In the introduction to Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide, Boaventura de Sousa Santos discusses “strong questions” whose “weak answers … do not challenge the horizon of possibilities” (de Sousa Santos, 20). Among these, de Sousa Santos describes how “it is as difficult to imagine the end of colonialism as it is to imagine that colonialism has no end” (de Sousa Santos, 26). The tension between these two difficulties is the result of weak answers that not only fail to challenge the “horizon of possibilities,” but perhaps cannot imagine a “horizon of possibilities” in the first place. This is not the result of a lack of imagination, but rather the violent suppression of non-Western imaginations and ways of knowing – that is, epistemologies.
Ramón Grosfoguel, in “The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century,” historicizes four major epistemicides related to the conquering of the Americas where knowledge in the form of books, bodies, and “códices” were (often literally) burnt out of indigenous American society. Grosfoguel ends his article with three programmatic points, the third of which being, “bring epistemic diversity to the canon of thought to create a pluri-verse of meanings and concepts where the inter-epistemic conversation among many epistemic traditions produce new re-definitions of old concepts and creates new pluriversal concepts with ‘the many defining for the many’ (pluri-verse) instead of ‘one for the rest’ (uni-verse)” (Grosfoguel, 89). The practice of the “pluri-verse” which incorporates the epistemologies of “the many” is one method of challenging the Western “horizon of possibilities” through which the end of colonialism may be imagined.
Making up part of the “pluri-verse,” surely, should be the “epistemologies of the heart” as defined by Juan López Intzín: “Sp’ijilal O’tan/ knowledges or epistemologies of the heart invite us to ‘hearten’ ourselves and the world, to recognize and respect the vast existence that is increasingly threatened by arrogant and indolent rationality” (Intzín, 10). Of particular importance to Sp’ijilal O’tan, in my understanding, is the acknowledgement within the concept of O’tan that the heart is not just a noun, but an action that “[incorporates] people’s everyday life experiences” into “ways of knowing that have built new life horizons – a political struggle from the joyous rebellion and the art of resistance” (Intzín, 7-9). Here is the echo in Intzín’s writing of the challenge that de Sousa Santos puts forward to imagine new horizons of possibility. For Intzín, the “new life horizons” allow for the difficulties in imagining the end of colonialism to be rephrased. Perhaps, it can be “joyous” to imagine the end of colonialism.
I want to end my reflection on these texts with a related quote in Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s article “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: a Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” “The project of indigenous modernity can emerge from the present in a spiral whose movement is a continuous feedback from the past to the future – a ‘principle of hope’ or ‘anticipatory consciousness’ – that both discerns and realizes decolonization at the same time” (Cusicanqui, 96). The term “anticipatory consciousness” feels like an overarching principle that speaks to Grosfoguel’s proposed program of the “pluri-verse” in that it de-linearizes consciousness, allowing for an epistemological continuum that allows for the inter-action of past, present. Beyond imagining the end of colonialism, “anticipatory consciousness” anticipates the end, allowing space for the joy in “joyous rebellion.”
López Intzín, Juan. "Sp'ijilal O'tan: Epistemologies of the Heart." 1 Jan 1970: Print.Grosfoguel, Ramon. "The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century." Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11. no. 1: 2013. 73-90. Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. "Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization." South Atlantic Quarterly 111. no. 1: 2012. Accessed 12 Oct 2018. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2014.