Coloniality Of Power And Progressive Politics In Latin America

The Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano is widely considered to be a foundational figure of the decolonial perspective grounded in three basic concepts: coloniality, coloniality of power, and the colonial matrix of power. His decolonial theorizations of these three concepts have transformed the principles and assumptions of the very idea of knowledge, impacted the social sciences and humanities, and questioned the myth of rationality in natural sciences. The essays in this volume encompass nearly thirty years of Quijano’s work, bringing them to an English-reading audience for the first time. This volume is not simply an introduction to Quijano’s work; it achieves one of his unfulfilled goals: to write a book that contains his main hypotheses, concepts, and arguments. In this regard, the collection encourages a fuller understanding and broader implementation of the analyses and concepts that he developed over the course of his long career. Moreover, it demonstrates that the tools for reading and dismantling coloniality originated outside the academy in Latin America and the former Third World.

The term "Latin" America supposes that there is an America that is Latin, which can be defined in opposition to one that is not. This geo-political manifesto revisits the idea of Latinity, charting the history of the concept from its emergence in Europe under France's leadership, through its appropriation by the Creole élite of South America and the Spanish Caribbean in the second half of the nineteenth century, up to the present day. Reinstating the indigenous peoples, the enormous population of African descent and the 40 million Latino/as in the US that are rendered invisible by the image of a homogenous Latin America, the author asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas. He explains why an "American Union" similar to the European Union is at this point unthinkable and he insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea of Latinity which belongs to the Creole/Mestizo mentality of the nineteenth century.

A state-of-the-art anthology of postcolonial theory and practice in the Latin American context.

The Failure of Latin Americais a collection of John Beverley’s previously published essays and pairs them with new material that reflects on questions of postcolonialism and equality within the context of receding continental socialism. Beverley sees an impasse within both the academic postcolonial project and the Bolivarian idea of Latin America. The Pink Tide may have failed to permanently reshape Latin America, but in its failure there remains the possibility of an alternative modernity not bound to global capitalism. Beverley proposes that equality, modified by the postcolonial legacy, is a particularly Latin American possibility that can break the impasse and redefine Latinamericanism.

This translation of Rita Segato's seminal book La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos offers an anthropological and critical perspective on the coloniality of power as formulated by the Peruvian thinker Anibal Quijano. Segato begins with an overview of Quijano's conceptual framework, emphasizing the power and richness of his theory and its relevance to a range of fields. Each of the seven subsequent chapters present scenarios in which a persistent colonial structure or form of subjectivity can be identified. These essays address urgent issues of gender, sexuality, race and racism, and indigenous forms of life. They set the decolonial perspective to work, and are connected by two central preoccupations: the critical analysis of coloniality and the effort to reimagine anthropology as anthropology on demand, answerable and useful to the communities previously regarded as the objects of ethnographic thought. A Critique of the Coloniality makes an important and original contribution to the understanding of colonial and decolonial processes, drawing the author's experience of feminist and antiracist issues and struggles for indigenous and human rights. This book will appeal to students and scholars working in anthropology, Latin American studies, political theory, feminist and gender studies, indigenous studies, and anticolonial, post-colonial, and decolonial thought.

Looking at the Latin American liberal project during the century of postindependence, this collection of essays draws attention to an underappreciated dilemma confronting liberals: idealistic visions and fiscal restraints. It focuses on the inventiveness of nineteenth-century Latinos who applied liberal ideology to the founding of new states.

A new journal inspired mainly by but not limited to Latin American, Caribbean and US Latinidad perspectives, Nepantla: Views from South is committed to fostering innovative reflection at the intersection of the humanities and the social sciences. Drawing on the international and interdisciplinary conference Cross-Genealogies and Subaltern Knowledges, while also including outside essays, the premier issue significantly advances the subaltern studies debate.