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” . 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 […]
UN MUNDO DONDE QUEPAN MUCHOS MUNDOS
Para Ramón Grosfoguel la racionalidad moderna-colonial basada en el universal abstracto y el solipsismo cartesiano tiene su origen en los epistemicidios perpetrados contra musulmanes y judíos, pueblos indígenas americanos y africanos y mujeres portadoras de sabiduría no-occidental que fueron quemadas en la hoguera acusadas de brujería. Hay una asociación directa entre el genocidio y el […]
Many Responses
Zapatistas, insurgents, use Sp’ijilal O’tan (knowledges and epistemologies of the heart) as a way to “hearten ourselves” and rebel against hegemonic structures of knowledge and the capitalist hydra. I wonder if Intzin, as an academic who employs culturally-developed epistemologies, feels a division between his academic and community life or if his use of culturally-developed epistemologies […]
Towards a “heterogeneous we”
How can we begin to consider what we have begun to materialize in class as a heterogeneous “we”? This week’s readings really spoke to me as they attempted to bring some manifestations of this “we” into presence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos begins his book with a manifesto –and minifesto– against epistemecide (side note: I found […]
Breaking the pact: epistemologies, history, and modernity
This week’s readings played a debate on the hegemonic epistemologies of forgetfulness and denial. Western colonial capitalism modes of producing knowledge have disenchanted and disregarded the indigenous and colonized ancestral culture, turning a “vast experience into merely things and commodities” (Intzín, pg 11). In search of emancipatory transformations in the world, the authors approach from […]