This article offers to outline a direction for a decolonial political theory based on Aimé Césaire’s and Frantz Fanon’s thoughts. In doing so, I will first discuss some work of comparative political theory that could be associated with an attempt to decolonize political theory. Rather than a systematic critique of these works, this article aims to outline some of their limits from a decolonial perspective, such as their embedment in a continental ontology/logic, and their over-emphasis on methodology that (...) can lead to an instrumental account of politics. In contrast, I will argue for a decolonial existential political theory that grounds its investigation in what Frantz Fanon called ‘the zone of nonbeing’ and that takes politics as first philosophy. To make my point, I will discuss Aimé Césaire’s Letter to Maurice Thorez and Frantz Fanon’s Political Theory of the Damnés. (shrink)

This paper explores how women and non-binary Latinx Community Workers in Toronto, Canada, negotiate their identities, citizenship practices and politics in relation to settler colonialism and decolonization. We demonstrate how LCWs enact a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging, an alternative way of practicing citizenship that strives to simultaneously challenge both Canadian and Latin American settler colonialism. This can be seen when LCWs refuse to be recognized on white settler terms as “proud Canadians,” and create community-based learning initiatives that (...) incite conversations among everyday Latinx community members around Canada’s settler colonial history and present, Indigenous worldviews, as well as race and settler colonialism in Latin America. We consider how LCWs’ enactments of a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging serve as small, incomplete, but crucial steps towards decolonization. (shrink)

This article examines how care functions as a critical feature in decolonial political theory and the politics of refusal. In recent years, political theorists have emphasized how refusal challenges the legitimacy of settler colonial government, asserts indigenous presence, and fuels decolonial politics. Care, I argue, plays a significant and under-examined role in the politics of refusal. I look, first, to the writings of William Apess to better examine the cruelty of settler colonial care and to (...) highlight how indigenous reworkings of care enact political presence and agency. I then examine how care has been taken up by contemporary indigenous activists in the Idle No More, Standing Rock, and Walking with Our Sisters movements. Care – expressed in online and on-the-ground grieving, social mobilization around environmental and health concerns, and teach-ins and healing practices – draws on affective intensities to build indigenous community, enact indigenous liberation, imagine and pursue radical alternatives, and create allied networks of support. In these examples, affective responses of joy, outrage, and mourning are not simply incidental accompaniments to the politics of refusal; they explain why refusal matters and how refusal in turn can challenge settler memory and pursue transformative decolonial politics. (shrink)

This article explores the politics of digital protest and emergent forms of sociality in the #NoDAPL movement using Elizabeth Povinelli’s concept of geontopower. I begin by situating the concept of geontopower in relation to a range of biopolitical, decolonial, and ecocritical theory in order to show its importance in conceptualizing the interconnectedness of decolonial and environmental interests. I use this theoretical framework to analyze several instances of what I call ‘digital decoloniality’ in the #NoDAPL movement, cases where (...) the particular affordances of social media technologies and the efforts of Indigenous activists and non-Indigenous allies disrupted normative assumptions regarding the boundaries of the digital and ‘analog’ worlds and resisted the geontopolitical structuring of life and nonlife. I argue that the #NoDAPL hashtag works to enact the prerogatives of Western science-based environmentalism and Indigenous epistemological tenets in common, performatively generating new possibilities for conceptualizing social struggle and shared history. (shrink)

In _The Politics of Decolonial Investigations_ Walter D. Mignolo provides a sweeping examination of how coloniality has operated around the world in its myriad forms from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Decolonial border thinking allows Mignolo to outline how the combination of the self-fashioned narratives of Western civilization and the hegemony of Eurocentric thought served to eradicate all knowledges in non-European languages and praxes of living and being. Mignolo also traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and (...) gendered classifications, modernity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, placing them all within the framework of coloniality. Drawing on the work of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the Global South and the Global East, Mignolo shows how coloniality has provoked the emergence of decolonial politics initiated by delinking from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. The urgent task, Mignolo stresses, is the epistemic reconstitution of categories of thought and praxes of living destituted in the very process of building Western civilization and the idea of modernity. The overcoming of the long-lasting hegemony of the West and its distorted legacies is already underway in all areas of human existence. Mignolo underscores the relevance of the politics of decolonial investigations, in and outside the academy, to liberate ourselves from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing, and praxes of living. (shrink)

