Updates Finally to Come!!

I realize that I abandoned this blog for many months, but I will be making an attempt to update it more frequently and to try to accomplish my original aim of breaking down difficult readings and providing notes.  In addition to that I will also post online lectures as I find them online both in English and Spanish with the aim of consolidating all of the available resources of decolonial thinking into one central place. Lately, I've been reading articles and books by and about Dussel's corpus. I will upload some notes from Linda Alcoff's article "Enrique Dussel's Transmodernism" as well as some notes which will be part of a series of notes on Dussel's "Philosophy of Liberation", "Ethics of Liberation", and "Invention of the Americas". Other post to expect will be on the thought of Cornel West and Tariq Ramadan as I begin work on developing a concept called "decolonial hope" (that I ultimately hope to pursue at the PhD level) which I see, tentatively speaking, as one of first moment in the ethical and political praxis of decolonization. I want to interrogate and put into conversation Dussel, West, and Ramadan for this project, but also to identify their limits and shortcomings through critical thought produced by Women of color (Black, Chicana, Islamic, etc) feminist thought . So this is an update of what to expect in the near future from this blog. Subscribe to it so you can receive these updates.

-Jordan

Fanon's Zone of Being and Zone of Non-Being

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

Longer Grosfoguel Interview

This is a longer version of the article posted earlier today. I will try to write up some notes later to extract Grosfoguel's argument and maybe add anything needed to make it clearer.

https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/saberes/como-luchar-decolonialmente.html

Decolonizing Political Economy: Interview Ramon Grosfoguel

Interview by Ramon Grosfoguel about Decolonizing Political Economy. He discusses socialism in the 20th century and how it only recognized 2 global hierarchies of power. Decolonizing Political Economy would involve recognizing/identifying the entanglement of the 15 global hierarchies of power which Grosfoguel identifies. This is in his article "Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy"
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq

https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/saberes/decolonizar-la-economia-es-mirar-desde-otra-geopolitica.html

Can Europeans be Rational? Julia Suarez-Krabbe

This is an article by Julia Suarez-Krabbe. She is responding to Debashi and Mignolo here. Check it out: 

Are the indigenous populations human? This was the question at the centre of philosophical debates in the 16th century, and its elaborations laid the fundaments of international law and contemporary human rights thinking.[i] “Can non-Europeans think?” is a very similar question. These questions are only possible to ask from a racist and imperial attitude at the basis of Eurocentric knowledge construction. In other words, it is only possible to pose these questions if you already ‘know’ that you are better than the one you are questioning. This is the core reason why decolonial scholars and activists theorise this question, and the problems it poses to us. Being questioned in this way carries with it different reactions among the questioned: they can engage the question and answer “yes, we are also human” or “yes, we can (think)”, both of which accept the question on its own terms and try to accommodate in relation to it.

I am, of course, speaking to the debate among three academic men. The debate was prompted by Zabala’s piece on Zicek, which received a reply by Dabashi entitled ‘Can non-Europeans think?’[ii], followed by Mignolo’s reply to the question as “yes, we can”[iii]. The debate has been widely shared in Facebook, and this confirms that there is a growing interest surrounding the problem of Eurocentric knowledge. Indeed, during the last 10 years or so addressing Eurocentrism has become more and more accepted in the academic world. Yet, we have not moved to the next level in the discussion concerning power relations in knowledge production: Can Europeans be rational? This last is yet another reaction to the question about our capacity to think as southern scholars. But contrary to Dabashi’s and Mignolo’s, it does not accept the terms of the question, and calls instead attention to how it is embedded in the colonial attitude[iv].

The question about whether the non-Europeans can think is absurd: it is like asking whether the sun shines. At best, it makes sense only for the people that continue to dominate knowledge production. For southern scholars and activists it makes no sense at all to engage in this kind of discussions that are, in fact, racist from the outset. Indeed, there is a strong current of thinking today that not only criticises the Eurocentric groundings of that, which is supposed to be science. It calls into question the scientificity, so to speak, of science. It takes into account that the power to define what is scientific continues to be at the hands of a small number of academics – White and male – and it is on these grounds that we rather should be scrutinising the European “rationality”. So, I was surprised to read Mignolo’s input to the discussion: he does not address the problem concerning the question about our capacity to think – and this is perhaps even more surprising because he invokes Dussel, Fanon and Gordon. So even though some of Mignolo’s points are important, their importance is blurred by the choice of the “yes, we can” as point of departure – and arrival – in this piece.

Let me clarify that to speak about the irrationality of Europeans, does not amount to speaking about people living in the European geographical space, nor to invert the question and incur in the same problems we are criticising. Instead, to ask whether Europeans can be rational is to address the problem of the geography of reason; in its contemporary dominant versions reason is White, European, Male, Christian (pretending to be secular), racist and capitalist. It should be obvious that the question relevant to be asked by those of us who think from different bodily, existential and geo-political locations than the dominant Eurocentric is not whether we can think. Rather, our work is concerned with how to continue to open up spaces where the dominant academic world can recognise and accept its own limitations and change accordingly.

Consider this example. A friend of mine from Chile is giving individual Spanish lessons to a young Danish woman. She asks him whether Chile is democratic. He answers that Chile is not democratic because it did not participate in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read through the lens of Eurocentric rationality my friend’s answer is irrational. However, think of his reasoning: the “democratic” character of his country is being questioned from the outset, as if this were the most natural thing to do. The question does not allow discussing what democracy actually is – neither in terms of current international abuses of power where genocides are legitimised in the name of “democracy”, or in terms of what would be the standards to decide whether a country is democratic. The whole history of racist violence that underscores the Eurocentric idea of democracy is deleted and instead, it is invoked as a natural order.[v] In this concern, my friend’s answer only uses the same rationality that poses the question: the countries that invaded Iraq and Afghanistan proclaim themselves to be democratic. So participating in those wars must be a criterion of democracy. Hence, Chile is not democratic.

