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Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom

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Abstract

Once upon a time scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured. From a detached and neutral point of observation (that Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez describes as the hubris of the zero point ), the knowing subject maps the world and its problems, classifies people and projects into what is good for them. Today that assumption is no longer tenable, although there are still many believers. At stake is indeed the question of racism and epistemology. And once upon a time scholars assumed that if you ‘come’ from Latin America you have to ‘talk about’ Latin America; that in such a case you have to be a token of your culture. Such expectation will not arise if the author ‘comes’ from Germany, France, England or the US. As we know: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science. The need for political and epistemic de-linking here comes to the fore, as well as decolonializing and decolonial knowledges, necessary steps for imagining and building democratic, just, and nonimperial/colonial societies.

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... In the following chapters of the analyses, the selected material will be analysed regarding the concept of decolonialization (Lorde 1984;Collins 1990;Smith 1999;Lugones 2008;Mignolo 2011;Vergès 2021) and the concept of dewesternization (Mignolo 2009). ...
... And I questioned myself: How can that be that there is no platform where there's representation of a majority of people from where the practice and philosophy come from? From India?" Priya's discussion on the lack of representation of South Asian yoga teachers and her suggestion to create a platform to bring authority back to them aligns with the concept of dewesternization as defined by Mignolo (2009). Dewesternization, as Mignolo (2009) describes it, involves shifting the locus of power and influence away from Western institutions and actors, and back to the culture of origin. ...
... From India?" Priya's discussion on the lack of representation of South Asian yoga teachers and her suggestion to create a platform to bring authority back to them aligns with the concept of dewesternization as defined by Mignolo (2009). Dewesternization, as Mignolo (2009) describes it, involves shifting the locus of power and influence away from Western institutions and actors, and back to the culture of origin. This strategy reflects a broader commitment to the empowerment of marginalised voices within the global yoga community. ...
Thesis
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This thesis navigates the intricate landscape of decolonizing yoga within the Western yoga community by synthesising decolonial feminist theories, ancient Indian wisdom, and contemporary activist perspectives. Starting with a critical examination of the power dynamics, exclusionary practices, and commodification within the global yoga community as results of cultural appropriation, the subsequent analysis explores strategies for transforming appropriation into appreciation. Therefore, a multi-dimensional methodology, including thematic content analysis, semi-structured interviews, and the application of 'Two-Eyed Seeing'-a holistic approach bridging Indigenous and Western viewpoints-is employed, and results are analysed through the lens of intersectionality and decolonial feminist theories. By combining fundamental principles of yoga with strategies of present-day activists, the findings highlight the need for self-reflection, compassionate communication, and collective action to dismantle oppressive structures, amplify marginalised voices, and cultivate more authenticity, inclusivity, and equity within the Western yoga community.
... Smith (2021) argues that decoloniality involves recognising and rectifying the imbalanced power dynamics and epistemic injustices inherent in conventional research methodologies, which often marginalise non-western ways of knowing. According to Mignolo (2009), decolonial approaches challenge eurocentrism in academic research by valorising indigenous knowledge systems and methodologies. these approaches advocate for a pluralistic view of knowledge that respects and integrates diverse cultural perspectives, especially those of indigenous and marginalised communities, into the research process, thereby promoting a more equitable and inclusive academic practice. ...
... central to this theory is the critique of how western epistemologies have dominated and marginalised non-western knowledge systems. walter Mignolo is pivotal in this discourse, arguing that decolonising knowledge involves a delinking from the colonial matrix of power that privileges western modes of knowing and disenfranchises others (Mignolo, 2009). Arturo escobar also extends this discussion by exploring how social sciences can transform by embracing a plurality of epistemologies, particularly through engaging with the knowledge systems of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities (escobar, 2007). ...
... Scholars like Smith (2021) have been instrumental in identifying how research has been used as a tool of colonisation, particularly in her discussion of the 'research' as a dirty word among indigenous communities. Her work, along with those of others such as Mignolo (2009), emphasises the importance of acknowledging this historical baggage and actively working to dismantle the ongoing colonial structures within academia. these efforts involve not only rethinking the theoretical frameworks used but also fundamentally altering the methodological approaches to ensure they are inclusive, participatory, and respectful of the epistemologies of the researched communities. ...
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This theoretical paper explores the implementation of decolonial practices in academic research, with a specific focus on fostering reciprocal relationships between researchers and researched communities. It argues that conventional research methodologies often perpetuate colonial power dynamics by extracting knowledge instead of facilitating knowledge exchange. Lensing this argument through decolonial practices, this paper suggests a shift towards reciprocity, where knowledge co-creation becomes the foundation of the research process. It examines various decolonial tools and strategies that promote mutual learning and respect. Furthermore, the paper acknowledges the challenges of implementing these practices within the rigid structures of academic institutions. It advocates for structural reforms that facilitate ethical engagement and ensure that research outcomes benefit all stakeholders, particularly those from marginalised communities. Ultimately, this paper proposes that fostering reciprocal relationships through decolonial practices not only enhances the ethical integrity of research but also leads to more profound and impactful knowledge production. This exploration is essential for academics who seek to align their research practices with principles of justice and equality, thereby promoting a shift towards a more inclusive and ethical academic environment.
... Therefore, through this research, decolonial inquiry can occur which questions how Western philosophy limits the presence of others' worldviews within classrooms (Maldonado-Torres, 2011). To engage in this type of decolonial inquiry, Mignolo (2009) suggests one can "delink" from Western epistemological assumptions through "epistemic disobedience"; this disobedience argues against the believed universality of European reason and thought, and its positioning as a globalised, ideal system that renders Indigenous peoples as "less than human" (p. 174). ...
... The strong legs represent Indigenous standpoint theory and Indigenous women's standpoint theory, grounded in Indigenism, which is concerned with privileging the diversity of Indigenous experiences (Moreton-Robinson, 2013;Rigney, 2017). The tail represents decoloniality theory and decolonisation (Maldonado-Torres, 2011;Mignolo, 2009;Smith, 2021;Stojnić, 2017;Tuck & Yang, 2012). The tail of a kangaroo stops the kangaroo moving backwards; it can only move forward. ...
... The tail of a kangaroo stops the kangaroo moving backwards; it can only move forward. This is in line with the imperatives of decolonisation, decoloniality and the epistemic delinking from colonial logics that this study calls for as we move forward away from colonial dominance (Mignolo, 2009 ...
