Decolonial Thinking

The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (2011)
Walter D. Mignolo
 
"But of course history is not an agent in itself. It moves because of the doing of human beings"(xxvii). This quote is essential to my interests here. The nature of history is never-ending and ever-changing because of human agency, and I argue that our work as teachers is to facilitate opportunities to bear witness, to be listeners of testimony and thus live through a history and in doing so move history's course.I think to do this, we have to go to the darker side of history. I think we can take our students there. I think our students need to bear witness to the darker side.

"'Modernity' is a complex narrative whose point of origination was Europe; a narrative that builds Western civilization by celebrating its achievements while hiding at the same time its darker side, 'coloniality'"(3). Thus, there is no modernity without coloniality (which means that there can not really be a "post" colonial state because we cannot extract the coloniality from history nor from human beings). The colonial matrix of power is shared and disputed by many contenders. Therefore,Mignolo argues that decolonial thinking emerged and unfolded as responses to the ideals projected to and enacted in the non-European world. So to counter the logic of coloniality, we must intervene with the logic of decoloniality, which seems to mean logics that stem from subjects, and from people perhaps, that have been subjugated by coloniality. I think history has shown that this is possible,
 and perhaps Guatemala's peasant/working class revolutionary efforts demonstrate this (see Grandin). Would Mignolo see U.S, interventions in the politics of Guatemala in 1954 and on as a colonial logic, a rhetoric of modernity, of Western dominance and hegemony? Is this a logic?  Does this power actually oppress those it has excluded or has it, in fact, created a situation in which those colonized can internalize the logic and then enact a form of decolonial thinking and action? If we look at Grandin's book, The Last Colonial Massacre, I think we can see how the logic of coloniality created a plantation economy in which, and only because of which, the laborers organized and found new meaning  in self and solidarity. However, did the "new meaning" evolve out of a similar colonial logic, a hierarchy of power?

The modern state and the colonial state are managed  by this matrix of power. The colonial matrix of power is a matrix used by all the colonial bodies;  the states have been organized,  and  they manage control in and through a structure that began and emerged during western expansion, creating colonies. 


The links (knowledge and subjectivity, gender and sexuality, economy, authority, and racism and patriarchy) are maintained  because there is a structure of annunciation (it dictates the parameters) of knowledge; there are specific insitutions (church, state, university), actors, categories of thought, and specific languages that control knowledge. To delink means to delink from that colonial matrix of power, but you do not delink all at once.

Delinking is a process -- a conscientious, political and epistemic process --  that involves a lot of people in different temporaltities. You have to delink from the categories of knowledge that have been created by Christian, European, heterosexual, white men. This colonial power was able to create knowledge and also delegitimize all others' knowledge. People were made to believe that their knowledge was not legitimate because they were linked to this matrix, but they can now see that, in fact,  it was a fallacy of sorts -- Africans, Indians, Mairos are realizing that they have been classified by patriarchy and/or racism and epistemically undermined as well -- the Global Politcal Society. Western modernity is working in this same matrix.

Mignolo talks about The Colonial Misunderstanding (2004) in an interview. It is  a documentary after the Congo Berlin Conference 1884 when all the European countries argued about their right to possess Africa. The discourse here is the German critiquing his own people from Germany to German public and academia. The African historian makes a critique of the same event when Germany slaughtered Hereros.  The question is : what are the differences in the kinds of knowledge by the white German and African historians? The African historian is producing knowledge not just to correct history, but he wants to delink it from European's version of history and produce an African Renaissance, a realization that Europe dispossesed us from our land and from our soul. The task of delinking, decolonialiity,  cannot be guided by Germans. It can't be a German saying, "you've been robbed of your land and soul."  The Africans don't need the help; they can delink. If the white want to become decolonialized, they have to follow the lead of the third world people or the people of the colonial state.

The response of the second and third world to being deligitimized- was an emergence of geo-political knowledge  from Third World intellectuals (Fanon 1961, Cabral 1973, Ghandi 1948,  Senghor 2001, Cesaire 2008, Kwasi Wiredu, Enrigue Dussel, Anibal Quijano). It is an epistemic war --focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification. Intellectuals of the Third World realized they did not need to wait for an idea from France or England to decide what to do "here" but by delinking, they found new options.  As Rodolfo Kusch said, "We are afraid of thinking for ourselves." This emergent of knowledge from Third World intellectuals showed that  colonial history is not just economic and political but that it is epistemic. They saw that their knowledge was indeed valuable, and so this geopolitical knowledge emerged in third world intellectuals. 


