|
|
|
Professor
Walter Mignolo addresses the audience
at his talk.
|
Walter
Mignolo is a professor of cultural anthropology and romance
language at Duke University. His research focuses on semiotics
and the complicity between eurocentric forms of knowledge
production and global coloniality. His recent publications
include The Darker Side of the Renaissance and Local
Histories/Global Designs.
The dualistic division
between soul and body was an ancient model, but from Descartes
on, points out Quijano, it became a complete separation/
This later allowed the division between peoples who were
regarded as almost pure body (the slave, the woman.) and
those who were envisioned as mostly spirit. In the center
of this dualism and evolutionism, the European subject placed
itself as the most spiritual and evolved of human beings,
relegating the rest of humanity to the status of primitivism.
To confront and to rethink this pervasive mental heritage,
which has invaded numerous local imaginaries, is one of our
tasks in overcoming colonialism.
Quijano emphasizes the
need to rethink all systems of exploitation, from the 16th
century on, in light of the characteristics of capitalism.
Slavery, serfdom, salary, and reciprocity (the forced labor
imposed on Indians, like the mita in Peru) were all
intentionally organized to produce commodities for the world
market. It is in this sense that from that period onward,
even though it had different faces, capitalism became the
new general system of exploitation. This system cannot be
linked to the promotion of democracy, an argument made by
its defenders that Quijano disputes. As he points out, it
has always been able to work within and with different kinds
of states, perhaps particularly non-nation-states, such as
Viceroyalties. Non-nation states did not represent the nation,
as understood as the totality of its participants: blacks,
Indians, mestizos, etc. This lack of representativity, these
de-nationalized states, are also related to the idea of race,
pivotal in Quijano's understanding of coloniality.
Quijano's lecture and
this series can be considered alternatives or complements
(depending on one's point of view) to post-colonial studies.
