Omar Rivera is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University, where he specializes in Latin American Philosophy, Phenomenology, and Aesthetics. His work explores themes of coloniality, resistance, epistemology, and cosmological aesthetics, often drawing from Andean indigenous traditions, decolonial thought, and continental philosophy to address issues of liberation, identity, and sociality in Latin America.
Originally from Peru, Rivera earned his PhD in Philosophy from The Pennsylvania State University and previously held positions at Southwestern University (where he served as Chair of the Philosophy Department and the Latin American and Border Studies Program) and the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse before joining Texas A&M around 2020. He also serves in administrative roles, including Director of HSI Initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences and Director of the Cantú Endowment Funds.
He is the author of influential books such as Delimitations of Latin American Philosophy: Beyond Redemption (Indiana University Press, 2019), which critiques philosophies of liberation and examines political texts from figures like Simón Bolívar, José Martí, and José Carlos Mariátegui, and Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance: A Cosmology of Unsociable Bodies (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies, 2021), which engages Inka stonework and architecture as examples of resistant cosmological aesthetics. His articles and essays further contribute to resistant epistemologies informed by contemporary indigenous Andean philosophies and cosmologies, bridging historical and contemporary decolonial perspectives.
Articles and papers in this journal include:
- “Mestizajes and Resistant Alterities” (Volume 11, Issue 1 – Spring, 2020)
- “Interpreting Enrique Dussel’s Transmodernity” (Volume 8, Issue 2 – Fall, 2017)