Week 7: The Coloniality of Power and De-linking Modernity as Coloniality PDF

People ====== - Anibal Quijano (1928-2018) Peruvian Sociologist - - Walter Mignolo, Argentinian Scholar - - Maria Lugones - Critique ======== - Critical Theory and its anti-colonial deficit - - Decolonial critique Encompasses - - Intersubjec...

People ====== - Anibal Quijano (1928-2018) Peruvian Sociologist - - Walter Mignolo, Argentinian Scholar - - Maria Lugones - Critique ======== - Critical Theory and its anti-colonial deficit - - Decolonial critique Encompasses - - Intersubjectivity Heuristic =========================== Background ========== The study of intersubjectivity heuristics examines how shared meanings and understandings are constructed, particularly in colonial contexts, affecting both settlers and indigenous populations. - Settler Colonies - Spanish colonies directly controlled by the King\'s bureaucracy - Spanish Amercian wars in 19th century - - - Colonization of Cognitive perspectives ====================================== - Models of Meanings- Colonial powers imposed their own cognitive frameworks, erasing alternative cultural cosmologies and perspectives, particularly regarding time and ecological practices. - Complete eradication of other cultural cosmologies from official sectors i.e. The perspective on time - The ecological wisdom - - - The nature of relationship between non-human and human - The alternative story of Modernity ================================== - All the fundamental concepts and processes of modernity do not exist inside Northern Europe - - - The Four Dimensions of coloniality ================================== - Social existence is dominated and regulated by four hegemonic systems/structures - - - - Coloniality of Power ---- Systems of Hierarchy ============================================== - The mental categories through which the power divided the space and people - - De-coloniality -------- Delinking ================================= - The conceptual de-linking from three macro-narratives of History- moving away from Eurocentric views of history and embracing diverse, localized histories. - Decolonizing the mind (knowledge) by investing into local languages - Decolonizing the way we think (imagine) about identities, structures based on those identities (nationalisms, state etc) Epistemological Ruptures ======================== Refer to breaks from dominant knowledge systems, embracing diverse ways of knowing: - Multiple ways of knowing - - - - Applications ============ - The Neoliberal Agendas - The Gender Binaries and Family systems - The Machine Learning and data epistemologies of digital colonization - Liberation subsuming emancipation- Moving beyond mere political freedom to deeper cognitive and cultural liberation. Criticism ========= - Potential for co-optation into conservative nationalist projects and global policy frames. - - Political Fragmentation - Take Home ========= - How can the decolonial Approach can help us to think about the effects of colonialism on work, family and cultural systems? - - Who are some of the decolonial thinkers in South Asia? - - - Readings ======== Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge -------------------------------------- In Bernard S. Cohn\'s \"Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge\", the central idea is that British colonial rule in India involved not just military or economic control but also the creation of knowledge systems to dominate Indian society. Key themes include: 1. Investigative Modalities: The British developed systems like censuses, surveys, and historiography to classify, control, and govern Indian populations. 2. Epistemological Conquest: Colonial authorities tried to understand and represent India through their own frameworks, leading to the imposition of Eurocentric knowledge systems. In Bernard S. Cohn's \*\*\"Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge\"\*\*, he argues that British colonialism in India was deeply tied to systems of knowledge, through which the British sought to classify, understand, and dominate Indian society. Here are the key points in more depth: 1\. Investigative Modalities: Cohn identifies several ways through which the British gathered knowledge about India. These modalities included: \- Censuses: The British used censuses to gather information on Indian populations, such as caste, religion, and occupation. This allowed them to categorize Indian society into manageable units. The census was more than a data-gathering tool; it actively shaped social identities, making rigid categories out of what were often fluid identities. \- Surveys and Maps: Through cartography and land surveys, the British were able to mark territorial boundaries and control the geography of India. These surveys often extended beyond geography, as they classified everything from local flora and fauna to the cultural practices of the Indian people. \- Historiography: The British imposed a Eurocentric narrative of Indian history that emphasized India's so-called stagnation and decline before British intervention. This was part of their strategy to justify colonial rule as necessary for the \"progress\" of Indian civilization. 2\. Colonial Knowledge as Power: Cohn argues that British rule relied heavily on knowledge production. By controlling how Indian culture, history, and society were represented, the British shaped India's understanding of itself. This was an epistemological conquest that went beyond mere governance; it was about defining India in British terms. \- For example, the British reconstructed Indian legal systems to align with British law, codifying and fixing Indian practices that were previously more flexible, particularly in areas like land ownership and revenue collection. 3\. Museological and Archaeological Projects: Another method of knowledge control was through collecting and preserving Indian antiquities, monuments, and historical artifacts. Museums and archaeological studies served to portray Indian culture as part of a distant past, positioning the British as modernizers of a \"backward\" society. 