Decoloniality

For the decolonial shift in various domains of knowledge, see Decolonization of knowledge.

Decoloniality (Spanish: decolonialidad) is a school of thought used principally by an emerging Latin American movement which focuses on untangling the production of knowledge from a primarily Eurocentric episteme. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture. Decolonial perspectives see this hegemony as the basis of Western imperialism.

Context

The decolonial movement includes diverse forms of critical theory, articulated by pluriversal forms of liberatory thinking that arise out of distinct situations. In its academic forms, it analyzes class distinctions, ethnic studies, gender studies, and area studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic (in the sense of semiotics) and practical “options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power" or from a "matrix of modernity" rooted in colonialism. It considers colonialism "the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today," although this foundational interconnectedness is often downplayed. This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power or coloniality of power. Some have built upon decolonial theory by proposing Critical Indigenous Methodologies for research.

Although formal and explicit colonization ended with the decolonization of the Americas during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the decolonization of much of the Global South in the late twentieth century, its successors, Western imperialism and globalization perpetuate those inequalities. The colonial matrix of power produced social discrimination eventually variously codified as racial, ethnic, anthropological or national according to specific historic, social, and geographic contexts. Decoloniality emerged as the colonial matrix of power was put into place during the 16th century. It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from, Eurocentrism.

Decoloniality is synonymous with decolonial "thinking and doing", and it questions or problematises the histories of power emerging from Europe. These histories underlie the logic of Western civilization. Thus, decoloniality refers to analytic approaches and socioeconomic and political practices opposed to pillars of Western civilization: coloniality and modernity. This makes decoloniality both a political and epistemic project.

Decoloniality has been called a form of "epistemic disobedience", "epistemic de-linking", and "epistemic reconstruction". In this sense, decolonial thinking is the recognition and implementation of a border gnosis or subaltern, a means of eliminating the provincial tendency to pretend that Western European modes of thinking are universal. In less theoretical applications—such as movements for Indigenous autonomy—decoloniality is considered a program of de-linking from contemporary legacies of coloniality, a response to needs unmet by the modern Rightist or Leftist governments, or, most broadly, social movements in search of a “new humanity” or the search for “social liberation from all power organized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and domination”.

Related ideas

Decoloniality is often conflated with postcolonialism, decolonization, and postmodernism. However, decolonial theorists draw clear distinctions. Postcolonialism is often mainstreamed into general oppositional practices by "people of color", "Third World intellectuals", or ethnic groups. Decoloniality—as both an analytic and a programmatic approach—is said to move "away and beyond the post-colonial" because "post-colonialism criticism and theory is a project of scholarly transformation within the academy".

This final point is debatable, as some postcolonial scholars consider postcolonial criticism and theory to be both an analytic (a scholarly, theoretical, and epistemic) project and a programmatic (a practical, political) stance. This disagreement is an example of the ambiguity—"sometimes dangerous, sometimes confusing, and generally limited and unconsciously employed"—of the term "postcolonialism," which has been applied to analysis of colonial expansion and decolonization, in contexts such as Algeria, the 19th-century United States, and 19th-century Brazil.

Decolonial scholars consider the colonization of the Americas a precondition for postcolonial analysis. The seminal text of postcolonial studies, Orientalism by Edward Said, describes the nineteenth-century European invention of the Orient as a geographic region considered racially and culturally distinct from, and inferior to, Europe. However, without the European invention of the Americas in the sixteenth century, sometimes referred to as Occidentalism, the later invention of the Orient would have been impossible. This means that postcolonialism becomes problematic when applied to post-nineteenth-century Latin America.

Decolonization

Decolonization is largely political and historical: the end of the period of territorial domination of lands primarily in the global south by European powers. Decolonial scholars contend that colonialism did not disappear with decolonization.

It is important to note the vast differences in the histories, socioeconomics, and geographies of colonization in its various global manifestations. However, coloniality— meaning racialized and gendered socioeconomic and political stratification according to an invented Eurocentric standard—was common to all forms of colonization. Similarly, decoloniality in the form of challenges to this Eurocentric stratification manifested previous to de jure decolonization. Gandhi and Jinnah in India, Fanon in Algeria, Mandela in South Africa, and the early 20th-century Zapatistas in Mexico are all examples of decolonial projects that existed before decolonization.

Postmodernism

"Modernity" as a concept is complementary to coloniality. Coloniality is called "the darker side of western modernity". The problematic aspects of coloniality are often overlooked when describing the totality of Western society, whose advent is instead often framed as the introduction of modernity and rationality, a concept critiqued by post-modern thinkers. However, this critique is largely "limited and internal to European history and the history of European ideas". Although postmodern thinkers recognize the problematic nature of the notions of modernity and rationality, these thinkers often overlook the fact that modernity as a concept emerged when Europe defined itself as the center of the world. In this sense, those seen as part of the periphery are themselves part of Europe's self-definition. To summarize, like modernity, postmodernity often reproduces the "Eurocentric fallacy" foundational to modernity. Therefore, rather than criticizing the terrors of modernity, decolonialism criticizes Eurocentric modernity and rationality because of the "irrational myth" that these conceal. Decolonial approaches thus seek to "politicise epistemology from the experiences of those on the 'border,' not to develop yet another epistemology of politics".

Contemporary decoloniality

Quijano summarizes the goals of decoloniality thus: to recognize that the instrumentalization of reason by the colonial matrix of power produced distorted paradigms of knowledge and spoiled the liberating promises of modernity, and by that recognition, realize the destruction of global coloniality of power.