This article approaches contemporary European debates on the subject of realism through the lenses offered by two decolonial thinkers: Fanon and Dussel. Whereas both share with realism a fundamental emphasis on reality as the starting point for theory – an assumption shared by much decolonial thought – they nevertheless provide another layer of specificity in their consideration of the colonial condition, diagnosing a fundamental absence of reciprocity that dictates the course of decolonization as a transformation of reality. Reconsidering (...) the debates on realism in light of these insights therefore provides a powerful basis for both formulating a specifically decolonial realism and for engaging in comparative political theorizing more generally. (shrink)

This article considers how diplomacy can be refined and amplified within the field of multicultural education. Focusing on Native American peoples in particular, I argue that the multiculturalist emphasis on cultural diplomacy overlooks the political difference of First Nations peoples. In contrast to a multiculturalist cultural diplomacy, the article develops diplomacy according to a decolonial framework that seeks to dismantle colonial perspectives of Native American political difference. Drawing upon theorists and historians of diplomacy, as well as Indigenous and (...) class='Hi'>decolonial writers, the article seeks to provide the terms through which teacher identifications as decolonial diplomats can be fostered toward Native Americans. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the significance of incorporating decolonial methodologies in analyzing political discourse in a postcolonial world, particularly in Africa. The decolonial approach to...

This article offers a comprehensive review of Political Choreographies, Decolonial Theo-ries, Trans Bodies, the latest book, a volume edited by Marina Gržinić and Jovita Pristovšek in intensive collaboration with Nomusa Makhubu and Tjaša Kancler, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2023. This volume takes as its starting point the body as a structural signifier, which is conceptualized in seven chapters. Each of them addresses the question of movement, politics, revolt, action, etc., in a variety of ways to de-link (...) ourselves (especially us Whites) from colonial modernity as the organizing principle not only of capitalism but of a whole range of processes that emanate from modernity, i.e., forms of domination and oppression such as racism, sexism, Eurocentrism, and environmental destruction. What makes this book special, however, is not only the positions presented but also the way in which they are presented. Each conversation begins with a carefully selected starting point, linked to the interlocutor’s* work and accompanied by a rich citation system of references and additional information. This opens up the formation of epistemic counter-narratives that confront the violent history of capitalism and form possibilities for yet unidentified bodies, movements, politics, and political action as future potentialities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I discuss the issues raised by Alcoff, Arya, and Táíwò in their responses to Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic. I pay special attention to a fact I think all nonideal theorists, particularly ones who care about reducing oppression, must take seriously: the fact that oppression characteristically faces its victims with tradeoffs such that attempts to advance their interests usually come with significant costs. I discuss how this fact bears on the situations of poor women and those oppressed by (...) sexism and imperialism simultaneously. I also discuss how the nonideal universalist perspective I develop in Decolonizing Universalism supports criticism of neoliberalism, how it takes seriously concerns about the locus of enunciation in Latin American decolonial theory, how it supports transnational solidarities, and its upshots for thinking the relationships between feminism, culture, and modernity. (shrink)

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

This paper explores the important role of critical science, and in particular of post-colonial and decolonial theories, in understanding and shaping the ongoing advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is viewed as amongst the technological advances that will reshape modern societies and their relations. While the design and deployment of systems that continually adapt holds the promise of far-reaching positive change, they simultaneously pose significant risks, especially to already vulnerable peoples. Values and power are central to this discussion. (...) class='Hi'>Decolonial theories use historical hindsight to explain patterns of power that shape our intellectual, political, economic, and social world. By embedding a decolonial critical approach within its technical practice, AI communities can develop foresight and tactics that can better align research and technology development with established ethical principles, centring vulnerable peoples who continue to bear the brunt of negative impacts of innovation and scientific progress. We highlight problematic applications that are instances of coloniality, and using a decolonial lens, submit three tactics that can form a decolonial field of artificial intelligence: creating a critical technical practice of AI, seeking reverse tutelage and reverse pedagogies, and the renewal of affective and political communities. The years ahead will usher in a wave of new scientific breakthroughs and technologies driven by AI research, making it incumbent upon AI communities to strengthen the social contract through ethical foresight and the multiplicity of intellectual perspectives available to us, ultimately supporting future technologies that enable greater well-being, with the goal of beneficence and justice for all. (shrink)