4\. The Relationship between Metropole and Colony: Cohn suggests that the knowledge generated in the colonies influenced the metropole (Britain) as well. For instance, the administrative practices developed in colonial India were used as models for British governance in other colonies and even back in Britain itself. 5\. The Power of Representation: One of the central themes of Cohn's work is how the British used representation to dominate. By translating Indian texts and languages into European frameworks, the British turned local knowledge into something that could be controlled and exploited. The process of translation was not neutral; it transformed the very meanings of Indian cultural practices and social norms. In sum, Cohn's thesis emphasizes that British colonial power was deeply intertwined with knowledge production, and the forms of knowledge they imposed on India were instrumental in shaping the colonial order. Knowledge, in this sense, became a tool of control, with the British framing India in ways that served their imperial project. "In British India, this modality is the most complex, pervasive, and powerful, underlying a number of the other more specific modalities. History, for the British, has an ontological power in providing the assumptions about how the real social and natural worlds are constituted." "Starting in the 1770s in Bengal, the British began to investigate,through what they called "enquiries," a list of specific questions to which they sought answers about how revenue was assessed and collected. Out of this grew the most extensive and continuous administrative activity of the British, which they termed the land-settlement process. Entailed in this enterprise was the collection of "customs and local histories," which in the British discourse related to land tenure." "A second strand of the historiographic modality involved the ideological construction of the nature of Indian civilizations, as typified in the major historical writings of Alexander Dow, Robert Orme, Charles Grant, Mark Wilks, James Mill, and James Tod. A third historiographic strand involves histories of the British in India." Coloniality of Power by Walter Mignolo: --------------------------------------- 1. Coloniality of Power: Introduced by Aníbal Quijano, it describes how colonial structures of power persist in society, especially in systems of knowledge, economy, authority, and race. 2. Coloniality and Modernity: Mignolo argues that modernity cannot be understood without coloniality. Colonialism is integral to the development of Western modernity, which is framed as a \"rhetoric of salvation\" but hides the exploitation and oppression of colonialism. 3. Decolonial Thinking: It involves the epistemic de-linking from Western universal knowledge, emphasizing localized ways of knowing and challenging the dominance of Eurocentrism in history and culture. 4. Intersectionality of Power: The colonial matrix of power is multidimensional, influencing race, economy, authority, and gender systems, as well as shaping global inequalities. Coloniality of Power: 1. Knowledge and Epistemic Control: Western colonial powers imposed their own knowledge systems, relegating indigenous knowledge to the margins. This \"epistemic violence\" has resulted in the ongoing dominance of Eurocentric perspectives in education, history, and science, undermining local knowledges. 2. Race and Social Classification: Coloniality created a global racial hierarchy, placing Europeans at the top and indigenous, African, and other non-Western peoples at the bottom. This hierarchy still influences global social structures and racism today. 3. Decolonial Critique: Mignolo and others call for rethinking modernity by \"delinking\" from Eurocentric frameworks. This involves validating indigenous and non-Western epistemologies and creating alternative ways of understanding history and society. 4. Gender and Coloniality: Gender roles and sexual norms were also shaped by colonial power, imposing European patriarchal structures onto colonized societies. Decolonial feminism, like that of María Lugones, seeks to deconstruct these colonial impositions and recognize how race, class, and gender intersect under coloniality. 5. Economic Exploitation: Colonial economies were structured around the extraction of resources and labor from colonized peoples for the benefit of colonial powers. The legacy of this exploitation continues in modern global capitalism, maintaining disparities between the Global North and South. 6. "In section III, ethnicity, nation-state and racism come into prominentfocus. Where do these issues fit in the colonial matrix of power? Where is thenation-state in the colonial matrix of power?; in the sphere of control of authority, for sure. The emergence of 'modern nation-states' in Europe, means two things: that the state became the new central authority of imperial/ colonial domination and that the 'nation' in Europe was mainly constituted of one ethnicity, articulated as 'whiteness'. Chronologically, South America and the Caribbean were the first cases of 'colonial nation-states' and in the process of their appearance and materialization, the colonial matrix of power was rearticulated in what has been described as 'internal colonialism': a Creole elite (e.g., white elite from European descent), took the power from the hands of Spanish and Portuguese monarchies re-enacted in their own hands. "Section IV takes up where section III left off: the inter-connection between the peripheries and the geo-political and body-political location of border thinking and de-colonial projects. Coloniality of power, in other words, it is not just a question of the Americas for people living in the Americas, but it is the darker side of modernity and the global reach of Imperial capitalism"