Epistemic Racism/Sexism in the
“Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric Modern/Colonial World
System”
Jordan
Rodriguez
UC Berkeley
Independent
Study with Professor Ramon Grosfoguel
Fall
Semester 2012
The
aim of this paper is to visibilize epistemic racism/sexism which is the most invisible
form of racism. The structure of this paper will be three parts in order to
understand epistemic racism/sexism in the “capitalist/patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system”. First, I will
historicize the discussion with the foundational moment of 1492 as that was the
beginning of the world system which we live today, and therefore it will
provide the framework of this paper. Second, I will present Frantz Fanon’s
conception of racism which will be made explicit through the zone of being and
non-being. Lastly, I will present epistemic racism/sexism by discussing
Islamophobia today.
“Capitalist/Patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric Modern/Colonial World System”
We
must first historicize our discussion in order to understand how the
capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world
system imposed many more power relations than just a global capitalist system.
The historical foundational moment is 1492 with the defeat of Islamic Europe in
Al-Andalus and the founding of the Americas. I will focus on European colonial
expansion to the Americas in this section and the world system that was imposed
on the population of the world. From a Eurocentric point of view, European
colonial expansion give a picture of the “capitalist world system” which would
be, according to Grosfoguel, “primarily an economic system that determine[s]
the behavior of the major social actors by the economic logic of making profits
as manifested in the world extraction of surplus value and the ceaseless
accumulation of capital at the world-scale.”[1]
Grosfoguel ask the epistemic question of “how would the world-system look life
if we moved the locus of enunciation from the European man to an Indigenous
woman in the Americas?” This question is fundamental to our discussion of the
capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world
system because as you can see what was brought to the Americas by European
colonial expansion was not just a capitalist world system.
I will now discuss what it means to move the locus of
enunciation. Grosfoguel argues that “the hegemonic Eurocentric paradigms that
have informed western philosophy and sciences…for the last 500 years assume a
universalistic, neutral, objective point of view.”[2] However,
the works of black and Chicana feminist have made clear that our knowledges are
always situated. This concept is called geopolitics of knowledge or
body-politics of knowledge. [3]
The locus of enunciation, as Grosfoguel argues, is the “geo-political and
body-political location of the subject that speaks.” Western philosophy and
sciences have hidden, concealed, and erased from the analysis the subject that
speaks. This myth of a concealed non-situated “Ego” is called the “ego-politics
of knowledge.” Speaking from the ego-politics of knowledge has allowed Western
philosophy and sciences to produce a myth of about “a Truthful universal
knowledge that covers up, that is, conceals who is speaking as well as the
geo-political and body-political epistemic location in the structures of
colonial power/knowledge from which the subject speaks.” [4] Grosfoguel
argues that Western philosophy and sciences have been able to produce this myth
by delinking ethnic/racial/gender/sexual epistemic location and the subject that
speaks.
It is important that we keep in mind that “epistemic
location” is not “social location” because a person can be socially located in
the oppressed side of power relations but not be thinking from an epistemic
subaltern location. One of the major successes of the modern/colonial world
system has been to get people located on the oppressed side of power relations
to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant side of power relations.[5] Subaltern
knowledge, Grosfoguel argues, is coming from below that produces “a critical
perspective of hegemonic knowledge in the power relations involved.” The point,
thus far, is that all knowledges are epistemically located in the dominant or
subaltern side of power relations and that this is related to the geopolitics
and body-politics of knowledge. The West produced a myth about that
“disembodied and unlocated neutrality and objectivity of the ego-politics of
knowledge.” It is Rene Descartes, the founder of Modern Western Philosophy, who
inaugurates a new moment in history of Western thought.