Same-sex practices are commonly medicalised in various global spaces. Some societies view same-sex practices as some form of disease that needs to be cured. In Africa, the influence of Christianity has prompted many communities to conclude that there are spiritual forces behind same-sex orientations and practices. Therefore, same-sex practices are demonised, and those identifying with these sexualities and gender identities are viewed as sick, or as having some form of mental illness. As a fast-growing and influential movement in South Africa, (...) Christianity plays a critical role in this narrative. Against this backdrop, this article examined how some Pentecostal pastors in South Africa use God-talk to propel the narrative that medicalises same-sex practices and how these pastors claim to have miraculous powers to heal these practices. Consequently, the gender and sexuality commonly accepted within African religiosity and spirituality are pushed to the peripheries. Therefore, it is argued in this article that the colonial-missionary discourses regarding African sexualities and genders are at play within the religious medicalisation of same-sex narratives. Thus, there is a need to problematise and transform this narrative. This act can contribute to delinking African genders and sexualities from Western repressions and subjugation agendas. The discussion moved from the premise of decoloniality while adopting a multidisciplinary approach that incorporated theology, gender and sexuality studies, psychology, health, and socio-political sciences. Again, the article used secondary literature analysis to examine this phenomenon and to gain a thorough understanding of how African Pentecostalism continues to use God-talk to medicalise same-sex practices in contemporary South Africa and the repercussions thereof.Contribution: The study contributed to the existing knowledge that addresses religious challenges faced by people identifying with non-normative sexualities and genders in Africa. This can contribute to the transformation of religious medicalisation of same-sex practices in South Africa, and elsewhere. (shrink)

"[N]o matter how much of a coalition space this is, it ain't nothing like the coalescing you've got to do tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday."This essay is a critical reflection on the centrality of coalitional politics for decolonial feminist philosophy. Decolonial feminisms emerge from multisited struggles with colonization and, as a result, are rich and heterogeneous.1 Thus, the starting point for decolonial feminists must be one that centers on coalitional politics. Women of color have long (...) emphasized the importance of coalition to collective struggle against a matrix of systems of oppression.2 However, the work of forging coalitions is just that, work. Indeed, the work of coalition building, as Bernice... (shrink)

Decolonial approaches to technical design are part of a broader category of design methodologies, which actualize unfulfilled sociotechnical potentialities. In this paper, I present some decolonial theory concepts and discuss three decolonial approaches to illuminate philosophical debates that: 1) Can find in them clear traces of a third set of elements that shape every design/technology, along with the well-analyzed technical-scientific and ethical-political ones. In dialogue with Walter Vincenti and some others, I call these elements structured procedures, imagery (...) lexicon, and aesthetical values, which constitute the central aspects of Eugene Ferguson’s art of engineering; 2) Identify, starting from some Gilbert Simondon’s and Andrew Feenberg’s ideas, any invention as triply situated ; 3) Can be taught by these decolonial approaches about some of the mainstream philosophy of technology’s colonial limitations, becoming thus able to widen it. (shrink)

This book explores how decolonial epistemologies are concretely translated in thinking and theorizing about cultural and political practices. Chapters draw on Latin American and Caribbean philosophies and concepts of creolization and racialization, Afropean aesthetics, arts and cultural productions, religion, feminisms, education, and architecture.

This article focuses on the analysis of the geo-politics and body-politics of being, and perception as the key concepts in the decolonial option grounded in the spatiality and corporeality of our cognitive and perceptive mechanisms. Revived spatiality refers in this case not only to a physical space that we inhabit but also to our bodies as specific spatial entities – the privileged white male bodies or the damned, non-white, dehumanized and often gendered and sexualized bodies from the (...) underside of modernity. The article presents a decolonial interpretation of the human/non-human binary aimed at rethinking the fundamental modern/colonial division into anthropos and humanitas and the subsequent animalization of large human groups. The main questions are then what does it mean to be animalized by and in modernity and what ways out are possible, desired and attainable for the dehumanized others? The main goal of the article is to further question liberal Western humanism from a decolonial perspective, without yet dropping this concept altogether, and considering instead another humanism model suggested by Sylvia Wynter. Contemporary critical anti-humanist and “other humanism” theories often find a much more accurate and immediate realization through artistic metaphors and activist art projects than traditional theory, problematizing the border between the human and the animal, the man-made and the natural, the individual and the communal. Therefore, the article dwells at some length on one such project balancing between art and critical anthropology – the works of the Northern Caucasus decolonial artist Taus Makhacheva. (shrink)