Examples of contemporary decolonial programmatics and analytics exist throughout the Americas. Decolonial movements include the contemporary Zapatista governments of Southern Mexico, Indigenous movements for autonomy throughout South America, ALBA, CONFENIAE in Ecuador, ONIC in Colombia, the TIPNIS movement in Bolivia, and the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil. These movements embody action oriented towards the goals expressed in above statement by Quijano, to seek ever-increasing freedoms by challenging the reasoning behind modernity, since modernity is in fact a facet of the colonial matrix of power.

Examples of contemporary decolonial analytics include ethnic studies programs at various educational levels designed primarily to appeal to certain ethnic groups, including those at the K-12 level recently banned in Arizona, as well as long-established university programs. Scholars primarily with analytics who fail to recognize the connection between politics or decoloniality and the production of knowledge—between programmatics and analytics—are those claimed by decolonialists to most likely to reflect "an underlying acceptance of capitalist modernity, liberal democracy, and individualism" values which decoloniality seeks to challenge.

Decolonial critique

Researchers, authors, creators, theorists, and others engage in decoloniality through essays, artwork, and media. Many of these creators engage in decolonial critique. In decolonial critique, thinkers employ the theoretical, political, epistemic, and social frameworks advanced by decoloniality to scrutinize, reformulate, and denaturalize often widely-accepted and celebrated concepts. Of particular concern to decolonial critics is the reformulation of modernity. Walter Mignolo situates modernity within colonial and racial frameworks. Pheng Cheah describes Mignolo's argument: "Modernity conserves itself as a totality by positing an “outside” of Europe and the North Atlantic that is excluded from modernity through a discourse of racism". Franz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, crucial contributors to decolonial thinking, theory, and practice, identify two core principles of decoloniality. The first is that colonialism must be confronted and treated as a discourse which fundamentally frames all aspects of thinking, organization, and existence. Framing colonialism as a "fundamental problem" empowers the colonized to center their experiences and thinking without seeking the recognition of the colonizer—a crucial development in the creation of decolonial thinking. The second core principle is that decolonization goes beyond ending colonization. Nelson Maldonado Torres explains, "For decolonial thinking decolonization is less the end of colonialism wherever it has occurred and more the project of undoing and unlearning the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being and of creating a new sense of humanity and forms of interrelationality." This elaboration of decoloniality and decolonization as fundamentally "unfinished" projects leads to decolonial critique as a method of applying decolonial methods and practices to all facets of epistemic, social, and political thinking.

Critiquing democracy

Moving beyond the critiques of enlightenment philosophy and modernity, decolonial critiques of democracy seek to uncover how assumptions and practices in democratic governance root themselves in colonial and racial rhetoric. As Mignolo sought to recontextualize and critique the totalizing discourse around western modernity, Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee seeks to counter "hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference." These models are hegemonic for Banerjee in that they make assumptions about the nature of individual existence that do not and cannot take colonized existence into account. He emphasizes how the formulation of democracy as resting in the political participation of individuals fails to understand how the colonial matrix of power impacts individuals' communities and identities. Banerjee explicitly critiques western liberal democracy: "In liberal democracies colonial power becomes the epistemic basis of a privileged Eurocentric position that can explain culture and define the realities and identities of marginalized populations, while eliding power asymmetries inherent in the fixing of colonial difference.” He also extends this analysis against deliberative democracy which seeks to root political legitimacy and democratic governance in the rational deliberation between citizens of equal political power and participation. He argues that this political theory fails to take into account colonized forms of deliberation often discounted and silenced—including oral history, music production, and more—as well as how asymmetries of power are reproduced within political arenas.

See also

• Anti-imperialism

Further reading

• LeVine, Mark 2005a: Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• LeVine, Mark 2005b: Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications.
• Quijano, Aníbal and Immanuel Wallerstein 1992: Americanity as Concept: Or the Americas in the Modern World-System. International Social Science Journal 131: 549–557.
• Vallega, Alejandro A. 2015: Latin American Philosophy: from Identity to Radical Exteriority. Indiana University Press.
• Walsh, Catherine & Mignolo Walter (2018) On Decoloniality Duke University Press
• Walsh, Catherine. (2012) "“Other” Knowledges,“Other” Critiques: Reflections on the Politics and Practices of Philosophy and Decoloniality in the “Other” America." TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1.3.
• Wan-hua, Huang. (2011) "The Process of Decoloniality of Taiwan Literature in the Early Postwar Period." Taiwan Research Journal 1: 006.
• Bhambra, G. (2012). Postcolonialism and decoloniality: A dialogue. In The Second ISA Forum of Sociology (August 1–4). Isaconf.
• Drexler-Dreis, J. (2013). Decoloniality as Reconciliation. Concilium: International Review of Theology-English Edition, (1), 115–122.
• Wanzer, D. A. (2012). Delinking Rhetoric, or Revisiting McGee's Fragmentation Thesis through Decoloniality. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 15(4), 647–657.
• Saal, Britta (2013). "How to Leave Modernity Behind: The Relationship Between Colonialism and Enlightenment, and the Possibility of Altermodern Decoloniality". Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture. 17. doi:10.13185/BU2013.17103.
• Mignolo, Walter D. (2007). "Introduction". Cultural Studies. 21 (2–3): 155–167. doi:10.1080/09502380601162498.
• Asher, Kiran (2013). "Latin American Decolonial Thought, or Making the Subaltern Speak". Geography Compass. 7 (12): 832–842. doi:10.1111/gec3.12102.
• Chalmers, Gordon (2013) Indigenous as ’not-Indigenous' as ’Us'?: A dissident insider's views on pushing the bounds for what constitutes 'our mob'. Australian Indigenous Law Review, 17(2), pp. 47–55. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=900634481905301;res=IELIND
• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2nd edition). London: Zed Books.