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In light of the results of the 2023 referendum, truth-telling should inform how educators embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives across the curriculum. It is imperative that students’ experiences of Indigenous content are understood, as this will inform the legitimisation of Indigenous futurity in classrooms and how teachers engage in truth-telling “proppa way” (a colloquial expression Indigenous Australians use to refer to doing something in a way which is culturally informed and appropriate). Teachers of subject English must understand how their views and approaches to Indigenous literature impact students. Texts present students with First Nations and colonialist histories, the intersections of these histories and the long-lasting legacy of both. How students comprehend and engage with these representations in their classrooms should be prioritised. This paper presents the preliminary findings of my PhD research informed by my positioning as a Mandandanji woman, educator and researcher. This collective case-study research shares data collected from focus groups of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alongside their English teachers and leaders in private schools across South East Queensland. The data presented privileges the students’ voices regarding their experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. This paper presents collaborative visions for the future of English teaching. The role of truth-telling is centred within these artefacts, as we look to disrupt the dominance of colonialism and prioritise Indigenous futurity in Australian English classrooms.
... Having mostly gained independence from colonising powers hundreds of years ago, the Latin American experience demonstrates that political independence does not result in the removal of colonial forms of domination. Decolonial theorists (such as Quijano, Grosfoguel, Lugones, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres) see coloniality as colonial forms of domination that continue beyond colonialism, the dark side or the underbelly of Eurocentric modernity (Quijano, 2007;Mignolo, 2009). Coloniality and modernity are based on the same epistemological principles: a split between subject and object, the possibility of a neutral 'objectivity' and the myth that knowledge can be produced by an ego untouched by the body or its space, produced by internal monologues rather than in relation to other humans (Grosfoguel, 2013). ...
... (Grosfoguel 2013:77) It is this claim of universal knowledge or a coloniality of knowledge that supports domination through colonialism and provides the material, ontological and epistemological conditions for Eurocentric modernity to flourish (Lugones, 2003;Maldonado-Torres, 2007;Quijano, 2007). The endpoint of studying the coloniality of knowledge is similar to those seeking to embrace Indigenous knowledge traditions, even if the analytical emphasis differs: this questioning is seen as a precondition to achieving a pluriversality of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2018), an epistemic de-linking (Mignolo, 2009). The third school of thought gives reason to consider whether the engagement of Indigenous and colonised knowledges into our modes of knowledge production is sufficient. ...
... I highlight the epistemic privilege of Western academia and the systematic marginalization of knowledge from other parts of the world. Mignolo (2009) terms such an interrogation of Western epistemic hegemony as "epistemic disobedience." ...
... Grosfoguel uses the term Westernized to refer to all universities (especially the ones in the non-Western world) that follow the Western forms of education. Mignolo (2009) advocates epistemic disobedience against epistemic hegemony of the West. He calls for the decolonial option, which he terms as "the singular connector of a diversity of decolonials." ...
... We employ a decolonial methodological framework that centers marginalized perspectives, challenging the dominance of traditional Western epistemologies (Grosfoguel 2015;Smith 1999). Rather than merely rejecting established frameworks, we advocate for epistemological disobedience (Mignolo 2009), a critical reorientation that disrupts the neutrality and objectivity saturating both academic discourse and workplace practices. ...
... Through writing, we embody the principles of neuroaquilombar in practice. Our act of self-representation is inherently subversive (Mignolo 2009). It directly confronts the silences and external narratives that historically render marginalized voices in the workplace as passive or diminished. ...
Preprint
Neutrality, epitomized as Whiteness, confers privileges that hinge on being neurotypical, equating neutrality with both Whiteness and the perception of normalcy. For individuals who are both autistic and non-White, navigating this construct often means enduring intersecting forms of oppression. This article examines these dynamics through the personal narratives of a Black neurotypical woman and an autistic Latina in the workplace. Drawing on Critical Racial Studies, Critical Autism Studies, Whiteness Studies, and ethnographic research, we highlight the urgent need for collaboration across these fields. To advance this effort, we introduce the term neuroaquilombar, representing a deliberate approach to cultivating collective spaces that affirm cultural identity for Black and non-White populations while embracing neurological diversity as a natural aspect of humanity. Through collaborative autoethnography as escrevivências, we reflect on the challenges of conforming to capitalist productivity standards in a society structured for the success of the White, able-bodied majority. By recounting our workplace experiences, we aim to deepen understanding, foster connections that humanize diverse experiences, and issue a call to action for advocates in both spheres. Additionally, we seek to showcase new forms of engagement that transcend the extractive practices often associated with anthropological research conducted by non-disabled White scholars.
... Porto Alegre Global Social Forum's slogan: Another world is possible is representative of this new call for imagination. Set against Eurocentric modernity and its corollary, globalization 19 , the decolonial proposition offers a staggering view of worlds and perspectives excluded and unrecognized. Between them, endless possibilities of political dialogues, producing "pluriverses of meaning where the new universe is a pluriverse" 20 . ...
... 14 18 For a reading on the divissive issue of postmodernism and postmodern thought in the context of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, see Ramón Grosfoguel "Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality", Decolonizing political economy and postcolonial studies, 2008, Eurozine, https://www.eurozine.com/transmodernityborder-thinking-and-global-coloniality/, accessed 2.02.2016 19 Escobar for example refers to globalization, following Giddens, as "the radicalization of modernity", in a world where "Not only is radical alterity expelled forever from the realm of possibilities, all world cultures and societies are reduced to being a manifestation of European history and culture." See Arturo Escobar (2007) Transmodernity is the recognition of epistemic diversity without epistemic relativism." ...
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Modernity has come under scrutiny in recent decades, particularly through developments in decolonial theorizing. At the same time, issues of representation in academic settings have been increasingly addressed, particularly in feminist and postcolonial works. This article is a brief presentation and examination of the decolonial option and its implications for some local Romanian academic contexts. It is juxtaposed against Marxist and Postcolonial approaches, in an attempt to disentangle the implications of adopting a decolonial turn in Romanian academia.
... Within education, decolonial scholars such as Mignolo (2009) argue that coloniality controls and reproduces Enlightenment knowledge. The colonial matrix of power manifests through ideologies of modernity, development, democracy, and human rights (Eriksen, 2021). ...