Taking “capitalism itself as the ultimate horizon of the political situation” enables us to reframe binationalism and the Palestinian question. It helps to underscore binationalism as a universalist project, engaged in a fight against domination and exploitation. Seeking economic justice at home invariably links the Palestinian plight to other labor movements in Israel and elsewhere in the region. The solidarity of workers can effectively challenge the interests of the few, de naturalize their exploitation, and foreground binationalism as a socio-economic project, (...) not limited to its own particularist interests, but “grounded in the ‘part of no-part,’ the singular universality exemplified in those who lack a determined place in the social totality, who are ‘out of place’ in it”. If decoloniality and others fetishize the enemy, over-emphasizing his or her exceptionality, and thus always risk reifying the antagonism, binationalism, if it is to be transformative, must embrace its role as a supplement to the Palestinian/Israeli antagonism, taking the task of co-existence, of living together with each other’s neighbor, as an urgent ethico-political challenge, fully cognizant that there is no guarantee of success. And each is killing the other by the window. (shrink)

This paper offers a philosophical exploration of Nelson Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the “decolonial reduction” as an instrument of phenomenology and ideological critique. Comparing the decolonial reduction to Edmund Husserl’s notion of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction or epoché, I argue that working through the demands of rigor for either mode of reduction points to areas of overlap: the work of transcendental phenomenology is incomplete without the performance of the decolonial reduction and vice versa. I then assess Maldonado-Torres’s anchoring of (...) the decolonial reduction in the spirit of the “decolonial attitude” and criticism of the Husserlian theoretical attitude. I conclude that foreclosing the theoretical attitude as a framework from which to perform the decolonial reduction implies significant limitations and pitfalls for the decolonial project. (shrink)

Linked to extractive practices, territorial dispossession can be traced back to the colonisation of Abya Yala. From a decolonial commitment, this article complicates notions of dispossession and extractivism as merely emerging from war in Colombia and focuses on their presence in Campesinas territories. Based on the conceptualisations of the coloniality of power and coloniality of gender, I narrate how territorial dispossession and extractivism are felt in women’s ‘body-lands’ through foreign tourism/conservation development and new export crops in two rural veredas (...) in the Colombian Andes and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta where I conducted participatory visual projects in 2016. From a relational understanding of place, I also demonstrate the ways that the rural population is resisting and negotiating within these processes. Ultimately, I make a call for feminist scholars to politically commit to the dismantling of the coloniality of gender, and to the resistances to territorial dispossession and extractivism (epistemic and economic) that rural women are leading in place in the Global South. (shrink)

I evaluate the argument advanced in politics and Christian ethics that I term ‘decolonial homophobia’: that decolonisation and LGBT+ affirmation are contradictory because LGBT+ rights are a global Northern phenomenon that is imperialistically imposed on the global South. I suggest one premise of the argument is valid—neo-colonial imposition of LGBT+ rights does happen and should be opposed. However, the overall argument fails because it erases or distorts diverse views and complexities of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history, and it (...) tacitly supports ‘homophobic nationalism’ that is oppressive even when advanced in ostensibly decolonial causes. I grant that there are tensions within many current expressions of decolonisation and LGBT+ rights, but argue that Christians should support both decolonisation and LGBT+ rights as intersecting justice issues. I close by suggesting we listen to global Southern LGBT+ activists like Uganda's kuchus on how to navigate this tension and pursue intersectional justice in all societies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that decolonial theory can offer a distinctive and valuable ethical lens. Decolonial perspectives give rise to an ethics that is fundamentally global but distinct from, and critical of, moral cosmopolitanism. Decolonial ethics shares with cosmopolitanism a refusal to circumscribe normative commitments on the basis of existing political and cultural boundaries. It differs from cosmopolitanism, though, by virtue of its rejection of the individualism and universalism of cosmopolitan thought. Where cosmopolitan approaches tend to articulate abstract (...) principles developed from within a particular Western tradition, decolonial approaches reject abstract global designs in favour of inter-cultural dialogue amongst multiple people, including peoples who deem collective and non-human entities to be of fundamental moral importance. In addition, decolonial global ethics rejects universality in favour of ‘pluriversality’. (shrink)

Since the early twentieth century, various strands of “anticolonial” scholarship have been and are concerned with how colonial encounters and practices constitute differences. In recent years, this scholarship maps the uneven implications of “coloniality” for subjects and bodies marked as different, for example, “feminine,” “raced,” “queer,” or trans. Along with feminism, anticolonial scholarship's analytical goals—to link the body with body politics—are closely tied to its political ones: to correct the wrongs of colonial encounters and practices. The current avatars of (...) anticolonial scholarship include postcolonial, decolonial, and settler-colonial variants. (shrink)

_Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas _is a complex, multisided rethinking of the epistemic matrix of Western modernity and coloniality from the position of border epistemology. Colonial and imperial differences are the two key concepts to understanding how the logic of coloniality creates ontological and epistemic exteriorities. Being at once an enactment of decolonial thinking and an attempt to define its main grounds, mechanisms, and concepts, the book shifts the politics of knowledge from (...) “studying the other” toward “the thinking other”. Addressing areas as diverse as the philosophy of higher education, gender, citizenship, human rights, and indigenous agency, and providing fascinating and little-known examples of decolonial thinking, education, and art, Madina V. Tlostanova and Walter D. Mignolo deconstruct the modern architecture of knowledge—its production and distribution as manifested in the corporate university. In addition, the authors dwell on and define the echoing global decolonial sensibilities as expressed in the Americas and in peripheral Eurasia. The book is an important addition to the emerging transoceanic inquiries that introduce decolonial thought and non-Western border epistemologies not only to update or transform disciplines but also to act and think decolonially in the global futures to come. (shrink)

Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take (...) Paul Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

'Political reconciliation' refers to processes for establishing right relations between groups that are emerging from a history coloured by violent relations. However, dominant Western, euro-descendent philosophies of political reconciliation rarely focus on ecological forms of harm or consider practices of ecological violence as constitutive of the violent relations that reconciliation hopes to repair. This article argues that the exclusion of ecological dimensions of harm from dominant Western models of political reconciliation is one way of understanding Indigenous claims of dissatisfaction with (...) such reconciliation projects. This article analyses and contextualises these claims of dissatisfaction by focusing on how dominant Western, euro-descendent models of reconciliation in the North American context import settler-colonial commitments that obscure the primacy of ecological violence in settler-Indigenous land-based conflicts. Furthermore, this article posits that settler-colonial commitments in reconciliation models pose an obstacle to deeper forms of reconciliation, partly because these models uphold dominant euro-descendent cosmologies and conceptions of land over and above Indigenous ones. Finally, this article suggests that that the possibility of deep reconciliation exists, and requires engaging with Indigenous philosophies that place land and relations to land at the centre of right relations, thus working toward decolonising settler-colonial-infused forms of reconciliation. (shrink)

Historians have held that colonialism and Western missionary enterprise were two distinct and unrelated entries to pre-colonial Kenya. How then did Christianity for decades live side by side with colonialism? The impact of that unholy relationship is felt and sustained in contemporary forms of violence. Whiteness realizes that is hard to enter into something that is in harmony. Therefore, separation needs to happen for Whiteness to succeed. Unfortunately, much of our theological understanding today is tempered with a neocolonial mindset that (...) separates the soul from the body for Christian triumphalism. This paper will analyze the impact of Whiteness in Kenya during and after colonialism to demonstrate how the British explorer-settler-missionary alliance oiled the religious and economic disenfranchising of African people. Secondly, it proposes a political theology that will restore ‘Shalom’ in a socially, economically, and spiritually broken country. (shrink)

A distinctive form of anticolonial analysis has been emerging from Latin America in recent decades. This decolonial theory argues that important new insights about modernity, its politics, and epistemology become visible if one starts off thinking about them from the experiences of those colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas. For the decolonial theorists, European colonialism in the Americas, on the one hand, and modernity and capitalism in Europe, on the other hand, coproduced and coconstituted (...) each other. The effects of that history persist today. Starting thought from these LA histories and current realities enables envisioning new resources for social transformations. These decolonial insights seem to receive only a passing recognition in the Latin American social studies of science and technology projects that have begun cosponsoring events and publications with northern equivalents. My focus will be primarily on the decolonial theory and on just two of its themes. One is the critical resources it offers for creating more accurate and progressive northern philosophies and histories of science as well as social studies of science. The second is insights from Latin American feminists that carry different impacts in the context of the decolonial accounts. (shrink)

