Coloniality of power

For knowledge related, see Coloniality of knowledge.

The coloniality of power is a concept interrelating the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies, decoloniality, and Latin American subaltern studies, most prominently by Anibal Quijano. It identifies and describes the living legacy of colonialism in contemporary societies in the form of social discrimination that outlived formal colonialism and became integrated in succeeding social orders.[1] The concept identifies the racial, political and social hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism in Latin America that prescribed value to certain peoples/societies while disenfranchising others.

Quijano argues that the colonial structure of power resulted in a caste system, where Spaniards were ranked at the top and those that they conquered at the bottom due to their different phenotypic traits and a culture presumed to be inferior.[2] This categorization resulted in a persistent categorical and discriminatory discourse that was reflected in the social and economic structure of the colony, and that continues to be reflected in the structure of modern postcolonial societies. Maria Lugones expands the definition of coloniality of power by noting that it imposes values and expectations on gender as well,[3] in particular related to the European ranking of women as inferior to men.[4]

The concept was also expanded upon by Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter Mignolo, Sylvia Wynter, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Santiago Castro-Gómez, Catherine Walsh, Roberto Hernández, and María Lugones.[5] Quijano's work on the subject "had wide repercussions among Latin American decolonial scholars in the North American academy."[6] The Grupo modernidad/colonialidad [es] modernity/coloniality group is an active network of intellectuals spanning generations and disciplines that are expanding on this work.

  1. ^ Quijano, Anibal (2000). "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America" (PDF). Nepantla: Views from the South. 1 (3): 533–580. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 June 2012.
  2. ^ Quijano, A. "Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality." Cultural Studies 21 (2-3) (March/May 2007): 168–178.
  3. ^ Lugones, M. "Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System." Hypatia 22, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 186–209.
  4. ^ Schiwy, F. "Decolonization and the Question of Subjectivity: Gender, Race, and Binary Thinking." Cultural Studies 21(2-3) (March/May 2007): 271–294.
  5. ^ "Several scholars have expanded on Quijano's coloniality, including Ramón Grosfoguel, with his explanation of the entangled heterarchy that manifests coloniality (Grosfoguel, R. "The Epistemic Decolonial Turn." Cultural Studies 21(2): 211–223. 2007); Walter Mignolo, with his integration of the concepts of coloniality, modernity, and decolonizing knowledge—particularly as regards space and history (Mignolo, W. "Delinking: the rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality, and the grammar of de-coloniality." Cultural Studies. 21(2): 449–514. 2007); Nelson Maldonado-Torres' Fanonian exploration of the coloniality of being and its dehumanizing consequences (Maldonado-Torres, N. "On the Coloniality of Being." Cultural Studies 21(2): 240 -270. 2007.) " Middleton, Elisabeth (2010). "A Political Ecology of Healing". Journal of Political Ecology. 17: 1–28 [2]. doi:10.2458/v17i1.21696.; and Roberto Hernández where he applies the concept of coloniality to the US/Mexico Border in (Hernández, R. "Coloniality of the US/Mexico Border: Power Violence and the Decolonial Imperative." University of Arizona Press, 2018.)
  6. ^ Poddar, Prem; Rajeev S. Patke; Lars Jensen (2008). A historical companion to postcolonial literatures: continental Europe and its empires. Edinburgh University Press. p. 508. ISBN 978-0-7486-2394-5.