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Decoloniality (Spanish:decolonialidad) is aschool of thought that aims todelink fromEurocentricknowledge hierarchies andways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth.[2] It critiques the perceiveduniversality ofWestern knowledge and the superiority ofWestern culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce such perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understandcolonialism as the basis for the everyday function ofcapitalistmodernity and ofimperialism.[3]: 168-174
Decoloniality emerged as part of a South America movement examining the role of theEuropean colonization of the Americas in establishing Eurocentric modernity/coloniality — according toAníbal Quijano (1928-2018), who defined the term and its reach.[2][4][5]
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 analyzesclass distinctions,ethnic studies,gender studies, andarea studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic (in the sense ofsemiotics) and practical "options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power"[10]: xxvii or from a "matrix of modernity" rooted in colonialism.[8][9]
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.[10]: 2 This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power orcoloniality of power. Some have built upon decolonial theory by proposing Critical Indigenous Methodologies for research.[11]
Although formal and explicit colonization ended with thedecolonization of the Americas during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and thedecolonization of much of theGlobal South in the late twentieth century, its successors, Westernimperialism andglobalization 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.[3]: 168 Decoloniality emerged as the colonial matrix of power was put into place during the 16th century.[citation needed][clarification needed] It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from,Eurocentrism.[12]: 542
Coloniality of gender is a concept developed by Argentine philosopherMaria Lugones. Building offAníbal Quijano's foundational concept ofcoloniality of power,[14] coloniality of gender explores howEuropean colonialism influenced and imposed European gender structures onIndigenous peoples of the Americas. This concept challenges the notion that gender can be isolated from the impacts of colonialism.
Scholars have also extended the concept of coloniality of gender to describe colonial experiences in Asian and African societies. The concept is notably employed in academic fields likedecolonial feminism and the broader study of decoloniality.[15]Decoloniality has been called a form of "epistemic disobedience",[10]: 122-123 "epistemicde-linking",[16]: 450 and "epistemic reconstruction".[3]: 176 In this sense, decolonial thinking is the recognition and implementation of a bordergnosis orsubaltern,[17]: 88 a means of eliminating the provincial tendency to pretend that Western European modes of thinking are universal.[12]: 544 In less theoretical applications—such as movements for Indigenousautonomy—decoloniality is considered a program of de-linking from contemporary legacies of coloniality,[16]: 452 a response to needs unmet by the modernRightist orLeftist governments,[10]: 217 or, most broadly, social movements in search of a "new humanity"[10]: 52 or the search for "social liberation from all power organized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and domination".[3]: 178
Frantz Fanon andAimé Césaire contributed to decolonial thinking, theory, and practice by identifying core principles of decoloniality. The first principle they identified 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 step towards the creation of decolonial thinking.[18]
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."[18] This is the work of the decolonial project that hasepistemic,political, andethical dimensions.[19]
Aníbal Quijano summarized the goals of decoloniality as a need to recognize that the instrumentation ofreason 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 the globalcoloniality of power.[16]: 452 Alanna Lockward explains that Europe has engaged in an intentional "politics of confusion" to conceal the relationship between modernity and coloniality.[20]
Decoloniality is synonymous with decolonial "thinking and doing",[10]: xxiv and it questions or problematizes the histories of power emerging from Europe. These histories underlie the logic ofWestern civilization.[3]: 168 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 andepistemic project.[10]: xxiv-xxiv
Examples of contemporary decolonial programmatics and analytics exist throughout the Americas. Decolonial movements include the contemporaryZapatista governments of Southern Mexico, Indigenous movements forautonomy throughout South America,ALBA,[21]CONFENIAE inEcuador,ONIC inColombia, theTIPNIS movement inBolivia, and theLandless Workers' Movement in Brazil. These movements embody action oriented towards the goals expressed to seek ever-increasing freedoms by challenging the reasoning behind modernity, since modernity is in fact a facet of the colonial matrix of power.[citation needed]
Examples of contemporary decolonial analytics includeethnic studies programs at various educational levels designed primarily to appeal to certain ethnic groups, including those at the K-12 level recentlybanned 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 ofcapitalist modernity,liberal democracy, andindividualism" values which decoloniality seeks to challenge.[22]: 6
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.[18][23] Many decolonial critiques focus on reformulating the concept ofmodernity as situated within colonial and racial frameworks.[24] Decolonial critique may inspire a decolonial culture that delinks from reproducing Western hierarchies.[25] Decolonial critique is a method of applying decolonial methods and practices to all facets of epistemic, social, and political thinking.[18]
Decolonial art critiquesWestern art for the way it is alienated from the surrounding world and its focus on pursuing aesthetic beauty.[27] Rather than feelings ofsublime at the beauty of an art object, decolonial art seeks to evoke feelings of "sadness, indignation, repentance, hope, solidarity, resolution to change the world in the future, and, most importantly, with the restoration of human dignity."[28] Decolonial aesthetics "seek to recognize and open options for liberating the senses" beyond just visual senses[29] and challenge "the idea of art from Eurocentric forms of expression and philosophies of the beautiful."[30]
Decolonial art may "re-inscribe indigeneity on the land" that has been obscured by colonialism and reveal alternatives or an "always elsewhere of colonialism."[29]Graffiti can function as an open or public challenge to colonial or imperialist structures and disrupt notions of a contented oppressed or colonized people.