Abstract:Latin American modernity/coloniality studies emerged in the early 1990s from a network of scholars focused on charting the nature and consequences of causal connections between the first appearances of modernity in Europe and Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1492. In this article, I address primarily epistemological and ontological issues raised by this literature for issues pertaining to the history and philosophy of science. The first section briefly summarizes the sixteenth century differences that were the starting point (...) of the modernity/coloniality analyses and points to just a few of the still-emerging feminist issues about this early era. The second section focuses on the distinctive epistemic and political stances that Latin American decolonial theorists use today to frame such analyses: they intend to do theory “otherwise.” This Latin American project has been conceptualized through Gloria Anzaldúa's influential “borderlands” thinking and aligns with the feminist standpoint methodology and other knowledge-from-below projects that have appeared in all of the social justice movements. (shrink)

Feminist decolonial scholars have called for disengaging from the current system built on a hierarchical logic of race and gender central to modern, colonial thinking. They have looked to worlds outside the modern system to lead us out of current unjust practices harming both humans and the environment. Although policymaking may be seen as the stronghold of the current political agenda and of the structures that have led to the climate crisis, we argue that climate policies too, are also (...) crucial for rethinking and transforming societies. Our examination of climate adaptation policies in Sweden and the literature from Europe shows how policy documents ignore and unknow the oppressive intersections of gender and power despite the knowledge that exists on these issues in the public domain. Drawing on the tools of agnotology, we examine how this is achieved by strategies of ‘denial, dismissal, diversion and displacement.’ Building on feminist post and decolonial scholarship, we make explicit the gendered and racial hierarchies and dichotomies underpinning these policy documents. At the same time, we bring attention to the nuances in the policy documents we study and look for the openings that might be used to bring about transformation by making these hierarchies explicit and calling them into question. We argue that a transformation is possible through a feminist post and decolonial intervention, even in policymaking otherwise ignorant of culture, values and the colonial histories that have produced contemporary society. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond — transcends — “pedagogy as justice,” recognizing that justice, particularly in these present times, may not be enough. Its wager is with pedagogies of and for life; pedagogies that plant and cultivate, that push and enable other modes of living, despite the capitalist-modern-colonial-racist system, beyond the system, and in the system's margins, borders, fissures, and cracks. These pedagogies, as Catherine Walsh argues here, are necessarily tied to and constitutive of decolonial(izing) praxis, a praxis that, while (...) not negating justice, takes us beyond it. The argument here is for the pedagogical-praxistical work being done now, and yet to be done; the actional thought, thoughtful action, and ongoing creation and construction of an otherwise for existence, for dignity, and for life in these times of multiple entwined pandemic-viruses, including capitalist greed, systemic racism, heteropatriarchy, and existential-territorial dispossession in which COVID is/was one more thread of the entwine. (shrink)

The three volumes I am considering in this review essay constitute a living archive of the political and epistemic movement called decolonial feminism. Together, Tejiendo de Otro Modo: Feminismo, Epistemología, y Apuestas Descoloniales en el Abya Yala, Feminismo Descolonial: Nuevos aportes metodológicos a mas de una década, and Decolonial Feminism in Abya Yala, collect the principal contributions to the profoundly important production of critical theory and radical politics. The editors and contributors include a diversity of key figures (...) in decolonial feminism, reuniting intellectual-activists mostly from Latin America and US Latinxs, a geohistorical landscape denominated Abya Yala, an Indigenous Kuna category that stands for “the territory of all of us.” The publication of this review essay as part of a special issue of Hypatia is a meaningful move because it was in this journal that María Lugones published her foundational articles on what she termed “the modern/colonial gender system,” as well as an invitation to cultivate decolonial feminism. (shrink)

Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine approaches to ecological and social extinction and resurgence from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounding their scholarship in decolonial, Indigenous, and counter-hegemonic frameworks, the contributors advocate for shifting the discursive focus from ruin to regeneration. -/- .

This article argues that María Lugones's articulation of decolonial feminism, as a theory and potential political praxis, both disappears Blackness and subjugates African American women—their scholarship, their language, and the materiality of their Black “flesh”—within the same subordinate position the coloniality of gender decries. Expanding Hortense Spillers's concept of “pornotroping,” this article puts into relief the ideological and rhetorical investments in deploying the figure of the Black woman to institute an argument about gender, but only to erase this figure (...) from the political and affective registers of its theorization. This essay argues that Lugones's theorization of decolonial feminism effectively reifies the libidinal dynamics it denounces: turning Africans into captives, into commodities for use and abuse. It questions the camouflaging and decontextualization of Black feminist interventions that consider the singularity of antiblack violence as a model for thinking about violence as a phenomenological and ontological global order, critiquing the category of gender incipit to the process of enslavement and colonialism that ushers in the very modernity that decoloniality frames itself against. (shrink)