... The decolonial process requires us to first recognise, and then systematically dismantle, existing colonial systems of power (Groglopo & Suárez-Krabbe, 2023;Quijano, 2000). To do this, Mignolo (2009) proposes that we undertake an epistemic delinking. This involves opening education up to diverse epistemologies, histories, and voices (Menon et al., 2021;Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). ...
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The idea of Nordic countries as benevolent, egalitarian nations largely innocent of colonialism, is increasingly challenged by researchers. Yet, there is still reluctance within Nordic education systems to properly examine issues of coloniality, race, and white privilege. In this conceptual paper we first draw on research from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to deconstruct the notion of Nordic exceptionalism. We highlight a shared history of colonial complicity and ongoing coloniality towards Indigenous and minoritised groups. We also show that the Nordic emphasis on societal equality is based on a narrative of cohesion, an imagined sameness, that increasingly fails to reflect their diverse populations. This egalitarian ideology results in colour-blindness in society and an unwillingness to acknowledge or confront issues of race, white supremacy, or inequality for fear of disturbing the equilibrium. Using decolonial theory, we then suggest that within education, Nordic exceptionalism has led to a singular historical narrative and attempts to assimilate minoritised groups, in the process valorising Western epistemology. Educators either dismiss, or are ignorant of, what Quijano (2000) terms the colonial matrix of power: the system of Western domination that continues to normalise epistemic violence and devalue other knowledges and perspectives. Educators prefer to protect white sensitivities rather than allow critical discussion and uncomfortable questions of coloniality. We demonstrate that Nordic education needs to decolonise itself, but that this cannot be achieved until it overcomes a discomfort with difference that prevents alternative knowledges and practices from being valued or adopted. We conclude with some thoughts on how to begin this process.
... I think it extends to publishing only White people's stories. (Participant 1,lecturer) This finding resonates with Grimes's (2001) and Mignolo's (2009) conclusion that White supremacy places White people, both ideologically and socioeconomically, as superior to every other race and systematically positions non-White people (especially Black people) as ignorant and incapable of generating knowledge. The participants also believe that their struggles are enormous because they lack representatives in the editorship of these journals and publications who would make decisions in their favour: I think Black stories and the African context really don't appeal to most editors and reviewers of leading journals, and our names always help them to identify our Black identity, and they just find excuses to reject our papers. ...
... This phenomenon can be attributed to three factors. (1) White supremacy has a pervasive influence, which marginalizes non-White individuals, particularly Black academics (Grimes, 2001;Mignolo, 2009). ...
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In this study, we tackle the underexplored issue of racial inclusion for Black academics in UK universities, thus exposing the harsh reality of ‘tokenism’. We amplify the voices of these academics and thereby reveal the disturbing prevalence of tokenism within UK higher education institutions. Drawing on organisational justice theory, we leverage a mixed-methods approach (24 interviews and 201 questionnaires) to examine their lived experiences, perceptions of belonging, interpretations of fairness within academia, and the roadblocks hindering their career progression. We uncover evidence of covert racism, the pressure to outperform non-Black colleagues, and epistemic injustice – the invalidation of their knowledge contributions. Interestingly, work prejudice and discrimination are not found to be associated with gender or work mode but rather with citizenship status. Our respondents, all British academics, report higher fairness perceptions, while non-British academics face greater discrimination. Our findings highlight the crucial role of procedural and distributive justice in mitigating prejudice in the workplace for Black academics, underlining the importance of residency status in human resources practices. This research strengthens organisational justice theory and calls for interventions promoting racial equity within UK universities. Our research demonstrates the detrimental impact of tokenism and highlights how it perpetuates racial disadvantages and prevents Black academics from achieving true equality within their institutions.
... Understanding and reckoning with colonial legacies and postcolonial realities is a major theme in anthropology today, including within the anthropology of food. A particular concern within the anthropology of food is how communities marginalised through colonial processes and the logic of modernity/coloniality [56] can reclaim and redefine their cultural narratives through the preservation and transmission of food heritage. The preservation and revitalisation of community foodways represent not merely culinary traditions but a reclamation of cultural identity, which has often been threatened, silenced, or sidelined [57] through colonialism and apartheid, coupled with globalized food practices. ...
Article
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The anthropology of food is a sub-field of cultural anthropology interested in studying food and foodways. This article provides a concise overview of the anthropology of food, tracing its development from the early twentieth century to contemporary debates and emerging research trajectories. Drawing on foundational work by figures such as Boas and Malinowski, it shows how early anthropologists approached food as integral to understanding social organization, kinship, and cultural meaning. As the field evolved, structuralist, materialist, feminist, and political-economic perspectives broadened its scope, highlighting the symbolic significance of cuisine, the interplay between environment and subsistence, and the pivotal role of gender and class in shaping food practices. In recent decades, the anthropology of food has engaged intensively with globalization, investigating how transnational flows reshape culinary identities, local economies, and cultural heritage, as well as other significant topics. At the same time, emerging themes—such as multispecies perspectives, sensory studies, and the application of innovative methodologies—offer new lenses for understanding how food mediates relationships between humans, non-human beings, and environments. By examining case studies spanning regions from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, this article illustrates how contemporary anthropologists use food as a prism to investigate cultural identity, social change, ethical relations, and the complex entanglements of local and global food systems.
... Can this type of archival destruction be seen as a form of decolonial resistance? It certainly aligns with other expressions of decoloniality that take a holistic and creative approach to dismantling colonial power structures in the cultural and intellectual spheres (Mignolo 2009;Santos 2014;Smith 2012). Palestinians' deliberate destruction of their own archives may also be understood in connection to the use of silence as a form of resistance (Allan 2007;Bosmajian 1999;Wagner 2012). ...
Article
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The positioning of archives in relation to state power is characterized by an inherent tension. Archives buttress the authority of the state by institutionalizing and legitimizing preferred historical narratives. National archives exemplify this, as their management and accessibility is determined by state legislation. Yet archives can also threaten state power by enabling counter-histories that dispute and undermine official narratives. We explore this tension here in relation to the Palestinian case. Palestinians have long been at the forefront of archival contestation, curating grass roots archives to provide alternatives to the state collections that exclude them, while challenging conventional ideas of what comprises an archive. In so doing, they have utilized the power derived from archives’ implicit legitimacy. By seeking to bestow this legitimacy on different ideas of “the archive,” Palestinians act upon the latter’s potential power: Whoever owns the archives can own the past, and whoever owns the past owns the present. Drawing on Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, we examine how the creation, capture and treatment of Palestinian archives by various actors fit within the postcolonial archival terrain. In so doing we argue that contestations over Palestinian history show how archival power can come about not only by curating alternative collections, but also by challenging the very concept of an archive itself.
