Essay 2 Decoloniality
Daphne Stivelman – 250612808
Essay #2
CGS 3517 – Decoloniality
Dr. Wendy Russel
December 1st 2014
Walter D. Mignolo’s The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options successfully tracks the course of Western modernity, its reliance on coloniality, and presents a variety of ways in which decoloniality exists, and has always existed alongside the development of coloniality. He delivers insight on the ways that decolonial options emerged and has the potential to produce other new worlds. Chapter Six of his visionary work is devoted to proposing the potential of a decolonial future using the Zapatista theoretical revolution to develop his arguments. He highlights the unity of “doing through thinking, and thinking through doing” (Mignolo 2011, 23). In his narration of decoloniality through epistemic disobedience/delinking from the Colonial Matrix of Power, Mignolo emphasizes the notion of dignity. Mignolo points out the ways in which the Zapatista theoretical revolution (or any decolonial movement for that matter) creates space for individuals to gain back their dignity, and thus keep their indigenous sovereignty alive. Sovereignty, in this respect, is something that cannot be afforded by governments. Peter Kulchyski also explores a similar concept to Mignolo’s dignity in his work, Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights by explaining the vast difference between human rights and aboriginal rights. Kulchyski points out that the rights that are afforded to indigenous people by governments as human rights don’t go far enough to afford these people their own sovereignty. Using Kulchyski’s concept of aboriginal rights, and Mignolo’s ideas of dignity, I will argue that through individual dignity comes indigenous sovereignty, and thus the break-away from Colonial Matrix of Power. Furthermore, I will discuss Mignolo’s ‘Zero Point Epistemologies’ – how they exist all in the same time and same conditions, but are all very different, and do not make one
Essay #2
CGS 3517 – Decoloniality
Dr. Wendy Russel
December 1st 2014
Walter D. Mignolo’s The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options successfully tracks the course of Western modernity, its reliance on coloniality, and presents a variety of ways in which decoloniality exists, and has always existed alongside the development of coloniality. He delivers insight on the ways that decolonial options emerged and has the potential to produce other new worlds. Chapter Six of his visionary work is devoted to proposing the potential of a decolonial future using the Zapatista theoretical revolution to develop his arguments. He highlights the unity of “doing through thinking, and thinking through doing” (Mignolo 2011, 23). In his narration of decoloniality through epistemic disobedience/delinking from the Colonial Matrix of Power, Mignolo emphasizes the notion of dignity. Mignolo points out the ways in which the Zapatista theoretical revolution (or any decolonial movement for that matter) creates space for individuals to gain back their dignity, and thus keep their indigenous sovereignty alive. Sovereignty, in this respect, is something that cannot be afforded by governments. Peter Kulchyski also explores a similar concept to Mignolo’s dignity in his work, Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights by explaining the vast difference between human rights and aboriginal rights. Kulchyski points out that the rights that are afforded to indigenous people by governments as human rights don’t go far enough to afford these people their own sovereignty. Using Kulchyski’s concept of aboriginal rights, and Mignolo’s ideas of dignity, I will argue that through individual dignity comes indigenous sovereignty, and thus the break-away from Colonial Matrix of Power. Furthermore, I will discuss Mignolo’s ‘Zero Point Epistemologies’ – how they exist all in the same time and same conditions, but are all very different, and do not make one