postgraduate researcher in Humanities at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC). His research focuses on the symbolic forms, language games, and ways of life narrated by stories based on the world of drug trafficking in Colombia. The objective of Julián’s research is to develop a critical interpretation of the narcoculture presented by television series and telenovelas, through the colonial matrix that generates negative identities, falsifies historical memory, and glorifies infamous figures based on various actors of violence in Colombia. The narratives and plots of narcoculture have naturalized the symbolic violence of the colonial matrix and have contributed to its hegemonic acceptance globally. The stereotype of the Colombian drug trafficker and the drug trafficker’s wife demands the development of a critical analysis of discourses and symbolic violence that allows for the construction of alternative culture and educational projects, in order to design an alternative symbolic and imaginary order for the most disadvantaged communities.

Currently, Julián Trujillo is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philology at the School of Language Sciences at the University of Valle in Cali, Colombia. There, he conducts research on semiotic coloniality, symbolic violence, and hegemonic masculinity in the discourses and texts of popular culture. His current project explores orality and lyric in popular Salsa songs as the soundtrack that accompanies Colombian migrants in Canada and the social function that salsa music, songs, and dance fulfill in the migration process of the Cali community in Montreal.