Decoloniality

Decoloniality (decolonialidad) is a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and imperialism. Decoloniality emerged as part of a South America movement examining the role of the European colonization of the Americas in establishing Eurocentric modernity/coloniality. Decolonial theory and practice have recently been subject to increasing critique. For example, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argued that it is analytically unsound, that "coloniality" is often conflated with "modernity", and that "decolonisation" becomes an impossible project of total emancipation. Jonatan Kurzwelly and Malin Wilckens, used the example of decolonisation of academic collections of human remains - which were collected during colonial times to support racist theories and give legitimacy to colonial oppression -, and showed how both contemporary scholarly methods and political practice perpetuate reified and essentialist notions of identities. The decolonial movement includes diverse forms of critical theory, articulated by pluriversal forms of liberatory thinking that arise out of distinct situations. In its academic forms, it analyzes class distinctions, ethnic studies, gender studies, and area studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic (in the sense of semiotics) and practical “options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power" or from a "matrix of modernity" rooted in colonialism. It considers colonialism "the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today," although this foundational interconnectedness is often downplayed.