UC Merced TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World Title Thinking through the Decolonial Turn: Post-continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction Thinking through the Decolonial T (original) (raw)

Abstract

This special issue of Transmodernity, " Thinking through the Decolonial Turn: Post-Continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique, " stands on three fundamental premises that serve as the starting point for the dialogical encounters between intellectuals from Latin America, the Caribbean, and from minoritized sectors in the United States, particularly Latina/o and African American, who are featured here. The first one is that just as there has been a linguistic and a pragmatic turn, among other such turns in theory and philosophy, there has also being a decolonial turn with distinct features, some of which will be elucidated in these two issues. 1 Different from these other turns, however, the decolonial turn has long existed in different ways, opposing what could be called the colonizing turn in Western thought, by what I mean the paradigm of discovery and newness that also included the gradual propagation of capitalism, racism, the modern/gender system, and the naturalization of the death ethics of war. 2

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References (51)

  1. I have elaborated further the concept of "decolonial turn" in multiple places including: "La descolonización y el giro des-colonial," Comentario internacional: revista del Centro Andino de Estudios Internacionales 7 (2006-2007): 65-78; "Césaire's Gift and the Decolonial Turn," Radical Philosophy Review 9. 2 (2006): 111-37; "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn," Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1. 1 (2011); and Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
  2. For these different elements of the decolonial turn, see Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of "the Other" and the Myth of Modernity, trans. Michael D. Barber (New York: Continuum, 1995);
  3. María Lugones, "Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System," Hypatia 22. 1 (2007): 186-209; Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003; Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000);
  4. Aníbal Quijano, "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America," Nepantla: Views from South 1. 3 (2000): 533-80; Sylvia Wynter, "On Disenchanting Discourse: 'Minority' Literary Criticism and Beyond," in The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, 432-69. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
  5. Sylvia Wynter, "1492: A New World View," in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, edited by Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford, 5-57 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995);
  6. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
  7. I have elaborated decolonial aspects of ethnic studies in "Pensamento crítico desde a subalteridade: os Estudos Etnicos como ciências descoloniais ou para a transformação das humanidades e das ciências sociais no século XXI," Afro-Asia 34 (2006): 105-29, and "Epistemology, Ethics, and the Time/Space of Decolonization: Perspectives from the Caribbean and the Latina/o Americas," Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/O Theology and Philosophy, eds. Ada María Isasi- Díaz and Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 193-206. See also the video of the forty years commemoration of the birth of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, which took place on February 26-27, 2010-Mattie Harper (Producer), and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production), (2010), Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College [Web video], available online at Vimeo website. Jan. 12, 2012.
  8. 4 Decolonization of knowledge, power, and being are crucial concepts in the work of scholars who have theorized modernity/coloniality in at least the last fifteen years. They include Santiago Castro-Gómez, Ramón Grosfoguel, Edgardo Lander, María Lugones, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, and Catherine Walsh. The late Fernando Coronil, ,Enrique Dussel, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Sylvia Marcos have also been important interlocutors, and have contributed with important ideas and developments to the understanding of coloniality and decoloniality. So is also the case with Caribbean scholars such as Lewis Gordon, Paget Henry, and Sylvia Wynter. On the topic of decolonizing the university, see the video with the same name on the 40 th Anniversary of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, which took place on February 26-27, 2010-Mattie Harper (Producer), and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production), (2010), Decolonizing the University.
  9. Figures such as Gloría Anzaldúa and María Lugones have been key figures in most of these moments or movements.
  10. For a discussion of the idea of the unfinished project of decolonization, in contrast with Habermas's conception of the unfinished project of the Enlightenment, see Maldonado-Torres, "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn," and Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldívar. "Latin@s and the 'Euro-American' Menace: The Decolonization of the US Empire in the 21st Century," Latin@s in the World-System, eds. Ramón Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres and José David Saldívar (Boulder, Co: Paradigm Press, 2005), 3-27.
  11. For a related effort see Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Eduardo Mendieta, eds., Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011).
  12. See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004).
  13. For this see the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 1999).
  14. For Gordon's reflections on the problems of identity and liberation, see Lewis R. Gordon, "Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (2000): 265-80.
  15. When I first wrote this session, I was bringing together two elements that are often brought out by Lewis Gordon (identity and liberation) with one theme that was and still is at the center of the modernity/coloniality/decoloniality network, that is, epistemic decolonization. Since then, Gordon has added a third component in his view of the basic questions that emerge in the context of colonization. He calls it the metacritique of reason, by which he means the critical revision of the concepts through which we understand identity and liberation-Gordon reflected on this most recently, to my knowledge, in his presentation at a panel honoring Fanon at the International Marcuse conference, University of Pennsylvania, October 28, 2011. Likewise, one can see in Walter Mignolo, who has long insisted on the need for decolonizing epistemology, an incorporation of the theme of "shifting the geography of reason," initially proposed by Gordon as a recurrent theme for the Caribbean Philosophical Association-see the very essay on this issue.