This article elucidates and expands on María Lugones's account of complex communication across liminal sites as the basis for deep coalitions among oppressed groups. The analysis underscores the crucial role that emotions and resistant imaginations play in complex communication and world-traveling across liminal sites. In particular, it focuses on the role of emotional echoing and epistemic activism in complex forms of communication among oppressed subjects. It elucidates Gloria Anzaldúa's storytelling and Doris Salcedo's visual art as exemplary forms of epistemic activism (...) that issue coalitional gestures and critical provocations that can wake people up from their epistemic slumbers and instigate forms of complex communication that can create new possibilities for coalitional politics. (shrink)

According to Chandra Mohanty, there is no apolitical academy; academic and scholarly practices are in themselves political, insofar as they are inscribed in power and validation relations, which answer to and have effects upon the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist structures to which they belong. In the case of philosophical writing, this means that the forms that regulate writing, that is, what determines how one must write in different contexts, are expressive of the power structures within philosophical academia. These power structures (...) are upheld through time because of, among many other factors, the rendering invisible of the diversity of places of enunciation belonging to those who write and think in philosophy, and of the universalization of the privileges associated with said places of enunciation. In this article, I propose a way of writing letters that appeals to grammatical persons and their relation to the authors of the texts. Through this writing practice it is possible to make explicit the places of enunciation from which we write philosophy. This enables, first, making visible the privileges and oppressions of those writing philosophy; and second, generating small spaces of resistance and transformation of the oppressive power relations within the philosophical academy. (shrink)

This article examines naked protests as efforts to advocate for social justice, particularly against patriarchal oppression and state violence. It explores ways in which women use naked body protests as a form of resistance, thereby negating dominant narratives of its impropriety. Naked protests are examined for how they might be mobilised against patriarchy and institutional oppression. This is done through the use of three data sources, namely a radio podcast interview of two women student protestors who staged a naked body (...) protest during the #FeesMustFall violence in 2016; a video recording of a protest staged by working class women against the destruction of their homes in Dobsonville, Soweto on 12 July 1990; and interviews conducted with 14 women who participated in naked body protests. The article employs critical discourse analysis to understand women’s role in advocating for social change and decoloniality. In addition, it delves into different affective registers experienced by women protesters during protests and interviews. Findings suggest that politics of protests are saturated with affective registers that range from anger to rage, fear, sadness, pain, joy and a sense of power. African women’s naked bodies in protest are a link to generational power that creates a rupture, which interrupts violence and coloniality. Moreover, the analysis suggests that naked protest is a powerful form of protest that transforms a woman’s body from social constructions of vulnerability and consumption to a site of militancy, defiance and one that speaks back from a position of solidarity and strength. These protests demonstrate a grounded African feminism, which enables African women to speak from their location and reality. (shrink)

The constructions of genders and sexualities in different global spaces continue to be influenced by Christian and imperial ideologies. In Africa, genders and sexualities were (mis)construed by colonial and missionary enterprises, and they continue to be defined according to Eurocentric terms and perceptions. This has produced ‘modern sexual repression’. The use of Biblical discourses to construct African genders and sexualities is one way that this repression is mirrored in South Africa. Because of this, African genders and sexualities are marginalised, treated (...) as taboo and depicted as backward and uncivilised, thus, promoting hegemonic heteronormative and monogamous marriages. This article examined how Biblical discourses contributed to this narrative. It further advanced a call for transforming this dominant narrative by engaging theology, gender and sexuality studies and socio-political sciences from the premise of a multidisciplinary epoch. The decolonial motif, with a focus on delinking African genders and sexualities from the Western agenda of sexual repression, serves as the theoretical framework for this research. On the other hand, race, gender and sexuality serve as lenses used to better understand the phenomenon and to explore the use of biblical discourses in this context. Thus, the article makes use of a secondary research approach to carry out this task.Contribution: This article seeks to add to the body of knowledge that endeavours to change the way that biblical discourses are used in South Africa today to construct a narrative that represses non-normative genders and sexualities. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper takes Chicana/Xicana indigeneity as a productive and problematic site to consider the vexed conjuncture between decolonial and postcolonial approaches to critical knowledge production. I examine the intersection between Chicana and Native feminisms as a point of entry to consider how the incommensurabilities between these formations get played out within specific sites of knowledge production. I read my positionality as a Californio Rancho descendent to explore urgent questions of landedness raised by Indigenous studies scholars and consider how we (...) might productively center questions of settlement within Chicana feminism. While Chicana relationships to land are varied, I reflect on my own positionality as a “settler Xicana” in an effort to sense the political and epistemic stakes for centering decolonial approaches in conversation with postcolonial/transnational feminisms. (shrink)

This book explores the ways in which existing narratives of cosmopolitanism are often organized around European and American discourses of human rights and universalism, which allow little room for the articulation of an affective, embodied and subaltern politics.

