Walter D. Mignolo (born in Argentina) is semiotician and professor at Duke University, USA, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and has worked on different aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity and pluriversality (http://waltermignolo.com/).

Marina Gržinić: You emphasized that colonial epistemology is a universalist project that repeats and cements western Eurocentric colonial logic. Instead of uni-versality you suggest therefore to take the path toward pluri-versality. This formulation may be understood as leaving a terrain open to your critics that will say that this pluri position leads to pluri localizations and to immense fragmentation of struggles, while capital will continue to exercise universal expropriation?

Walter Mignolo: First of all, my emphasis is not in that colonial epistemology is a universalist project but – on the contrary – that de-colonial epistemology points toward pluri-versality as a universal project; quite different indeed. “Colonial epistemology” would be another way to refer to the colonial side of imperial epistemology. Or in other words, colonial epistemology will be the space of coloniality in the equation modernity/coloniality. However, you are right in the last observation. Capital has continued to “exercise universal expropriation” through the publications of all Žižek’s, Negri’s, Harvey’s etc., books attacking capitalism, globalization, and the like. So, pluri-versality joints the crowd of inefficient discontents who protest and dream “while capital continues to exercise universal expropriation.” And remember the example of Bill and Melinda Gates’s Foundation and the cultural industry’s expropriations of subjectivities. But let’s put the problem into perspective. In what sphere of the social is our work (yours, mine, of those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, and of others you mention yourself below – like Badiou, Agamben, etc.)? I am not sure if Berlusconi reads Agamben or Sarkozy reads Žižek. Perhaps he reads Badiou who wrote about him. If we take the classic liberal triangle of the State, the Market and the Civil Society, and we add a fourth, the Political Society (Partha Chaterjee), of which liberals may not be too happy, our work is located basically in the sphere of the Civil and Political Society, and more specifically, in the sphere of Education (school, universities, colleges, the media). Our (your, mine, and other names mentioned in this interview) influence on the State and the Market is very limited, if we have some. Contrary to political scientists, economists, mainstream media and journalism, our (the same as above) sphere of influence is again that of the civil and political society. In fact, I see our (the same as above) contribution in trying to enlarge the political society since the active civil society is mainly taken by NGOs. The legacies of W.E.B Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Gloria Anzaldúa, among many others, is to have created a space in which many of us (same as above), who did not find our place in the existing canon of Western knowledge, have now a place to dwell. Let me put it differently. Agnes Heller stated, in the introduction to her A Theory of Modernity that Europeans dwell in the house of Being while Americans (she means Anglo-Americans), dwell in the house of Democracy. When I read that I asked myself, where is my house? And which one is the house of the large minorities in the US and European immigrants? And in which house is the rest of the world dwelling? Minorities in US and Europe, immigrants in both places (but also in China and India) and many others around the world, dwell in the house of Coloniality. Well, what we (this time “we” refers to the collective modernity/coloniality) are doing is to affirm the existence of the house of Coloniality and, from there, to forcefully enter into the conversation with those inhabiting the fenced house of Being and Democracy.

But perhaps I am wrong and pluri-versal conversations are irrelevant and inefficient in front of the juggernaut of capitalism. Perhaps a renovated international revolution of the proletarian, or the global multitude; or perhaps if we can write more books on Lenin, Saint Paul and Spinoza we would be able to stop the global march of capitalism. But, if we succeed in stopping capitalism, what is next? What kind of world would we (all of us concerned with this question) like to build? Pluri-versality as a universal project is the anchor of a non-capitalist and totalitarian struggle to impose one form of life and of domination. As for the “universal projection of de-colonial epistemology,” it is not exactly but just the opposite of what we (the collective of the project) are talking about. We aim at a global projection of de-colonial epistemology, and not necessarily universal. Global projection is predicated on pluri-versality and objectivity in parenthesis. Universal projection is predicated on the uni-versality of objectivity without parenthesis. The epistemology I (and others) advocate, border epistemology, is not colonial but de-colonial. On the other hand, it moves away from the “abstract universals” predicated by Christian Theology (but also by some Islamists), by liberals (civilizing mission), by neo-liberals (market democracy) and by Marxists (proletarian revolution, the rising of the multitude). Border epistemology promotes “pluri-versality as universal projects.” At this point of our conversation (yours and mine) it should be clear what I mean by that. Nevertheless, let’s push it a step further.