In the same manner that questioning the humanity or democratic capacity of the “other” has been an integral part of “humanistic” European endeavours, so has the question of the capacity to think rationally, to do science, in regards to southern scholars been part of the racist configurations of power at a global scale. This is important because the mere act of questioning whether others can think is not only an expression of power; it is violence. As Maldonado-Torres has put it, it is to question the most obvious. The fact remains, however, that even though the question is irrational and violent it is in most cases, implicitly or explicitly, answered negatively: no, non-Europeans cannot think. As a result, we have endless fields of studies in the social sciences and the humanities all around the world that study Eurocentric concerns under the guise of “global approaches”. This is irrational, as is the fact that “universal” is a word that only covers that which is European. And even if the question had positive answers like in the cases of Mignolo and Dabashi, the problem remains unsolved, and the racist violences such a question represents and legitimates are ignored. What matters is, indeed, not the answer, but the fact that the question is posed at all. Posing it already presupposes that the ‘other’ is questionable, less worth.[vi]

The problem that southern scholars face is then that of being relegated to a status of being irrational when we – quite rationally – address and conceptualise the deep problems and obvious flaws of Eurocentric knowledge. Let me explain this by recalling Audre Lorde’s metaphor concerning the master’s house. Lorde put it like this:

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”[vii]

Think of the house as being that which raises the question concerning whether the non-European can think. In other words, the house is Eurocentric “rationality”. The elements that structure the house are “scientific” methods, whereby the house gains maximum consistency. The problem with this “rationality” is that no one can contradict it, because the house itself determines the spaces of thinking – logic – and of course no “rational” being would tear down the walls of His own house.[viii] The “rationality” in dominant Eurocentric knowledge demands consistency with itself, and this consistency is achieved through its own methods. A significant element underlying these methods is precisely the question about other’s capacity to think or be democratic. Rationality, in other words, not only views itself as reason, but as the only reason. By this, it actively negates anything different[ix].

To engage in answering the irrational questions that emanate from the master’s house is to stand and knock on its door, hoping it will open. But this is by far enough to bring about genuine change. We need to move on to question the fundaments of the house; to question that which allows posing irrational, racist and violent questions as if they were rational and legitimate. In this endeavour we do not need to convince the European of anything, nor engage in their racist questions. Instead, we need to take advantage of the flawed nature of the master’s house and dismantle it.

Julia Suárez-Krabbe coordinates the Decoloniality Europe network, composed by a majority of southern scholars and activists who work against racism, Islamophobia and coloniality in Europe (http://decolonialityeurope.wix.com/decoloniality). She is assistant professor at the Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University, Denmark and associated researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. With co-funding from the Danish Social Science Research Council she is currently involved in the research project “ALICE – Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons” (alice.ces.uc.pt) coordinated by Prof. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and financed by the European Research Council (FP/2007-2013)

End Notes
[i] See, for example, Suárez-Krabbe, “Race, Social Struggles, and ‘Human’ Rights: Contributions from the Global South”:http://www.criticalglobalisation.com/Issue6/78_102_RACE_HUMAN_RIGHTS_JCGS6.pdf

[ii] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html

[iii] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132672747320891.html

[iv] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze_71xvHuoI

[v] See also Ramón Grosfoguel’s inputs concerning “the question of democracy” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faWQFUdrp6M

[vi] Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2008): Against war. Views from the Underside of Modernity. Duke University Press.

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-March/000794.html

[viii] See Lewis Gordon for more elaborations concerning current scientific rationality in: Gordon, Lewis (2011): Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence. Transmodernity 1(2): 95-103. Available online at: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/218618vj

[ix] See also Santos, B.S. (2004) A critique of lazy reason: Against the waste of experience. In I. Wallerstein (ed.) The Modern World-System in the Longue Dure ́e (pp. 157Á198 ). London: Paradigm.

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Decolonial Translation Group

This is a great website called Decolonial Translation Group (available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese). The site has tons of articles including some  by Ramon Grosfoguel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, and many others scholars.

I would suggest  first checking out: Grosfoguel's "Transmodernity, border thinking, global coloniality"
and Quijano's "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America". They provide lots of info and a theoretical framework which other articles will build on.

The Quijano article which discusses his concept of "coloniality of power" is perhaps one of the most essential readings for Decolonial Theory. SO BEGIN THERE!

Here is the link for the Decolonial Translation English page:
http://www.decolonialtranslation.com/english/

Walter Mignolo- "Yes, We can!- non-European thinkers and philosophers"

Walter Mignolo (Duke University) weighs in on the debate of the role of non-Europeans thinkers and philosophers.

Check out the article: http://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/yes-non-european-thinkers-philosophers-113405018.html

Mignolo adds to the debate which has been going on between articles written by Santiago Zabala on Slavoj Zizek and Hamid Debashi. This is very interesting because it is rare to see a decolonial scholar such as Mignolo writing for a non-academic audience and it provides an opportunity for other people who are not introduced to our studies to see what we argue for (much like the purpose of this blog).

I suggest that you check out the articles of Zabala and Debashi first to check get an idea of the context in which Mignolo is weighing in.

I will come back to write out Mignolo's main argument and to expand on some of the points he makes because many people have misunderstood what he is arguing in this piece.