... The fourth most prominent research focus reflected this vantage point; students' agency and access (n=21). The second vantage point, to expose colonized and geopolitically tied disciplinary representations that perpetuate societal and sociocultural inequities, framing those oppressed as responsible for problems they did not create (Mignolo, 2009;Takeuchi et al., 2015), was not explicit in any published research questions in this review. While the former is more prominent in STEM education literature, both perspectives are not in neat opposition to one another. ...
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The purpose of this study is to explore trends in interrelated engineering education and science education research within six science education research journals across the first decade since the release of the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. Journals were selected using a combination of impact factors and random sampling. The resulting qualitative systematic review exposes trends that arose and fell among science education journals and scholars as reflected in 141 articles published between 2011 and 2024 in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, the International Journal of Science Education, School Science and Mathematics, the Journal of Science Teacher Education and Cultural Studies of Science Education. Through the analysis of 289 published research questions and purposes, themes of research and stakeholder foci were developed to uncover trends in research across this timespan. The greatest proportion of research examined student learning of science content through engineering experiences and teacher practice concerning science and engineering adjacent learning. Gaps in the literature are also described including studies in greater need of focus, most notably those that examine the roles of communities, families, learner agency, and access to engineering and science. Findings illuminate a need for improved resonance between the calls of policy for advancing access to science, STEM, and engineering education and literacies and research that remains most focused on traditional settings and structures.
... Anibal Quijano in his text 'Colonialidad y modernidadracionalidad,' first printed in English in 2007, strongly associates the coloniality of power with that of knowledge articulated as modernity or rationality (Quijano 2007, 168-178). Further developing on Quijano's work, Walter D. Mignolo, in his manifesto called the 'Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option,' theorises 'de-linking' or epistemic disobedience, changing the terms and histories of the conversations while thinking of modernity or coloniality (Mignolo 2009). Decolonialism offers an intellectual resistance to dominant epistemology of taxonomy and geopolitical creation (Bhambra 2014). ...
... Decolonial theory has emerged mainly in the Latin American context of the group "Modernidad/Colonialidad" and can be seen (in a somewhat simplified manner) as a radical variant of postcolonial studies (e.g., Quijano 2000;Mignolo 2009). They are centring the colonization of the Americas and are connected to dependency theory and the theology of liberation-in (perceived or actual) opposition to the more Anglo-Saxon focused and literature-oriented postcolonial studies. ...
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The paper seeks to define and situate postdevelopment (PD) theory within the social sciences by discussing its relation to other theoretical approaches. It concludes that PD can be seen to a rather limited extent as a development theory, but rather as a sociology of knowledge of this discipline and a critique of its foundation. PD shares the critique of capitalism with Marxism but also has a more negative view of industrial modernity, its relation to nature, economic growth and productivity. For some, PD is characterized by a spirituality alien to western modernity, although this does not seem to be necessary to subscribe to the approach. Although PD’s critique is intimately related to ecofeminist thinking (and ecofeminist authors), many of its male protagonists seem unaware of this proximity. PD is clearly a postcolonial (or decolonial) critique of colonial and neocolonial relations of power which can be found also in knowledge production, in particular in the division between the ‘developed’ Self (Europe and European settler colonies and other societies emulating them) and the ‘backward’ Other. And PD, at the least sceptical PD, is based on a post-anarchist perspective of ontological equality, oriented towards self-determination in the pluriverse and rearguard theories.
... Por eso, Catherine Walsh plantea que una de las dimensiones del proyecto decolonial es la praxis pedagógica, entendiendo esto como los procesos y prácticas que construyen y cultivan posibilidades vitales decoloniales.La perspectiva decolonial se basa en la idea de que la regeneración de la vida debe prevalecer sobre la primacía de la producción y reproducción de capital, y que el valor de la vida no debe estar determinado por el precio impuesto por el capital (Mignolo, 2009). ...
... A partir disso, foi criado um mapa mental que ilustra as PL e a internacionalização para institutos federais, fundamentando-se nas teorias de Paulo Freire, da decolonialidade e do Sul Global. Ele detalha conceitos chave como Consciência Crítica (Freire, 1970), Diálogo (Freire, 1992), Empoderamento (Freire, 1996), Colonialidade do Poder (Quijano, 2000), Desobediência Epistêmica (Mignolo, 2009), Pluriversalidade (Mignolo, 2011), Equidade na Educação (Santos, 2014), Conhecimento Local (Santos, 2018) e Resistência à Hegemonia (Escobar, 2004). Essas ideias são fundamentais para compreender e aplicar políticas que promovam uma educação mais inclusiva e crítica. ...
Article
Este trabalho tem por objetivo discutir políticas linguísticas (PL) relacionadas à Educação Profissional Tecnológica, as diretrizes curriculares que fundamentam o ensino médio e superior tecnológico, e apresentar uma proposta de PL e de internacionalização ao IFFar. Esta investigação corresponde a uma pesquisa em estágio supervisionado de pós-doutorado em Linguística da Universidade de Brasília. Compreende-se a PL como um campo de atividade política, decorrente de escolhas, decisões, planejamento e responsabilidades dos agentes dentro de um sistema democrático. A abordagem das PL aqui é realizada à luz de teorias decoloniais, destacando-se os pressupostos de Rajagopalan (2003, 2013) e Lagares (2018), visando uma concepção de educação linguística crítica no ensino de línguas. A proposta sugere uma relação entre conhecimento, cultura e poder, com necessidade de uma práxis pedagógica libertadora intercultural, ancorada nos pensamentos de Paulo Freire (1968, 1992, 1996), promovendo a descolonização do saber.
... The second section of the chapter theorises graffiti by adopting the thematics of 'fugitive practices' (Moten and Harney 2013). These two thematics will be interwoven with other thinkers' thoughts and concepts that will contribute to the argument that graffiti is an epistemic and ontological tool, technology, and weapon of 'epistemic disobedience' (Mignolo 2008) in the interest of peace. The third section engages the principles of hip hop to explore the definition of peace from the street because peace, love, and happiness are elements that define the objectives of hip hop culture. ...