Pluri-versality requires – as said above – connectors, connectors among projects (see the question about who are the revolutionary subjects today, below) moving, advancing, unfolding in the same direction (departing from the colonial matrix of power), but following singular paths emerging from local histories. Consequently, pluri-versality as a universal project is not another new abstract universal that claims the ultimate truth above all the previous abstract universals. Connectors are necessary to avoid fragmentation. And I would say that capital is not exercising universal but global expropriation. Certainly, China is short in land to produce enough food for its population. Consequently, China is “buying” land in Africa and Latin America and banks in Africa. The Bill Gates’s and the Rockefeller Foundations are “helping” African farmers to “develop” agriculture (http://waltermignolo.com/2007/11/01/bono-contra-china/), while the variegated global “left” (another “we”) have no more to do than run behind trying to guess how this time the colonial matrix of power is being reshaped. The institutions controlling, today, knowledge, authority and economy are constantly renovating the technology of control. Davos and the G8 are just two examples. The World Social Forum, The Americas Social Forum, the Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations (http://www.cumbrecontinentalindigena.org/index_guate_en.php), the Pacific Coast Federation or Fishermen’s Association, Mujeres Creando (in Bolivia, http://www.mujerescreando.org/) etc. etc. etc.), La Via Campesina, Food Sovereignty have initiated a different modus operandi: the proliferation of nodes around the globe with the intention of thinking forward and creatively not only against. Both organizations are gaining importance today when predators of all sorts are making enormous amounts of money in food speculation. Once again, profit comes first, human beings second. If people have to die, let it be. “We” (the corporations and its agents) accumulate money. The crisis in Argentina today between land-owners who want to increase their profit by just growing soya and exporting it, and the government who is pushing agricultural diversification by increasing their taxes to force them to diversify. For land owner, diversity may be good for society in general but not for profit, and they do not want to loose this opportunity to jump in the band wagon of food-predators. This is, as you know, the beauty of capitalism of Western civilization: a world of successful winners in accumulation of wealth at the cost of dispensability of human life.

All these are sign-posts of the pluri-versal global march de-linking from the colonial matrix of power (or capitalism, in your vocabulary). Border epistemology and pluri-versality are two necessary horizons in that endeavor. Unless one still believes that all these movements need to study Marx, Lenin, Spinoza, Žižek, Deleuze, Gramsci, etc. These thinkers and activists are all great, but the de-colonial project responds to a myriad of experiences, desires, dreams, traumas, etc. etc., that are not those embedded in the regional history of Europe; and this time I mean Hegel’s Europe, divided in South, the Heart and the North-East. Let’s examine a modest case (and this very moment [May 9, 2008] in a difficult situation after the referendum of Santa Cruz passed with a wide margin, legal or not). The government of Evo Morales (with all the expected difficulties) is a good example in both, its possibilities and difficulties. The fact that the province of Santa Cruz is forcing its autonomy makes evident the paradoxical situation that in order to rule over communities controlling the land, natural resources and capital, it is necessary to have a state that is stronger in possessing lands and natural resources and capital. It seems that the rule of Capital cannot be overruled by the rules of the State. We are facing a new and paradoxical situation. During the Cold War, the State sent the army against the workers and university students supporting the claim of the union. Today, the army if it is to be sent it has to be sent against the landowners, both in Bolivia and in Argentina. One may think that capitalism (as a civilization structured by the colonial matrix of power) may be difficult to defeat playing by the rules established (e.g., the colonial matrix of power) to make capitalism work. The bottom line is the paradigmatic experience Bolivians and the world at large (we) are going through. There are three contending forces and projects in Bolivia: the State-MAS (Marcha hacia el socialismo) project; the interests of the agro-industrial bourgeoisie of South East (the Media Luna) and the indigenous political society. None of these three forces is hegemonic. What are the possible features? And what are the unavoidable roads toward the future? If we remain in the hegemonic ideal modeled by “abstract universal,” the situation will be explosive because each of the three projects will claim their legitimacy to be the best model for all. The alternative is inter-culturality (in the sense the concept has been introduced and used by Indigenous intellectuals in Ecuador and Bolivia, which is not equivalent to multiculturalism but, once again, exactly the opposite) and border epistemology. However, inter-culturality and border epistemology would/could be endorsed by the actual State and by the indigenous political society, but would hardly be accepted by the agro-industrial bourgeoisie, that is, by the Bolivian agents of global capitalism (this statement comes from a conversation with Javier Sanjinés, in the collective modernity/coloniality). Inter-culturality is not the same as multi-culturality. The former operates in a world ruled by an epistemology in parenthesis; the latter in a world ruled by an epistemology without parenthesis.