In this essay, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to clarify Patrick Wolfe’s claim that, for settler colonialism, “invasion is a structure, not an event.” I also engage critically with colonial assumptions in Merleau-Ponty’s own work, including his Eurocentric response to questions such as: “[I]s there a field of world history or universal history? Is there an intended accomplishment? A closure on itself? A true society?” In this essay, I ask different questions – with Merleau-Ponty, against him, and beyond (...) him. I neither defend Merleau-Ponty against his own worst self nor disown him as “bad” philosophical kin. Rather, I learn what I can from Merleau-Ponty for a critical phenomenology of settler colonialism and for amplifying movements to transform and abolish settler colonial structures at the level of thought, being, and politics. (shrink)

A turn from the “whither” to the “whence” of anarchism is at stake in Catherine Malabou’s interpretation of Latin American decolonial theory. This is a turn from a materialist philosophy that seeks to open the space of anarchism within the modern state toward one that discerns anarchism as already operative in the modern state given the social implications of colonial legacies. In tracing this turn, I propose a development of Malabou’s work insofar as I put her in dialogue with (...) María Lugones, who is much closer to Malabou than the more canonical decolonial figures she actively engages, especially in view of anarchism as a form of social–political plasticity. Understanding Lugones’ critique of earlier iterations of decolonial theory helps make explicit an immanent anarchic resistance to domination as an explosive inhabitation of everyday loci of tension. (shrink)

The first version of this piece was written for the opening panel of the 2017 Conference of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory in Florida. The panel, “Decolonial Feminism: Theories and Praxis,” offered the opportunity for Black and Latinx feminist philosophers and decolonial scholars to consider their arrival to decolonial feminisms, their various points of emergence, and the utility of decolonial politics for liberation movements and organizing. I was prepared to discuss some genealogies (...) of US Latina decolonial feminisms with a focus on the relationship of decolonial feminisms to other feminist articulations—for example, a consideration of the relation and divergence between decolonial and postcolonial feminism. I was particularly interested in examining some of the “decolonizing constellations of resistance and love” created by Black, Indigenous, Latinx feminisms. I wanted to track the intergenerational labor of relationality as a part of women of color politics and to discuss how these politics unseat coloniality in its variant iterations. (shrink)

Judith Butler argues for collective liberatory action grounded in ontological vulnerability. Yet descriptive social ontology alone provides neither normative ethical prescriptions nor direction for political action. I believe Butler tries to overcome this gap by appealing to equality as an ethical ideal. In this article, I reconstruct how equality operates in her transition from ontological vulnerability to prescriptive commitments. Then, turning to Sylvia Wynter, I argue Butler's uncritical use of equality constrains the radical direction of her liberatory goals—firstly because it (...) cannot mitigate the coloniality of Being, and secondly because she figures the locus of critique as an anonymous and equally vulnerable body at the limits of the recognizably human. I conclude with Wynter's demand for liberatory critique to arise out of specific decolonial locations of rupture from our historically situated, oppressive, and overrepresented genre of being human. (shrink)

Common notions of comparative philosophy tend to be strongly configured by the East-West axis. This essay suggests ways of seeing Latin American liberation philosophy as a form of comparative philosophy and an important Latin American thinker as being relevant for East-West political philosophy. The essay focuses on the Peruvian activist and intellectual, José Mariátegui, who is widely regarded to have been a leading Marxist, liberatory, and decolonial figure in 20th century Latin America. Like many “Third World” intellectuals of the (...) interwar years, Mariátegui had an interest in decolonization struggles in Asia and wrote with some consistency on this subject and in ways that bear significantly upon key themes in his political theory. Since very little of this has received commentary, this essay begins a discussion of Mariátegui's decolonial experimentation with ideas about Asia, decolonization, and indigenous cultural forms, like those of the Incas and Confucians. After some preliminary discussion of Euro.. (shrink)