Descartes replaces God as the foundation of knowledge in
the Theo-politics of knowledge of European Middle Ages with Western Man as the
foundation of knowledge in European Modern times.[6] Thus
all the attributes of God are “now extrapolated to (Western) Man.” The result
is that universal truth beyond space and time privileges access to the laws of
the universe, and the capacity to produce scientific knowledge and theory is
now placed in the mind of Western Man. The Cartesian “cogito ergo sum” which is
“I think, therefore I am” is the foundation of modern western sciences. This
dualism of mind and body and between mind and nature allowed Descartes to claim
“non-situated, universal, God-eyed view knowledge.”[7] Colombian
philosopher Santiago Castro-Gomez has called this “the point zero” which is the
point of view that that assumes no point of view. It is the point of view that
hides and conceals itself as being beyond a particular point of view, or simply
stated the point of view that represents itself as being without a point of
view. Grosfoguel argues that “it is this “god-eye view” that always hides its
local ad particular perspective under an abstract universalism.” Importantly,
this has allowed Western man to represent his knowledge as the only one capable
of achieving a universal consciousness, and to dismiss non-Western knowledges
as particularistic. We see the dismissal of non-Western knowledges at large in
the canon of thought of Westernized universities still to this day.
Grosfoguel argues that “by hiding the location of the
subject of enunciation, European/Euro-American colonial expansion and
domination was to construct a hierarchy of superior and inferior knowledge and
thus of superior and inferior people around the world.”[8] Now that we have a better understanding of the
locus of enunciation we can return to Grosfoguel’s question of moving the locus
of enunciation or shifting the geopolitics of knowledge. Rather than looking at
Europe expanding, we look at Europe arriving to the Americas. This will allow
us to see that what arrived was a capitalist/patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system not a capitalist
world system. Grosfoguel identifies 15 global hierarchies of power that arrived
in the Americas from European colonial expansion, but I will only list a select
few because there is just not enough room in this paper to list them all. We
must keep in mind that these hierarchies are entangled not separate from each
other.
These
global hierarchies of power include: international division of labor of core
and periphery; a global class formation where diversity of forms of labor are
to coexist and be organized around capital; a global racial/ethnic hierarchy; a
global gender hierarchy and European Judeo-Christian patriarchy; a sexual
hierarchy that privileges heterosexuals over homosexuals and lesbians; a
spiritual hierarchy that privileges Christians over non-Christians/non-Western
spiritualties; and an epistemic hierarchy that privileges Western knowledge and
cosmology over non-Western knowledge and cosmologies. It is only when we shift
the geopolitics of knowledge that we can make visible the multiple global
hierarchies of power that arrived in the Americas through European colonial
expansion. I have presented very briefly an account of the
capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world
system so that it is clear what model I will use to discuss epistemic
racism/sexism, but there is a lot that still can be said in regards to this
discussion. In the next section, I will discuss Frantz Fanon’s conception of
Racism through the zone of being and the zone of non-being.
Frantz
Fanon’s conception of Racism
For
Fanon, racism is a global hierarchy of superiority and inferiority along the
“line of the human” that has been politically, economically, and culturally
produced and reproduced during the centuries by the capitalist/patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system. People above
the line of the human are in, what Fanon calls, the zone of being, and the
humanity of these people is socially recognized through human, social, civil,
labor rights. Those people who are below the line of the human are in the zone
of non-being and are considered sub-human or non-human. Those people who are
considered sub-human or non-human do not have their humanity socially
recognized and it is in question.
Grosfoguel
argues that “Fanon’s definition of racism allows us to conceive diverse forms
of racism avoiding the reductionism of many definitions.”[9] It
is critical that we understand that racism can take many forms such as: color,
ethnicity, language, culture, or religion. Historically, racism has taken the
form of skin color in many parts of the world, however; it is not the “only and
exclusive form.” Grosfoguel argues that if “we collapse the particular form of
racism that a region or country of the world adopts as if it were the universal
definition of racism then we lose sight of the diversity of racism that are not
necessarily marked by the same form in other regions of the world.”[10] This is dangerous that we must be careful not
to do because taking one form of racism to be the universal will prevent us
from seeing racism of different forms in other regions of the world, and
perhaps we conclude that racism does not exist there when in reality it is in
another form. We must keep in mind that racism, on Fanon’s account, is a
hierarchy of superiority/inferiority along the line of the human which means
that the hierarchy can be constructed or marked through different forms. Grosfoguel
provides the example of Britain constructing their superiority over Ireland
through religion not skin color.