The colonial matrix of power, or in a more common parlance, the expansion of Western civilization to control the economy, authority, gender and sexuality, subjectivity and knowledge, has been gradual since the 16th century, and has encountered many different local histories, languages, religions, economies, epistemologies etc. The responses to Western expansion were and are variegated. There are the promoters in different parts of the world of Western civilization (lately modeled on the US), there are anti-Westerns responses from manifestations to armed violence responding to the violence of Western incursion (in all the spheres mentioned above), and de-colonial. De-colonial responses have, of necessity, to be founded on border epistemology. Imagining that Western political economy and political theory (in their right or left versions) will be helpful in imagining and creating the future of, say, Bolivia or Iraq is, in my view, an Eurocentric illusion. When the government of Evo Morales, as well as Bolivian intellectuals (and also in Ecuador) talk about the decolonization of the state and of the economy, of the re-foundation of the state, they are already enacting border epistemology. That is to say, Western political theory and economy is there, has been there since the foundation of the republic. But Bolivia and Ecuador are colonial states, and not modern states like France or England. Thus, liberal democracy has a tradition in Bolivia, for sure. And also the ayllu (indigenous ways of life, political and economic organization, knowledge grounded in Aymara and Quechua language). There is no reason, except imperial reason, to argue that liberal democracy is the way to go and Indians have nothing to say. That said, it is not a question of going back to the past or of transforming Bolivia into a big ayllu (as Felipe Quispe, El Mallku would like to do). For the same reason, it is no longer sustainable to imagine Bolivia as big liberal-colonial state. Simultaneously, and since there is around 60% of indigenous population, it is no longer possible to have a liberal (even less neo-liberal) state. Just analyze this case: the conflict between Ronald Larsen (an American rancher in Bolivia) and the government of Evo Morales (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?pagewanted=all). This is not a conflict between liberals and Marxists. It is a conflict between liberal and ayllu democracy. Thus, border thinking (or epistemology) and inter-culturality implies the epistemic leadership of Indigenous epistemology in conflict with White (European descent) modern/colonial epistemology in which economy, politics, education, subjectivity, etc. is formulated and enacted.1

And let me offer another example of the inevitability of border epistemology as creative response to Western intrusion and the global reproduction of capitalism. Much has been written about Sun Yat-sen. He has been portrayed as pro-communist and pro-capitalist, as conservative and traditionalist, as close to the Jesuits, etc. No one thought that what Sun Yat-sen was doing was to think in the borders of Western liberalism and Marxism on the one hand, and Chinese long lasting history and civilization on the other. At the point he was thinking, it was – like in Bolivia – impossible and imaginable to pretend that China could go back to its past, before the Opium War. On the other hand, it was unthinkable also to get a blue print of liberalism or communism; to erase Chinese past and supplant it with the history of the Western world from Greece and Rome until the Western capitalist imperialism and the aftermath of Industrial Revolution. He had then to theorize by dwelling in the borders. He himself was not yet ready to imagine that it was possible to detach from the duality between theory and facts, so that he opted for facts instead of theory to frame and argue for the three principle of livelihood as a vision for China. Given space constraint here I just want to underline his “fundamental difference between the Principle of Livelihood and capitalism.” Since the principle of livelihood is also used within the economic principles of capitalist economy (e.g. profit at the expenses of life in general and not only human life), Sun Yat-sen’s Principle of Livelihood points toward a different direction. Like Evo Morales’ distinction between “buen vivir” and “vivir mejor que otros” (to live well rather than to live better than the other), Sun Yat-sen sees capitalism as a civilization of death: “The fundamental difference between the Principle of Livelihood and capitalism is this: capitalism makes profit its sole aim, while the Principle of Livelihood makes the nurture of the people its aim.” Unfortunately, it is not in this direction that the history of China, in the past 60 years, seems to be heading. The lesson seems to be that there is no way out of capitalism without de-linking from Western epistemology (in its variety) and from all pretense of achieving a “new abstract uni-versal” that will correct all the errors and limitations of previous ones and will be good for the planet and its six billions plus people. And the lesson seems to be also that the desire for wealth, accumulation and control is stronger than the desire for “vivir bien” and Sun Yat-sen’s principles of livelihood. The modest claim of de-colonial thinking is that without de-colonizing knowledge and being (e.g., non-consumerist subjectivities), reading Lenin and cheering the global multitude will not take as very far.