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This document examines the interplay between Audra Simpson's “politics of refusal” and Subcomandante Marcos' “pluriversalism”—both emerging from postcolonial discourse on Turtle Island—as frameworks aiming for self-determined governance that authentically acknowledges Indigenous knowledge(s) and ways of being. Simpson advocates for an emancipatory refusal to accept settler-state recognition, which often marginalises Indigenous perspectives and relegates them to a “peripheral” or “deviant” status within educational institutions and policies. In contrast, Marcos' pluriversalism, while also challenging the state's homogenising force, promotes a dialogical engagement that incorporates Mesoamerican knowledge(s) to enrich mainstream discourses, fostering “border thinking” or “border epistemology.” This analysis proposes that Simpson's approach effectively deconstructs prevailing hierarchical knowledge structures within education, while Marcos' method seeks to reconstruct more inclusive paradigms where diverse epistemologies coexist without perpetuating colonial dominance. Thus, the thesis advocates for a two-step decolonial process with significant implications for educational practice, policy, and pedagogy: (1) Implementing Simpson's politics of refusal to critically dismantle the dominance of colonial epistemologies in curricula, teaching methods, and educational policies, effectively breaking down hierarchical relationships between colonial and Indigenous knowledge systems; and (2) Employing Marcos' pluriversal approach to reconstruct educational paradigms, fostering policies and pedagogical practices that support the equitable coexistence of different, and often competing, epistemologies and ontologies. This dual strategy aims to transform educational systems, preventing the perpetuation of colonial imbalances and promoting a truly inclusive, pluriversal educational landscape. Keywords: politics of refusal, pluriversalism, postcolonial discourse, indigenous knowledge, inclusive pedagogy
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With the publication of Agenda for Peace, the UN system opened its peace interventions up to critiques that allowed a tentative incorporation of critical, ethnographic, feminist, and rights-based approaches. Yet, subsequent efforts to reform the international peace architecture have been more limited, reflecting geopolitical interests rather than critical methodologies. Since the 1990s, two trends have occurred: within the liberal international order legitimate political claims from outside Western understandings of peacemaking have been marginalized, while liberal peacemaking has been undermined by competing actors, institutions, and processes in an emerging multipolar order. But has the latter developed a significant capacity for peacemaking? This article argues that the “liberal alignment” appears to have broken down but a “misaligned multipolar” order offers few if any tools that respond to critical arguments about peacemaking. This article critically evaluates the potential for peacemaking in a liberal aligned order versus that of a multipolar misaligned order.
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This article considers issues of coloniality in social work education in Germany. As Quijano (2000) and Mignolo (2009) have identified, even though we are largely in a post-colonial context, ideas of coloniality are deeply embedded in everyday structures, institutions, and practices throughout the globe. Coloniality ensures that particular structures of power remain stable. We examine these power structures in the context of social work education in our university in Germany to exemplify and highlight some of the issues of power and inequalities that exist in the German context. We examine two social work programs at our university and use two examples to illustrate the inclusionary and exclusionary systems in place that maintain coloniality. The first example highlights how innovative educational programs and processes often end up excluding or limiting access for students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. The second example highlights how the calls for widening participation in existing programs fail to open possibilities for ‘non-traditional’ students. We argue that addressing coloniality embedded in capitalistic, neo-liberal systems requires deconstructing ‘normality’ in systems, thereby identifying and disrupting paradoxes that limit widening participation and inclusion.
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This paper explores the potential for a decolonial praxis in history of education research. It argues that history of education scholarship, despite its inclusion of critical post-and decolonial perspectives, remains largely entrenched in a modernist logics of scholarly knowledge production. This paper proposes an alternative approach by examining 'The Conversations', as an example of a locally-embedded practice of collective study that we undertook in the Spring of 2022 in Belgium. Inspired by decolonial scholarship and decoloniality research, we argue that such an alternative approach to historical study and research may help in connecting the discipline's commitment to a critical study of the (colonial and imperial) past with the activation of possible futures, and promote alternative ecologies of knowledge.
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What do the school strikes for climate teach (adults)? Beyond being apt responses to democratic exclusions, children’s and young people’s strikes also have educative potential (including for adults) through counterweighing formal education, as the authors previously argued. This paper continues to explore the educational import of children and young people’s climate contentions as part of a more explicit decolonial agenda. In a first step, the paper sketches the altered conditions under which children stage school strikes/occupations and highlights increasing global connections drawn also by strikes in the North. Next, departing from a reading of Socrates’s canonical defense of obedience to the law, it offers a reading of the political economy and developmentalism of neoliberal, Anthropocene schooling as part of a modern oikos that depends on children’s work in their roles as “pupils.” Finally, children’s and young people’s activism is approached as resistance to colonially shaped epistemic injustice.
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Postcolonialism and decoloniality, which question the epistemology of Western science as a colonial construct, also challenge qualitative methods. Based on an overview of various attempts to decolonize qualitative methods, this article explores how the Documentary Method, a methodology for reconstructing the modus operandi of social practices, can avoid the pitfalls of colonial epistemology. To achieve this, it is crucial to consider multiple contexts to adequately interpret the utterances and actions of research participants. Comparative and multilevel analyses help not only to uncover hidden contexts but also to give voice to previously unconsidered social groups, such as subaltern and oppressed communities. The concept of “postcolonial location” is newly introduced as a theoretically elaborated search strategy to focus researchers’ attention on the potential coloniality of practices. Rather than relying on self-confession, self-reflexivity is methodically initiated and controlled.
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This article explores contemporary biopolitics in the light of Michel Foucault's oft quoted suggestion that contemporary politics calls `life itself' into question. It suggests that recent developments in the life sciences, biomedicine and biotechnology can usefully be analysed along three dimensions. The first concerns logics of control - for contemporary biopolitics is risk politics. The second concerns the regime of truth in the life sciences - for contemporary biopolitics is molecular politics. The third concerns technologies of the self - for contemporary biopolitics is ethopolitics. The article suggests that, in these events, human beings have become `somatic individuals': personhood is increasingly being defined in terms of corporeality, and new and direct relations are established between our biology and our conduct. At the same time, this somatic and corporeal individuality has become opened up to choice, prudence and responsibility, to experimentation, to contestation and so to a politics of `life itself'.