Racialization
occurs through a marking of bodies; some bodies are racialized as superior and
others are racialized as inferior. Grosfoguel takes serious the concept of “the
coloniality of power” put forth by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, and he
argues that “in an imperial/capitalist/colonial world, race constitutes the
dividing line through the oppressive relations of class, sexuality, and gender
on the global scale.”[11] Furthermore,
intersectionality occurs in both the zone of being and non-being. In the zone
of being, the subjects are racially privileged, and in the zone of non-being
the subjects who are inferior live in racial oppression. It is important that we understand that both
the zone of being and the zone of non-being are heterogeneous spaces[12].
In
the zone of being, continuous conflicts exist between the “I” and the “Other”;
this is characterized as the Hegelian dialectic. There are conflicts between
the “I” and the “Other” in the zone of being; however, these conflicts are not
racial because the humanity of the oppressed “Other” is recognized by the “I”
oppressor. In the capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
modern/colonial world system, the “I” oppressor is the metropolitan masculine
heterosexual Western elites and peripheral, masculine, heterosexual,
Westernized elites. Grosfoguel argues that there is an “internal colonialism in
the core like in the periphery.”[13]
The oppressed “Other” is the Western population of the metropolitan centers or
the Westernized in the periphery whose humanity is recognized but at the same
time they live non-racial oppressions such as class, sexuality, or gender
dominated by the imperial “I” in their respective regions or countries. Grosfoguel
reminds us of another very important to thing to keep in mind is that both
zones are not specific geographical places, but rather positionality in racial relations of power which occurs at a global
scale between the centers and peripheries but that also occurs on a nation and
local scale between various racialized groups. Lastly, the zone of being and
the zone of non-being exist on the global scale (global coloniality) between
the centers and peripheries, and they exist in the interior of the metropolitan
centers like also in the peripheries.[14]
Grosfoguel
provides an account in which we can enrich Fanon’s zone of being and zone of
non-being by combining it with Portuguese sociologist Boaventura De Sousa
Santos’ concept of “the abysmal line.”[15] On
this account, the way in which conflicts are managed in the zone of being is
through regulation and emancipation. Since there are codes of civil, human,
labor rights; civil relations, spaces for negotiation and political actions
that are recognized for the oppressed “Other” in their conflict with the “I”
oppressor. Emancipation refers to concepts of liberty, autonomy, and equality
that form part of the discursive purposes, institutions and laws of the
management of conflicts in the zone of being. In short, there is perpetual
peace in which violence is always an exception and used in exceptional moments[16].
On the contrary in the zone of non-being where the
population is dehumanized because they are below the line of the human, the
methods used the “I” oppressor and institutional systems to manage and
administrate conflicts is through violence and appropriation. Conflicts in the
zone of non-being are managed through perpetual violence and rarely in
exceptional moments do they use methods of regulation and emancipation such as
in the zone of being. Grosfoguel argues that “give that the humanity of the
people classified in the zone of non-being is not recognized, given that they
are treated like non-humans or sub-humans, is to say, without standards of
rights and civility, violent acts are permitted.”[17]
For Fanon, the Hegelian dialectic of the “I” oppressor and the oppressed
“Other” which exist in the zone of being collapses in the zone of non-being
since it fails to recognize the humanity of the “Other”. It is important that
we understand that he various oppressions lived in the zone of being and the
zone of non-being are not the same.