M. G.: Especially harsh is your attack on emancipation that in European leftists circles seems to be the last »fetish« not to be questioned. Instead of emancipation, you talk about liberation, grounding both concepts in a historical overview, and showing that emancipation is just a process inside the colonial mechanism of western rational episteme, while liberation has a different genealogy of struggle. Can you reflect on the radical difference between emancipation and liberation?

W. M.: The distinctions I am trying to draw are the following: “emancipation” belongs to the vocabulary of the enlightenment. As I mentioned before, Kant equates enlightenment with emancipation. As such, “emancipation” became the key-word to describe the projects and visions of the secular European bourgeoisie emerging in England from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and in France from the French Revolution of 1789. Within the same logic, but with reverse content, “emancipation” entered the vocabulary of socialism. Marx himself conceived emancipation as the march toward humanness: “Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself. Human emancipation will only be complete when the real individual man has absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an individual man, in his everyday life, in his work, and in his relationships, he has become a species-being; and when he has recognized and organized his own powers (forces propres) as social powers so that he no longer separated his social power from himself as political power,” (quoted by Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, http://www.thur.de/philo/emanc.htm). In this genealogy of thoughts, Ernesto Laclau wrote a book titled Emancipation(s) (1996). The fact that Laclau illustrates his thesis with the case of Juan Domingo Perón, in Argentina, is telling. Instead, the “national left” in Argentina that emerged in the late fifties after the fall of Juan Domingo Perón, as a critical response against the oligarchy and the communist party that collaborated in his fall, used the world “liberation.” One of the books written by J. J. Hernández Arregui (a leading figure of the nationalist left, is significantly titled Nacionalismo y liberación. In Latin America, Theology and Philosophy of Liberation were founded in the late sixties and early seventies. No one claimed Theology of Emancipation or Philosophy of Emancipation as a better name. All the movements toward decolonization during the Cold War were labeled “Ejércitos o Movimientos de Liberación Nacional.” No one was baptized “ejército o movimiento de emancipación nacional;” the same with EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. Of course it is not a nominal question that is at stake. In the domain of abstract universals, you can say that emancipation and liberation are the same. In history, however, they carry the weight of different experiences: emancipation described the dreams and experiences of the European bourgeoisie while liberation describes the struggles of the damnés (Fanon), the racialized and colonized people of the ex-Third World. Liberation in other words is linked to de-colonization both during the Cold War and after the collapse of the Soviet Union – that is the meaning of “de-colonial” in the project modernity/coloniality, which I will clarify below.

So, the de-colonial option that emerged from such experiences, the armed struggle for liberation, was paralleled by intellectual weapons of liberation. Beyond theology and philosophy of liberation were projects of de-colonizing rather than opening the social sciences (c.f., Wallerstein). Decolonizing the social sciences was a contemporary project launched by Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals-Borda. Our (in this case, the collective modernity/coloniality but also Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous intellectuals) critique of the European left and its version in South American and the Caribbean is grounded on its Eurocentricity – on the fact that the emphasis on changing the content of the conversation made them blind to the necessity of changing the terms of the conversation. Why should a Black or an Indian intellectual endorse the vision of the European left if their experiences and locations in the colonial matrix of power are so different? Besides, the Eurocentered version of the European left in South American and the Caribbean has always been blind (if not blind, like in Bolivia today, at least still inhabiting white Creole consciousness) to Indians, Blacks and women and particularly to women of color as if no real transformative projects could come from their needs and experience without the help of the European Left and its local agents; which indeed parallel the relationship, on the right wings, of the IMF and its local agents. The de-colonial option brings to the foreground (through the pioneering works of Dubois, Césaire, Fanon, Anzaldúa) and many others a genealogy of thoughts that has been blocked by the Eurocentered right as well as the Eurocentered left. The de-colonial option emerges as an option next to the variegated versions of Marxism as well as of Theology of Liberation. It emerged as an analytic and transformative project in the academia (in the US and in South America and the Caribbean) as well as in the public sphere, joining forces with similar and compatible projects advanced by Afro-Andean and Caribbean, Latinas and Latinos, Native Americans and Aboriginal in New Zealand and Australia; immigrants of the ex-Third World in Europe and the US, gay and lesbian struggle, women of color, etc. This is the most immediate context of the de-colonial option as formulated by the collective modernity/coloniality. And in this genealogy of thoughts and activism, liberation is akin to de-colonization.