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For centuries, medicine aimed to treat abnormalities. But today normality itself is open to medical modification. Equipped with a new molecular understanding of bodies and minds, and new techniques for manipulating basic life processes at the level of molecules, cells, and genes, medicine now seeks to manage human vital processes. The Politics of Life Itself offers a much-needed examination of recent developments in the life sciences and biomedicine that have led to the widespread politicization of medicine, human life, and biotechnology. Avoiding the hype of popular science and the pessimism of most social science, Nikolas Rose analyzes contemporary molecular biopolitics, examining developments in genomics, neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychopharmacology and the ways they have affected racial politics, crime control, and psychiatry. Rose analyzes the transformation of biomedicine from the practice of healing to the government of life; the new emphasis on treating disease susceptibilities rather than disease; the shift in our understanding of the patient; the emergence of new forms of medical activism; the rise of biocapital; and the mutations in biopower. He concludes that these developments have profound consequences for who we think we are, and who we want to be.
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As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he refers as the crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to postcolonialism.
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Let me begin by defining what I mean by decolonization in African philosophy. By decolonization, I mean divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past. The crucial word in this formulation is "undue". Obviously, it would not be rational to try to reject everything of a colonial ancestry. Conceivably, a thought or a mode of inquiry spearheaded by our erstwhile colonizers may be valid or in some way beneficial to humankind. Are we called upon to reject or ignore it? That would be a madness having neither rhyme nor reason. Yet there are reasons for adopting a doubly critical stance toward the problems and theories of Western philosophy--particularly toward the categories of thought embedded therein. The reasons are historical. Colonialism was not only a political imposition, but also a cultural one. Gravely affected, or even perhaps infected, were our religions and systems of education. I will address the question of religion later, but I want directly to notice an aspect of the system of education introduced by colonialism that is of a particular philosophical relevance. It consists in the fact that education was delivered in the medium of one foreign language or another. Now if you learn philosophy in a given language, that is the language in which you naturally philosophize, not just during the learning period but also, all things being equal, for life. But a language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization. Note, however, that I say "suggest" not "compel", for, if the phenomenon had the element of necessitation implied by the latter word, no decolonization would be possible. Nevertheless, the starting point of the problem is that the African who has learned philosophy in English, for example, has most likely become conceptually westernized to a large extent not by choice but by the force of historical circumstances. To that same extent he may have become de-Africanized. It does not matter if the philosophy learned was African philosophy. If that philosophy was academically formulated in English and articulated therein, the message was already substantially westernized, unless there was a conscious effort toward cross-cultural filtration. Of course, in colonial times such concerns were not the order of the day, to say the least, nor have they, even now in post-colonial times, acquired that status. This gives the present conference a special significance; for, as far as I know, it is the first conference on decolonization in African philosophy.
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This article discusses the difficult but necessary task of dismantling our disciplinary boundaries in order to even begin to understand the who, what, why, when and how of human beings. Sylvia Wynter argues that when Frantz Fanon made the statement "beside phylogeny and ontogeny stands sociogeny" in Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 1967) he effectively ruptured the present knowledge system that our academic disciplines serve to maintain, by calling into question "our present culture's purely biological definition of what it is to be, and therefore of what it is like to be, human" (Wynter 2001: 31). This rupture that Fanon caused remains the space, Wynter argues, that will necessarily move us out of our present Western/European/bio-economic conception of being human whereby the Self requires an Other for its definition, toward a hybrid nature-culture (2006a: 156) conception that needs no Other in order to understand Self (1976: 85).
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The South Atlantic Quarterly 101.1 (2002) 57-96 In December 1998 I had the good fortune to be one of the commentators in the workshop "Historical Capitalism, Coloniality of Power, and Transmodernity," featuring presentations by Immanuel Wallerstein, Anibal Quijano, and Enrique Dussel. Speakers were asked to offer updates and to elaborate on the concepts attributed to them. Reflecting on "transmodernity," Dussel made a remark that I take as a central point of my argument. According to Dussel, postmodern criticism of modernity is important and necessary, but it is not enough. The argument was developed by Dussel in his recent short but important dialogue with Gianni Vattimo's work, which he characterized as a "eurocentric critique of modernity." What else can there be, beyond a Eurocentric critique of modernity and Eurocentrism? Dussel has responded to this question with the concept of transmodernity, by which he means that modernity is not a strictly European but a planetary phenomenon, to which the "excluded barbarians" have contributed, although their contribution has not been acknowledged. Dussel's argument resembles, then, the South Asian Subaltern Studies project, although it has been made from the legacies of earlier colonialisms (Spanish and Portuguese). Transmodernity also implies—for Dussel—a "liberating reason" (razón liberadora) that is the guiding principle of his philosophy and ethic of liberation. The dialogues between Dussel and Wallerstein, between philosophy of liberation and world system analysis, and between philosophy of liberation and opening the social sciences, have two things in common. First, both are critical of capitalism, the neoliberal market, and formal democracy. Second, both (and Quijano as well) conceive of modernity as unfolding in the sixteenth century with capitalism and the emergence of the Atlantic commercial circuit. However, there is a break between Wallerstein, on one hand, and Dussel and Quijano, on the other: they stand at different ends of the colonial difference. To explain this intuition is the main thrust of this essay. Dussel's remarks can also be applied to Wallerstein's conception of historical capitalism, in that it states that Historical Capitalism is a Eurocentric criticism of capitalism. By introducing the notion of colonial difference, I will be able to expand on Dussel's notion of transmodernity and Quijano's coloniality of power. I will be able also to compare the three in their approach to Eurocentrism and, toward the end of the article, to introduce Slavoj Zizek's own take on "Eurocentrism from the left." My first step, then, will be to distinguish two macronarratives, that of Western civilization and that of the modern world (from the early modern period [i.e., the European Renaissance] until today). The first is basically a philosophical narrative, whereas the second is basically the narrative of the social sciences. Both macronarratives have their positive and negative sides. While Western civilization is celebrated by some, its logocentrism is criticized by others. Similarly, modernity has its defenders as well as its critics. Dussel is located between the two macronarratives, but his criticism diverges from both the criticism internal to Western civilization and the critique internal to the modern world, as in world-system analysis. As a philosopher he is attuned to the first macronarrative, the macronarrative of Western civilization and its origins in ancient Greece. As a Latin American philosopher, he has been always attentive to the historical foundation of the modern/colonial world in the sixteenth century. He shares these interests with Wallerstein and Quijano, both of whom are sociologists. However, Quijano and Dussel share the Latin American colonial experience or, rather, a local history of the colonial difference. Wallerstein, instead, is immersed in the imperial difference that distinguishes the philosophical critique of Western civilization in Europe and the sociological critique of modernity in the United States. In essence, then, the geopolitics of knowledge is organized around the diversification, through history, of the colonial and the imperial differences. Let me specify further the distinctions I am introducing here. The following argument is built on the assumption (which I cannot develop here) that the history of capitalism as told by Fernand Braudel, Wallerstein, and Giovanni Arrighi and the history of Western epistemology as it has been constructed since the European Renaissance run parallel to...