  16. See Gordon, "Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy," 275.
  17. These intellectuals include all the contributors in this volume, others already cited or mentioned in the essay, and others that have not been mentioned.
  18. See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, coord., "Post-continental Philosophy," Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise 3 (Fall 2006). See http://trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/wko-v1d3\. This issue includes essays by Lewis Gordon, Alejandro de Oto, Gertrude James Gonzalez de Allen, Paget Henry, Jane Gordon, Kenneth Knies, and the late Esiaba Irobi.
  19. See essay by Gordon in this issue, "Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence."
  20. See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn".
  21. These readings included Sylvia Wynter "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, Its Overrepresentation-an Argument," The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003): 257-337, and an unpublished version of Enrique Dussel's "From Critical Theory to the Philosophy of Liberation: Some Themes for Dialogue," trans. George Ciccariello Maher, now appearing in Transmodernity 1.2 (2011): n.p. Dussel offered the first keynote, based on "From Critical Theory to the Philosophy of Liberation," and Wynter offered the closing keynote entitled "After Human as Anthropos: Towards the Sociogenic Principle and the Third Emancipatory Breaching of the Law of Cognitive Closure." While Wynter is a foundational figure for this project, and her work is explicitly referred to by Linda Martín Alcoff and Corey Walker in this issues, she was working on a collection of her essays and could not to submit an article for the projected publication that was planned as an outcome of the conference.
  22. See from Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "La descolonización y el giro des-colonial"; "Césaire's Gift and the Decolonial Turn," "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn," and Against War. Also see Santiago Castro- Gómez, and Ramón Grosfoguel, eds. El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global (Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad Javeriana y Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2007).
  23. The Unidad de Apoyo a Comunidades Indígenas (UACI) at the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico publishes the newspaper Tukari, which dedicated its issue of November 20, 2011 to the theme "Giro des-colonial. La lucha de los pueblos por la autonomía y el territorio" [De-colonial turn. The struggle of peoples for autonomy and land.] See http://www.tukari.udg.mx/publicaciones/giro-descolonial-la-lucha-de-los-pueblos-por-la-autonomia-y-el-territorio Also, the Universidad de la Tierra put together a number of my articles on the topic and published them as Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "…la descolonización y el giro des-colonial…" (Chiapas: Universidad de la Tierra, 2011). See also Ramón Grosfoguel, "The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms," Globalization and the Decolonial Option, eds. Walter Mignolo and Arturo Escobar (London: Routledge, 2011), 65-77.
  24. Key in the creation of the network on decolonial feminism was María Lugones, who was a presenter at the conference and who met Chela Sandoval, an important Chicana decolonial feminist, and also a presenter at the conference. Sandoval herself did not participate in the network, which was formed by groups in Bolivia, Mexico, Binghamton University in New York, and the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, I had the pleasure of working with Laura Pérez, also a participant in the conference, and with the former and current students mentioned above, in the formation of the decolonial feminist working group there. At the conference, Laura Pérez presented a paper that explored intersections and contrasts between Dussel's liberation ethics and Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed. An expanded and more elaborated version of this paper is now found in Laura Pérez, "Enrique Dussel's Etica de la liberación, U.S. Women of Color Decolonizing Practices, and Coalitionary Politics amidst Difference," Qui parle 18.2 (Spring/Summer 2010), 121-46. Pérez's essay forms part of a "special dossier" on decolonial feminism that Marcelle Maese-Cohen, another participant in the decolonial feminism group at Berkeley, put together for the journal Qui parle. See Marcelle Maese-Cohen, "Introduction: Toward Planetary Decolonial Feminisms," Qui parle 18.2 (Spring/Summer 2010), 3-27. Also, central for decolonial feminism, see, Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and Lugones, "Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System." A version of this essay by Lugones, originally published in the feminist journal Hypatia, also appears in what is a collection of essays by scholars who engage the concept of coloniality-see Walter Mignolo and Arturo Escobar, eds.,Globalization and the Decolonial Option (New York: Routledge, 2010).
  25. See Mark Driscoll, "Looting the Theory Commons: Hardt and Negri's Commonwealth." Postmodern Culture 21.1 (2010).
  26. As a matter of fact, already in 2005, Ramón Grosfoguel, José David Saldívar and I began to prepare an anthology entitled Coloniality, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, focused on contributions by Aníbal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, and Walter Mignolo. I had written the section on transmodernity for the introduction. However, there were several complications and the project took a different route.