It is necessary that we understand one last thing about
the zone of being and the zone of non-being before moving on. We must complicate
the “Other” in order to understand how oppressions differ in the two zones. In
the zone of being, we will assign the “Other Being” because this “Other” is in
the zone of being there is access to various rights, regulation and
emancipation, and their humanity is recognized and it is no racialized as
inferior. In the zone of non-being we will designate “Other Non-Being” because
it is located in the zone of non-being and is racialized as inferior and the
humanity of the people is not recognized by the “I”. An example of an “Other
Being” would be a Western white women or a Western gay man. As previously
stated the “I” oppressor is the Westernized/heterosexual/Christian/males thus
homosexuality or being a women would make a person the “Other Being”. The
oppressed “Other Non-Being” would be non-Western women or non-Western gays.
There oppression is different because they have a compounded oppression of
first race and then followed by a second oppression of gender, class, religion,
or sexuality. Thus, a non-Western/heterosexual/male
would live the least oppressed in the zone of non-being because he would be
only oppressed racially. While the most oppressed would have a compound of
three or four oppressions. I have presented the zone of being and the zone of
non-being in order to provide a theoretical tool in which we can understand
oppression and various forms of racism in the capitalist/patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world system.[18]
Epistemic
Racism/Sexism
Grosfoguel argue that “epistemic racism and epistemic
sexism are the most hidden forms of racism and sexism in the global system we
all inhabit”, the capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
modern/colonial world system.[19] As
I stated earlier, there are fifteen global hierarchies of power in the
capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric modern/colonial world
system, and one of these hierarchies is the “global epistemic hierarchy.”[20] The
global epistemic hierarchy privileges Western male knowledges as superior and
treats women-centered and non-Western knowledges as inferior. Grosfoguel argues
that this epistemic hierarchy has its own discourse, ideology, and institutions
which are called Eurocentrism. This has been globalized around the world
through the Westernized university.[21] The Westernized university is organized around
a canon of thought that is both Western and masculine, and therefore women are
excluded (both Western and non-Western women).
It must be made clear that I am using the term
“Westernized” and not “West”, and this fundamental to our understanding because
a Westernized university can be found in major cities throughout the world.
There are Westernized universities in Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Bogota, New
York, and Cairo. When I say a Westernized university, I mean a university in
which the Western canon of thought is being taught. Grosfoguel argues that the Westernized
university is “a machine of epistemicide” in which it inferiorizes and destroys
the epistemic potential of non-Western epistemologies[22]. I
will now discuss more clearly what I mean by the Western canon of thought. The
canon of thought being taught in Westernized universities is coming
predominately from the following five countries: France, Italy, Germany,
England, and the United States. Furthermore, these thinkers are not only from
Western countries, but also they are predominately all male thinkers. These
five countries of the world make up 12% of the world’s population, and when we
factor out the fact that half of that 12 % are women then in reality it is only
6% of the world’s population.[23]
This is means that the social experiences and history of
these 5 countries which are used to create social theory is only coming from
the experiences of 12% of the world’s population, and that it should be taken
as valid and universal for the majority 88% of the world’s population. To
illustrate epistemic racism, I will turn the discussion to Islamophobia. Grosfoguel
argues that “epistemic racism allows the West to not have to listen to the
critical thinking produced by Islamic thinkers on Western global/imperial
designs.” [24]
Islamic critical thinkers are considered inferior to the Western/Christian
thinkers. The capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
colonial/modern world system places the Western/Christian/heterosexual/male
thinker as superior. We must keep in mind that the global hierarchies of power
are entangled, and thus the hegemonic religion is Judeo-Christian and the
hegemonic thinker is a Western male. This position of superiority is what
allows the West to not take serious Islamic critical thinkers.