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Nepantla: Views from South 4.1 (2003) 97-119 There are two kinds of histories of the university as an institution that may help us understand the dilemmas now confronting universities in Latin and Anglo-America. Since the European Renaissance and European colonial expansion in the sixteenth century—that is, the foundational moment of the modern/colonial world—the accumulation of money has gone hand in hand with the accumulation of meaning and of knowledge. Today “historical-structural dependency” still structures the world, both economically and epistemically. If the Latin American university, as an institution, is in crisis (as is the political and economic system, from Argentina to Colombia, from Venezuela to Peru, and from Brazil to Mexico), it is obvious that the accumulation of money cannot be detached from the institutional accumulation of meaning and knowledge at the university. Economists like Joseph Stiglitz and financial giants like George Soros have been denouncing the crisis of capitalism since the early 1990s. Shortly before then, Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1987) published a booklet about the crisis of science. Is it a coincidence that capitalism and scientific practices have a parallel biography, and that they both have arrived at a critical stage, together? What are the possible futures that can be imagined from our daily practice at the university? And how can we reimagine the connections between knowledge, the state, civil and political society, and an economy that is coming apart under the guidance of market fundamentalism? In addition to exploring these questions, this essay will detail how one institution, the Universidad Intercultural in Ecuador, has responded to them in a way that demonstrates that an institution of higher education need not be subservient to the values of the liberal state, the needs of corporations, or hegemonic conceptions of “universal” knowledge. Since knowing how cannot be identified with knowing what and understanding why, the role of the humanities in the corporate university becomes essential. And I say the “humanities,” and not just “the humanists” (as a species distinct from natural scientists and scholars in the professional schools). Since all knowledge and understanding is human understanding (from genomics to dance, from electric engineering to literature, from mathematical models in economy to political economy), every scholar, academic, and scientist has a responsibility toward the humanities; in other words, he or she has critical, ethical, and political responsibilities in the production, dissemination, transformation, and enactment of knowledge. The humanities can no longer afford to be what they have been for the past sixty years: a “complement” to the “efficiency” of “serious” technological knowledge that guarantees a constant progress of humanity as a whole and a sublime “enrichment” of human beings as Human Being. The repeated errors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s economic policies, and the “mistakes” of financial experts at Enron and WorldCom, show, among other things, that efficiency and expertise are simply technological skills, and not a guarantee of ethical conduct and political vision. Frank Capra's superb film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for example, remains a fundamental allegory of the individual perversions of “knowledge and interests” under capitalism and “liberal” democracy. The university today is not, indeed, cannot be, isolated from the general values by which the defenders of “triumphant” neoliberalism trumpeted it in the United States, Argentina, Europe, and elsewhere. As I said, the accumulation of money, in the constitution of Europe, the West, or Western civilization, went hand in hand with the accumulation of meaning. Think about “museums of natural history,” for example. They are a clear example of the accumulation of meaning and knowledge; and the “histories” of museums of natural history parallel those of capitalism and European expansion all over the globe. Let this serve as a paradigmatic example in the sketching of two kinds of histories, the proper knowledge of which is beyond my reach at this point. As I said earlier, I am not interested in history per se, or in covering all the important details that would satisfy the empiricist scholar, but in underlining two historical trajectories: first, the linear history of the Western...
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Our ideas of tradition, culture, and ideology found their places in the social scientific discourse of the 1950s and 1960s as part of modernization theory. This supposed theory was heir to ancient occidental habits of mythological thinking about history, as is well known.1 But the reorientation of these ideas in the postwar years was guided more specifically by the novel division of the globe into three conceptual “worlds” in response to the Cold War.
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The problem of “foundations” is a crucial one for any field, particularly perhaps one with as varied a possible repertoire of elementary sources as the study of world politics. In this paper, I draw attention to how some different ways of thinking about where knowledge is produced and how it circulates can be used to inform understanding about geographies of knowledge of world politics. Such geographies, however, are not ends in themselves. The point is to understand the ontological bases of knowing from perspectives that do not privilege a singular history of knowledge associated with a specific world region or of conceptions of knowledge that implicitly or explicitly presume their self-evident universality. In other words, we need to move beyond the all-too-conventional repertoires of relativism and positivism in understanding the bases to knowing about world politics/international relations. The paper suggests some ways forward, which should now be the subject of vigorous debate.
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This essay expands on the idea that gave rise to these two special issues of Poetics Today and explores the connections between place and theory, between geocultural locations and theoretical practices. It examines the genealogy of self-descriptions instead of focusing on the "Western" construction of the "extreme West" (i.e., the New World, America, etc.). It emphasizes colonial legacies in the construction of postcolonial theories and assesses postmodernity from the perspective of postcoloniality, demonstrating that geocultural locations are not necessarily bound to given theoretical practices, although it maintains that, in the social sciences and the humanities, the place one is from and the place one is in are part and parcel of what one imagines and constructs. In a transnational world, displacement and exile are creating new relationships between places and theories. Boundaries, rather than nations or regions, are the places where new theoretical energies emerge. This Afterword also attempts to construct a genealogy of colonial legacies and postcolonial theories in the Americas and, by so doing, attempts to rearticulate the succession of colonial imaginary constructions that have mapped and remapped "The Americas."