  27. Enrique Dussel, Posmodernidad y transmodernidad: diálogos con la filosofía de Gianni Vattimo. (Puebla, Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, Golfo Centro; Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente; Universidad Iberoamericana, Plantel Laguna, 1999). For a discussion of the concept transmodernity and some of its uses, see the opening article by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda in the first issue of Transmodernity, 1.1 (2011), entitled "Transmodernidad: un nuevo paradigma" (transmodernity: a new paradigm). Magda coined the term in 1989, making her the first or one of the firsts in using the concept-certainly before Dussel did. Her definition of it has some elements in common with Dussel's, but it is also quite different, a discussion that is beyond the scope of this introduction to the "decolonial turn."
  28. See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn," 3, 9, 14.
  29. Sylvia Wynter was part conference that led to these special issues, but she was working on the collection of her essays and could not submit a contribution.
  30. For a brief introduction to the Caribbean Philosophical Association and access to an annotated bibliography see Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Lewis R. Gordon, "The Caribbean Philosophical Association," Oxford Libraries Online.
  31. For an exploration of decolonial ethics, see Maldonado-Torres, Against War. Works Cited Castro-Gómez, Santiago, and Ramón Grosfoguel, eds. El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Bogotá, Col.: Universidad Javeriana y Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2007.
  32. Driscoll, Mark. "Looting the Theory Commons: Hardt and Negri's Commonwealth." Postmodern Culture 21.1 (2010). Web.
  33. Dussel, Enrique. The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse Of "The Other" And the Myth of Modernity. Trans. Michael Barber. New York: Continuum, 1995. . Posmodernidad y transmodernidad: diálogos con la filosofía de Gianni Vattimo. Puebla, Mex.: Universidad Iberoamericana, Golfo Centro; Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente; Universidad Iberoamericana, Plantel Laguna, 1999.
  34. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004. "Giro des-colonial. La lucha de los pueblos por la autonomía y el territorio" [De-colonial turn. The struggle of peoples for autonomy and land.] Tukari: Espacio de Comunicación Intercultural 3.18 (2011). Web.
  35. Gordon, Lewis. "Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568 (2000): 265-80.
  36. Grosfoguel, Ramón. "The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms." Globalization and the Decolonial Option. Eds. Walter Mignolo and Arturo Escobar. London: Routledge, 2011. 65-77.
  37. Grosfoguel, Ramón, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and José David Saldívar. "Latin@S and the 'Euro- American' Menace: The Decolonization of the Us Empire in the 21st Century." Latin@S in the World-System. Eds. Grosfoguel, Ramón, Nelson Maldonado-Torres and José David Saldívar. Boulder, Co: Paradigm Press, 2005. 3-27.
  38. Harper, Mattie (Producer), and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production). (2010). Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College [Web video]. (Available online at Vimeo website). Jan. 12, 2012.
  39. Isasi-Díaz, Ada María, and Eduardo Mendieta, eds. Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.
  40. Lugones, María. "Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System." Hypatia 22.1 (2007): 186-209.
  41. Maese-Cohen, Marcelle. "Introduction: Toward Planetary Decolonial Feminisms." Qui parle 18.2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 3-27.
  42. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. . "Césaire's Gift and the Decolonial Turn." Radical Philosophy Review 9.2 (2006): 111-37. . "…la descolonización y el giro des-colonial…" Chiapas: Universidad de la Tierra, 2011. . "La descolonización y el giro des-colonial." Comentario internacional: revista del Centro Andino de Estudios Internacionales 7 (2006-2007): 65-78.
  43. "Enrique Dussel's Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn." Transmodernity 1.1 (2011. Web. . "Epistemology, Ethics, and the Time/Space of Decolonization: Perspectives from the Caribbean and the Latina/o Americas." Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy. Eds. Isasi-Díaz, Ada María and Eduardo Mendieta. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. 193-206. . "Pensamento crítico desde a subalteridade: os Estudos Etnicos como ciências descoloniais ou para a transformação das humanidades e das ciências sociais no século XXI." Afro-Asia 34 (2006): 105-29. . "Post-Continental Philosophy." Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise 1.3 (Fall 2006).
  44. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, and Lewis R. Gordon, "The Caribbean Philosophical Association," Oxford Libraries Online. Web.
  45. Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003. . Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.
  46. Mignolo, Walter, and Arturo Escobar, eds. Globalization and the Decolonial Option. London: Routledge, 2010. Pérez, Laura. "Enrique Dussel's Etica de la Liberación, U.S. Women of Color Decolonizing Practices, and Coalitionary Politics Amidst Difference." Qui parle 18.2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 121-46.
  47. Quijano, Aníbal. "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America." Nepantla: Views from South 1.3 (2000): 533-80.
  48. Rodríguez Magda, Rosa María. "Transmodernidad: un nuevo paradigma." Transmodernity 1.1 (2011). Web. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
  49. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books, 1999.
  50. Wynter, Sylvia. "1492: A New World View." Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View. Eds. Hyatt, Vera Lawrence and Rex Nettleford. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. 5-57. . "On Disenchanting Discourse: 'Minority' Literary Criticism and Beyond." The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 432-69. . "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after
  51. Man, Its Overrepresentation-an Argument." The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003): 257-337.