Grosfoguel argues that the “West is considered to be the
only legitimate tradition of thought able to produce knowledge and the only one
with access to ‘universality’, ‘rationality’, and ‘truth’.”[25] If we recall, Western thinkers conceal or have
hidden the subject who speaks (which in reality is a Eurocentric geopolitics of
knowledge and a Western male body[26]);
this is called the ego-politics of knowledge. This concealed subject is what
they argue allows them to produce universal truths, and still to this day it
the grounds in which they argue that other epistemologies are particularistic
and therefore inferior. Now that we have
seen how epistemic racism/sexism privileges knowledge from Western thinkers and
dismisses non-Western/Christian thinkers as inferior, I want to discuss
Grosfoguel’s proposed way to move beyond this structure.
Grosfoguel argues that in order to move beyond this
structure that we need to have a pluri-versity not a uni-versity. In a
uni-versity, it is one epistemology that defines for the rest “the questions
and answers to produce a colonial, universal
social sciences and humanities.”[27] A
pluri-versity would, on the other hand, allow for epistemic diversity that is “institutionally
incorporated into necessary inter-epistemic dialogues in order to produce a
decolonial, pluriversal social science.”[28] However,
this incorporation of new epistemologies which have been sub-alternized and
silenced by Eurocentric epistemology would confront the power relations which
arrived in the Americas through European colonial expansion and which are
within the current capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
modern/colonial world system. Grosfoguel
argues that what we are speaking of then is a call for “transmodernity” which
is a concept developed by Argentine philosopher of liberation Enrique Dussel. Transmodernity
would be a call to move beyond
modernity, and in a “utopian, transmodern world there exist as many proposals
for the liberation of ‘women’ and ‘democracy’ as there are epistemologies in
the world.”[29]
So what Grosfoguel is calling for is epistemic diversity rather than what has been
historically for the last 500 years been one hegemonic epistemology dominating
discourses for the world. Epistemic diversity would open the door to critiques
of Eurocentrism and transmodernity in which we can decolonize the global power
relations of the capitalist/patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
modern/colonial world system.
[1] Ramon Grosfoguel, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and
Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking and Global
Coloniality, 2011, 7
[2] Grosfoguel, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy,
4
[3]
ibid
[4]
ibid
[5] Grosfoguel, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy, 5
[6]
ibid
[7]
ibid
[8] Grosfoguel, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy, 6
[9]
Ramon Grosfoguel, La Descolonizacion del
Conocimiento: Dialogo Critico Entre La Vision Descolonial de Frantz Fanon y la
Sociologia Descolonial de Boaventura De Sousa Santos, 98
[10] ibid
[11] Grosfoguel, La Descolonizacion
del Conocimiento, 99
[12] ibid
[13] ibid
[14] Ibid
[15]
Grosfoguel, La Descolonizacion del
Conocimiento, 100
[16] ibid
[17] ibid
[18]
Grosfoguel, La Descolonizacion del
Conocimiento, 101
[19] Ramon Grosfoguel, The Multiple Faces of Islamophobia, 19
[20] Ramon Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United
States: Between Liberal Multiculturalism, Identity Politics, Disciplinary
Colonization, and Decolonial Epistemologies, 82
[21] Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States, 83
[22] Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States, 83-4
[23] Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States, 84
[24] Grosfoguel, The Multiple Faces of Islamophobia, 19
[25] Grosfoguel, The Multiple Faces of Islamophobia, 20
[26] ibid
[27] Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States, 84
[28] ibid
[29] Grosfoguel, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States, 86
References
Ramon Grosfoguel, 2011,
Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and
Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global
Coloniality, In Transmodernity
━La Descolonizacion Del
Conocimiento: Dialogo Critico Entre La Vision Descolonial De Frantz Fanon y La
Sociologia Descolonial De Boaventura De Sousa Santos
━Winter 2012, The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United
States: Between Liberal Multiculturalism, Identity Politics, Disciplinary
Colonization, and Decolonial Epistemologies, In Human Architecture
━Spring
2012, The Multiple Faces of Islamophobia,
In Islamophobia Studies Journal
