Decoloniality and the Critique of Modernity: An Interpretive Study on Walter Mignolo, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and Arturo Escobar

This dissertation defends the distinctiveness of decoloniality’s critique of modernity through interpretative studies on Walter Mignolo, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and Arturo Escobar. First, I argue that Mignolo elaborates two core concepts: the coloniality of power as a logic of domination that emerges from historical colonization, and the colonial matrix of power as a social structure that embodies this logic and constitutes ontological domains (economic, political, etc.). Mignolo claims this is grounded on epistemology. This has logical, historiographical and methodological problems. It ends in an arbitrary demarcation of what is Western, and in epistemic and political relativism. Second, I argue that Rivera Cusicanqui offers a non-modern understanding of history grounded in the Aymara “ch’ixi” (grey). It highlights the irreducible tensional oppositions, structural and phenomenological of postcolonial subjects. I clarify this by providing a needed interpretation of Walter Benjamin’s thought that is implied in her writings. This articulates the postcolonial condition with the standpoint of the oppressed. It gives unity to history and seeks the redemptive vindication of past’s victims. Here I locate her visual sociology, vested in grasping the visual to challenge what official languages and public discourses silence. Her analyses help us to understand colonial social change, the agency of the historically excluded, and oppressive narratives of progress. Third, I argue that Escobar provides an ontological critique that emerges from his discourse analysis on development, and his ethnographic work in the Colombian Pacific. He vindicates the intellectual agency of social movements and shows how modernity rests on Cartesian separation, individualism and instrumentalization. Against this, he proposes pluriversal relationality, understood as real self-generating processes of life from which many worlds arise. Normatively, this implies a cooperative and tolerant horizon between different worlds, decentering modernity and its ecological unsustainability. To conclude, I discuss two objections. The first one by Táíwò considers that decoloniality denies agency. I argue that this account assumes a notion of modernity that has been challenged: agency is marked by coloniality. The second one by Tuck and Yang considers that decoloniality could be too metaphorical. I partially agree, but add that this makes it more inclusive and less utopian.

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