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Incl. bibliographical notes and references, index
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Winner of the Modern Language Association's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize. The Darker Side of the Renaissance weaves together literature, semiotics, history, historiography, cartography, geography, and cultural theory to examine the role of language in the colonization of the New World. Walter D. Mignolo locates the privileging of European forms of literacy at the heart of New World colonization. He examines how alphabetic writing is linked with the exercise of power, what role "the book" has played in colonial relations, and the many connections between writing, social organization, and political control. It has long been acknowledged that Amerindians were at a disadvantage in facing European invaders because native cultures did not employ the same kind of texts (hence "knowledge") that were validated by the Europeans. Yet no study until this one has so thoroughly analyzed either the process or the implications of conquest and destruction through sign systems. Starting with the contrasts between Amerindian and European writing systems, Mignolo moves through such topics as the development of Spanish grammar, the different understandings of the book as object and text, principles of genre in history-writing, and an analysis of linguistic descriptions and mapping techniques in relation to the construction of territoriality and understandings of cultural space. The Darker Side of the Renaissance will significantly challenge commonplace understandings of New World history. More importantly, it will continue to stimulate and provide models for new colonial and post-colonial scholarship. ". . . a contribution to Renaissance studies of the first order. The field will have to reckon with it for years to come, for it will unquestionably become the point of departure for discussion not only on the foundations and achievements of the Renaissance but also on the effects and influences on colonized cultures." -- Journal of Hispanic/ Latino Theology Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature, Duke University.
Comprensión hermenéutica y comprensión teórica
  • Walter D Mignolo
Mignolo, Walter D. (1983) 'Comprensión hermenéutica y comprensión teórica', Revista de Literatura 90: 5-38.
Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, the Puzzle of Conscious Experience, and What It Is Like to Be ‘Black’
  • Sylvia Wynter
Wynter, Sylvia (2001) 'Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience, and What It Is Like to Be 'Black'', pp. 30-66 in Mercedes F. Duran-Cogan and Antonio Gómez-Moriana (eds) National Identities and Sociopolitical Changes in Latin America. New York: Routledge.
Black Skin, White Masks, trans
  • Frantz Fanon
Fanon, Frantz (1967 [1952]) Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lum Karkmann. New York: Grove Press.
The- New-World-civilizations-of-the-Maya-Aztec-and-Inca See also in this respect the ground-breaking study by
  • See
See: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/179408/education/47445/The- New-World-civilizations-of-the-Maya-Aztec-and-Inca; 8. See also in this respect the ground-breaking study by Lewis Gordon (1995).
all founded during the 16th century) and Harvard University (founded in 1636, when Descartes was publishing Discours de la méthode) See Mignolo
  • Cordoba
Cordoba, all founded during the 16th century) and Harvard University (founded in 1636, when Descartes was publishing Discours de la méthode). See Mignolo (2003).
Research Imbalance: Taking Science to the Problem http://www.harvardir.org/articlesThe Missing Chapter of Empire: Postmodern Re organization of Coloniality and Post-Fordist Capitalism
  • Richard Cash
Cash, Richard (2005) 'Research Imbalance: Taking Science to the Problem', Harvard International Review 22 March. http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1324/2/ Castro-Gómez, Santiago (2007) 'The Missing Chapter of Empire: Postmodern Re organization of Coloniality and Post-Fordist Capitalism', Cultural Studies 21(2–3): 428–48.
And if there is any doubt that 'les sciences humaines' (social sciences and the humanities in the US) are one and the same with 'la pensé occidentale
  • Wallerstein
Wallerstein et al. (1995). And if there is any doubt that 'les sciences humaines' (social sciences and the humanities in the US) are one and the same with 'la pensé occidentale', see Gusdorf (1967).
Talking about Our Modernity in Two Languages
  • Partha Chatterjee
Chaterjee, Partha (1998) 'Talking about Our Modernity in Two Languages', pp. 263-85 in A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism. Calcutta: Oxford University Press.
Is the Human a Teleological Suspension of Man? A Phenomenological Exploration of Sylvia Wynter’s Fanonian Biodicean Reflections
  • Lewis Gordon
Gordon, Lewis (2006) 'Is the Human a Teleological Suspension of Man? A Phenomenological Exploration of Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian Biodicean Reflections', pp. 237-57 in Anthony Bogues (ed.) After Man, Towards the Human: Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
Teorías literarias o de la literature/Qué son y para qué sirven?
  • Walter D Mignolo
Mignolo, Walter D. (1989) 'Teorías literarias o de la literature/ Qué son y para qué sirven?', pp. 41-78 in Graciela Reyes (ed.) Teorias literarias en la actualidad. Madrid: Ediciones El Arquero.
Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide Between East and West
  • Kishore Mahbubani
Mahbubani, Kishore (2001) Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide Between East and West. Hannover: Steerforth Press.
The Monocultures of the Mind
  • Vandana Shiva
Shiva, Vandana (1993) The Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives in Biodiversity. London: Zed Books.
Les origines des sciences humaines et la pensée occidentale
  • Georges Gusdorf
Gusdorf, Georges (1967) Les origines des sciences humaines et la pensée occidentale. Paris: Payot.
Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifesto', Subaltern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Study of Media and Communication
  • Walter D Mignolo
Mignolo, Walter D. (2008) 'Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifesto', Subaltern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Study of Media and Communication, 2 February. http://subalternstudies.com/?p=193.
The Missing Chapter of Empire: Postmodern Reorganization of Coloniality and Post-Fordist Capitalism
  • Richard Cash
Cash, Richard (2005) 'Research Imbalance: Taking Science to the Problem', Harvard International Review 22 March. http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1324/2/ Castro-Gómez, Santiago (2007) 'The Missing Chapter of Empire: Postmodern Reorganization of Coloniality and Post-Fordist Capitalism', Cultural Studies 21(2-3): 428-48.
  • Frantz Fanon
Fanon, Frantz (1967 [1952]) Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lum Karkmann. New York: Grove Press.
The Rise of Social Theory, trans. Sheila Gogol
  • Johan Heilbron
Heilbron, Johan (1995) The Rise of Social Theory, trans. Sheila Gogol. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of Decolniality
  • Walter D Mignolo
Mignolo, Walter D. (2007a) 'Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of Decolniality', Cultural Studies 21(2-3): 449-514.
The Darker Side of the Enlightenment: A Decolonial Reading of Kant's Geography
  • Walter D Mignolo
Mignolo, Walter D. (forthcoming) 'The Darker Side of the Enlightenment: A Decolonial Reading of Kant's Geography', in Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta (eds) Readings on Kant's Geography. Stony Brook: Stony Brook Press. Pletsch, Carl E. (1981) 'The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, circa 1950-1975', Comparative Studies in Society and History 23(4): 565-90.
Formulating Modern Thoughts in African Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations
  • Kwasi Wiredu
Wiredu, Kwasi (1992) 'Formulating Modern Thoughts in African Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations', pp. 301-32 in V.Y. Mudimbe (ed.) The Surreptitious Speech. Presence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness, 1947-1987. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.