The body-politic knowledge emerged in the US because of the Civil Rights Movement.  New ideas flourished in the 60s: Women Studies, Ethnic Studies, Afro-American Studies, Chicano Studies.  What knowledge that was being claimed in these new ideas was a knowledge that had been taken away. Knowledge about African Americans and Chicano/as had been written by the whites and so this new knowledge was about writing their own history -- it is a struggle, an epistemic war to delink because coloniality dominates everything from  humanities to social sciences to natural sciences. The diverse system of the west has its power because it is based on the same colonial matrix of power; western modernity is the based on the same matrix as the colonial matrix of power. Thus, the second and third worlds are the geo-politic, it seems like the first world is actually a body-politic within and outside western modernity, which, again,  is controlled by the colonial matrix of power. To delink means to engage in this epistemic war.


How do we delink if we are in the matrix? Advocacy -- if you really want a minority student to do well, you need faculty who can produce decolonial knowledge; show the students options how to delink -- going to the university to be a doctor or lawyer is one option, but there are other options in education; decoloniality is not a field of study, but it permeates all the disciplines where you make students aware of options; the ultimate decision is not epistemic or political but is ethical because what you choose, whichever option you choose, you are responsible for your option. Ethics is about responsibility in whatever you choose to do, all your acts. You have to be aware of the decisions you make and the consequences. 

A decolonial education is making a student aware that they are living among options. You cannot force a student to take an option, but you can say that you have to be aware and responsible for that option. We are conditioned by modernity not to question our actions -- we don't question the messages of accumulation. What is hidden is how we arrived at this state of accumulation. You start with your own personal ethics. Create a space whereby we question eachothers frameworks of what is right and wrong -- begin to dialgoue. If the ethics is controlled by hegemony, how is a student to see options? The colonial education limits this, but a decolonial education has to provide how communication functions, how we have been conditioned to accumulate, talking to them about their own life and what they know to show how they have been conditioned; a decolonial education needs questions; it is not about information but it is about being able to understand the world in which they are living unconciously.  We don't have to live unconsciously. The teacher opted to bring this to the classroom and now students have to think about options, but they are not always rational choices. Rational argumentation for why you chose an irrational option locates your ethical decision. Ino ther words, advocating for others and making ethcical choices may seem irrational but that is a good sign that you are delinking from the age old systems of control that dehumanize our global society AND that system that is now dressed in a modern garb.

What is justice and how does decoloniality bring forth justice? Mignolo first suggests that there be a shift in the meaning of justice to "economic justice." Next, we have to think about what it means to live within the law. Civilians are living within the law, but the state and corporations are not. What kind of justice can we talk about when the people in the army and with the money are living beyond the law? So what is a decolonial sense of justice? If the rhetoric of modernity is the defense and rationalization of the use of the matrix, and justice, human rights and democracy are being used to preserve acting beyond the law, then justice will be in the delinking -- to thoughtfully engage the Global Society to practice inclusivity, but I think it is fundamentally to show options.


Delinking epistimology from capital is decolonization -- to produce decolonial knowledge that will put us in a different concept of life, but what is that concept of life?

Society is modern; economy is capitalism but it is linked with racism which has a dispensibility of human life. The massive enslavement of Africans; it is an economic concept. Human life is dispensible because once a body does not produce, we throw it away and bring more bodies. The body becomes a commodity; human life became a commodity. They were slaves before, but once capitalist economy existed, it became a commodity -- the mercantilization of human life (children, women, organs). What are the consequences of making human life dispensible?

Economy is based on an extraction of gold and silver - -coffee and cotton. But now because of technological advancement, there is a possiblity of environmental catastrophe. Mignolo says that there is a rhetoric of modernity -- salvation, progress, triumph - that hides the logic of colonialism. You have to have both; there is no modernity without coloniality. The new technology and the rhetoric of modernity -- save paper, save trees, put people in contact, no need to get into a car because you have the Internet -- but how do you make technology? Mining. Where are the mines? What are the consequences of the mines and the technology that improves your life? You need copper. So you need water to separate the copper from the stone; water which was a human right becomes a commodity. So when you are exploding mines to produce cell phones, you need to reduce costs to produce more and serve more using the rhetoric of modernity while using the logic of colonialism -- that is the consequences of progress! They won't tell you what is behind modernity. The rhetoric of modernity always goes with colonialism -- the problem is because knowledge is being controlled by those making decisions and building, so we criticize but we are always working at the level of the annuciated (semiotic term ?): racism and patriarchy. The system of values in which life became dispensible in the 16th century came from the logic of Eurpean enlightenment which was transformed into the US corporate world --they had to classify a system of inferior people that was racist and and use a system patriarchy to decide who was normal and who was not normal. This is where the control of knowledge is secured.

The moment in which we start questioning the kind of issues that have been put in front of us to discuss is the moment of delinking-- we should change the terms of the conversation and not the content of the conversation.