M. G.: Your criticism of the western modernity and western rationality and Eurocentric institutions of knowledge is so systematic that nothing is left here in Europe for a process of liberation and a systematic process of de-coloniality on which to base ourselves in order to proceed today in struggles against the Eurocentric institutions of knowledge. Am I wrong? Can you list, besides Horkheimer, some other important names, practices, positions, resistance?

W. M.: You may be right. Eurocentrism was so harsh and systematic in asserting its supremacy and humiliating people that generated a significant amount of harsh energy and mistrust against. Remember Fanon?

“Europe has taken over leadership of the world with fervor, cynicism and violence. And look how the shadow of its monuments spreads and multiplies. Every movement Europe makes bursts the boundaries of space and thought. Europe has denied itself not only humility but also solicitude and tenderness [..] So, my brothers, how could we fail to understand that we have better things to do than follow in that Europe’s footsteps? […] Come, comrades, the European game is finally over, we must look for something else. We can do anything today provided we do not ape Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with Europe (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961, “Conclusion”).

I do not want to hide myself behind Fanon. By quoting him I want to put forward, to make visible, the sensibility of the colonial wound that you have in Fanon as well as in others in similar circumstances, with respect to western modernity and rationality.2 The response to your observation “that nothing is left here in Europe for a process of liberation and a systematic process of de-coloniality” could be reversed in this direction. What would it mean for you, in Europe (senso largo), to shift the geography of reason, to think decolonially and from the experiences and conceptualization of de-colonial thinkers, and to re-imagining political theory and political economy from the experiences of the damnés? Why not? For a long time, people in the “third world” were exposed to European emancipating ideals. Well, perhaps a shift in the geography of reason is thinkable and doable. After all, the damnés like Fanon had to learn the European canon in order to articulate, against it, his de-colonial critique (border epistemology). Let’s follow Fanon again: “The Third World (today we will include immigrants in Europe and the US, my addendum, W. M.) is today facing Europe as one colossal mass whose project must be to try and solve the problems this Europe was incapable of finding the answer to” (The Wretched of the Earth, Conclusion). Fanon’s observations were written just at the moment when the US was on its way to global hegemony. Today Euro-America would most certainly be included in his reflections.

It is not just among Blacks, Indians or Jews that the colonial wound is felt. It is also among whites of European descent in South America and the Caribbean, and I suppose in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. And obviously among Irish people. There is a tradition, in Argentina, of intellectuals, sons (mainly sons) of European immigrants, lower or middle class, that have written many pages about that feeling of being European at the margin, which is, not being European; being looked as inferior or behind by Europeans visitors to Argentina, hosted by the Argentine Creole elites, grounded in Spanish (and some time German or British) intellectual and family traditions. The point is here that many of us, in South America and the Caribbean, grew up in that atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why, with a growing awareness, the link and solidarity with Indians and Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Andean intellectuals “came naturally:” we have all experienced coloniality, although at a different scale. We share “the colonial wound” at different level of intensity. The “colonial wound” is one of the consequences of Eurocentrism and it operates, basically, at the epistemic and ontological level. At the epistemic level, the Western notion of rationality became a universal measuring stick and a model of a rational human being. At the same time, it spilled over ontology, as those who are not quite at the level of Western notion of rationality are lesser being. This is, simply, the logic of racism: the invention of epistemic and ontological colonial differences to secure the supremacy of Western rationality and devalue what cannot be assimilated. And it is basically epistemological because it is invented and created rather than “representing” epistemic and ontological differences in the world. It is true, though, that many people think differently and not according to Western criteria of rationality, which really and only means that they think differently, not that they are less rational.3 This may be one of the reasons why I (as well as others in Latin America, like Enrique Dussel) felt connected with Jewish European intellectuals (Marx, Freud, Horkheimer, Benjamin). Remember that one of the first, if not the first, Marx’s publication was titled The Jewish Question. The emergence of the secular idea of Jewishness in the eighteenth century displaced the religious identification of Jews and their specific history in the modern/colonial world, when they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the same time as the Moors were. In the 18th and 19th century, when the modern-nation state was in its inception in Europe, it was more or less simultaneous with the emergence of the colonial nation state in the Americas. Jews, Indians and Afros became the targets of the first radical transformation of the colonial matrix of power: the emergence of colonial internal minorities. That is, minorities of the nation state, modern in Europe or colonial in the Americas.