Notable artists include:
Decolonial feminism reformulates thecoloniality of gender by critiquing the very formation of gender and its subsequent formations ofpatriarchy and thegender binary, not as universal constants across cultures, but as structures that have been instituted by and for the benefit ofEuropean colonialism.[5][31]Marìa Lugones proposes that decolonial feminism speaks to how "the colonial imposition of gender cuts across questions of ecology, economics, government, relations with the spirit world, and knowledge, as well as across everyday practices that either habituate us to take care of the world or to destroy it."[31] Decolonial feminists likeKarla Jessen Williamson and Rauna Kuokkanen have examined colonialism as a force that has imposedgender hierarchies on Indigenous women that have disempowered and fractured Indigenous communities and ways of life.[5]
Decolonial love is a love established on our relationality that is directed toward the emancipation of community from thecoloniality of power, including human and non-human beings.[33] It was developed byChicana feministChela Sandoval as a reformulation of love beyond individualistromantic notions of love.[33] Decolonial love "demands a deep recognition of our humanity and mutual implacability in undoing colonial relations of power and oppression that lead to indifference, contempt, and dehumanization."[32] It begins from within, as a love of one's humanity and for those who have resisted colonial violence in their pursuit of healing and liberation.[32] Thinkers who speak to the concept state that it is rooted inIndigenous cosmologies, includingIn Lak'ech ("you are my other me"), where love is a relational and resisting act toward thecoloniality of power.[32]
Moving beyond the critiques ofenlightenment philosophy and modernity, decolonial critiques of democracy uncover how practices in democratic governance root themselves in colonial and racial rhetoric. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee seeks to counter "hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference."[23]
Banerjee critiqueswestern 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."[23] He also extends this analysis againstdeliberative democracy, arguing 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.[23]
Decoloniality is often conflated withpostcolonialism,decolonization, andpostmodernism. However, decolonial theorists draw clear distinctions.
Postcolonialism is often mainstreamed into general oppositional practices by "people of color", "Third World intellectuals", or ethnic groups.[17]: 87 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".[16]: 452
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.[34]: 8 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 asAlgeria, the 19th-century United States, and 19th-centuryBrazil.[35]: 93-94
Decolonial scholars consider the colonization of the Americas a precondition for postcolonial analysis. The seminal text of postcolonial studies,Orientalism byEdward Said, describes the nineteenth-century European invention of theOrient 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 asOccidentalism, the later invention of the Orient would have been impossible.[10]: 56 This means that postcolonialism becomes problematic when applied to post-nineteenth-century Latin America.[35]: 94
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 political 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 tode jure decolonization.Gandhi andJinnah inIndia,Fanon inAlgeria,Mandela inSouth Africa, and the early 20th-centuryZapatistas in Mexico are all examples of decolonial projects that existed before decolonization.
"Modernity" as a concept is complementary to coloniality. Coloniality is called "the darker side of western modernity".[10] The problematic aspects of coloniality are often overlooked when describing the totality ofWestern 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".[16]: 451
Althoughpostmodern 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.[36]: 13
To summarize, likemodernity, postmodernity often reproduces the "Eurocentric fallacy" foundational to modernity. Therefore, rather than criticizing the terrors of modernity, decolonialism criticizes Eurocentric modernity andrationality because of the "irrational myth" that these conceal.[16]: 453-454 Decolonial approaches thus seek to "politicise epistemology from the experiences of those on the 'border,' not to develop yet another epistemology of politics".[36]: 13
Jonatan Kurzwelly and Malin Wilckens used the example of decolonisation of academic collections of human remains collected during colonial times to support racist theories and give legitimacy to colonial oppression, and showed how both contemporary scholarly methods and political practice perpetuatereified andessentialist notions of identities.[37]
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