Decoloniality

Decoloniality (Spanish: 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 such perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and of imperialism.

Decoloniality emerged as part of a South American movement examining the role of the European colonization of the Americas in establishing Eurocentric modernity/coloniality — according to Aníbal Quijano (1928-2018), who defined the term and its reach.

Coloniality of knowledge is a concept that Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano developed and adapted to contemporary decolonial thinking. The concept critiques what proponents call the Eurocentric system of knowledge, arguing the legacy of colonialism survives within the domains of knowledge. For decolonial scholars, the coloniality of knowledge is central to the functioning of the coloniality of power and is responsible for turning colonial subjects into victims of the coloniality of being, a term that refers to the lived experiences of colonized peoples.

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 Aníbal 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. 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.

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. This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power or coloniality of power. Some have built upon decolonial theory by proposing Critical Indigenous Methodologies for research.

Although formal and explicit colonization ended with the decolonization of the Americas during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the decolonization of much of the Global South in the late twentieth century, its successors, Western imperialism and globalization perpetuate those inequalities. The colonial matrix of power produced social discrimination eventually variously codified as racial, ethnic, anthropological or national according to specific historic, social, and geographic contexts. Decoloniality emerged as the colonial matrix of power was put into place during the 16th century.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]} It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from, Eurocentrism.

Coloniality of gender is a concept developed by Argentine philosopher Maria Lugones. Building off Aníbal Quijano's foundational concept of coloniality of power, coloniality of gender explores how European colonialism influenced and imposed European gender structures on Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This concept challenges the notion that gender can be isolated from the impacts of colonialism.