I needed this explanation to respond to other aspects of your question. Certainly we could think of many movements in the internal history of Europe, significant for the history of Europe, like France 1968. The problem always is that what happens in Europe could be taken as an event of global significance. Thus, Immanuel Wallerstein took 1968 as the first sign of the crisis of the geo-culture of the modern/colonial world that he traced, alas, in the French Revolution of 1789, and not in the Haitian Revolution, for example, of 1804. French Revolution is no doubt crucial in the history of Europe and the European imperialism. The Haitian Revolution is fundamental in the global history of de-coloniality. If we come back to 1968, it was not just France. It was Mexico, it was Beijing, it was Czechoslovakia. The crisis was indeed in the geo-culture (respecting Wallerstein’s vocabulary) of the modern/colonial world. More recently, I think the crucial moment of Europe are the emerging branches of The World Social Forum that originated, as you know, in Brazil. And, in the same vain, I found extremely interesting the contribution that Europe can make to the de-colonial process with recent events like “La marche décoloniale du 8 Mai 2008.” Ramón Grosfóguel, one of the members of the collective modernity/coloniality, who lives between Paris and San Francisco, California, attended the march and told me that “the march went in pitching with a gigantic photo of Aimé Césaire and with thousands of people with photos of: Yassin Sheik; Hasan Nasrallah, Geronimo; Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin; W.E.B. Dubois, Nasser, Nkrumah, Shariati, Zapata, Ghandi, etc. And some other 12 or so photos of African-Muslims whom I do not know and have not yet heard their names although they seem to be related to liberation movements. The march was integrated by a significant number of young Black and Arab youths (personal communication).” The march has a name; identification: “La marche décoloniale.” So, there are two ways of responding to your question. One is to name the canonical critical thinkers of Europe who have been and still are extremely relevant for the history of Europe itself and for all current debates about “European identity” after the European Union. I would say that this is your business to which “we” (non European in senso largo) can contribute from the perspective of “our” (as defined above, non-European) concerns. Another answer to your question would be to say that the time has arrived, for European intellectuals, to follow the guidance of non-European de-colonial thinkers, illustrated by all those names whose pictures were honored in “la marche décoloniale.” After all, “we” (in the colonies and ex-colonies) had to suffer and endure Aristotle and Saint Thomas, while ignoring Waman Puma de Ayala, in the Andes, and Ottobah Cugoano, in the Black Atlantic. If Beck or Badiou are being translated, read and discussed in Mexico and Buenos Aires, for example, why not do the same with Césaire, Fanon, Anzaldúa, Du Bois and Sylvia Wynter in Paris, Ljubljana, London and Frankfurt? Once European intellectuals master the de-colonial genealogy of thought as “we” master the Western (both imperial and dissenting) genealogy of thought, then we can start talking and working together.

If “we” (the variegated array of intellectuals I mentioned before in the Americas) and “you” (in Europe, in senso largo) are to work together de-colonially, we have to begin by redressing coloniality of knowledge and working toward epistemic democracy. Otherwise, who would be interested, beyond the self-colonized mentality of the left in South America or Africa or Asia, to receive orders and instructions on how to “do the revolution?” And to embrace a subjectivity that is grounded in the history that is not “ours” (that is, colonial histories)? Evo Morales said in another context, addressing the IMF: We do not need experts telling us what to do, we need people to work with. Perhaps the moment has arrived, the moment of “epistemic democracy” and of redressing the geo-politics of knowledge. I am neither a missionary nor a functionary of the IMF to tell you what to do in Europe. I can only tell you what we are thinking, what we are doing, and what are the possible roads where we (a collective “you” and a collective “we”) can meet each other and sing together epistemic and decolonial chants. Basically, what is necessary is to shift the geography of reason and to look at Europe (imperial Europe and the US) from the experiences, needs and perspectives of the ex-colonial world – and of immigrants in Europe and the US – rather than looking at the ex-colonial world from the experiences and perspectives of Euro (American) observers (from the left and from the right).

The third part of the interview will be published in Reartikulacija no. 6, spring 2009.

[top]