Decolonizing Epistemologies

Theory Critique: Decolonizing Epistemologies

Daniel Zamora CHS 502: Contemporary Theories in Chicana/o Studies California State University, Los Angeles

In this paper I will interrogate the theoretical and methodological frameworks of Chela Sandoval and Walter Mignolo. Specifically, I will compare and contrast the way both author’s construct an analytical lens for the purpose of decolonizing epistemological foundations in Western academia. Guiding my analysis will be the following questions: Which methodological framework is best suited for resisting structures of neocolonialism? And to what extent are both of the authors falling under the rubric of having to use the ‘master’s tools’? While Chela Sandoval proposes a cross-disciplinary theory and method of oppositional/differential consciousness, as mapped out by the apparatuses she calls the ‘methodology of the oppressed,’ Mignolo argues for a de-linking of imperialism’s epistemic privilege through a process he calls ‘epistemic disobedience.’ Walter Mignolo’s “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought, and Decolonial Freedom” is critical of Western epistemology’s privilege of constructing both knowledge, and the subjects who produce those paradigms of thinking. The author centers a framework of what he calls the ‘geo-politics’ of knowledge, which critically interrogates the geo-historical mapping of Western epistemologies across colonized spaces in a global perspective. Mignolo (2009) writes: “Who and when, why and where is knowledge generated?...Why did euro-centered epistemology conceal its own geo-historical and bio-graphical locations and succeed in creating the idea of universal knowledge as if the knowing subjects were also universal?” (p. 160). This is how the author is making sense of the systematic nature of white privilege as understood through Western intellectualism’s diaspora to the subsequent spaces it constituted its colonial power on. In other words, Western epistemology does not even require the adjective of “Western;” epistemological innovation has always been conceived as a universal, as opposed to localized knowledge emanating from the geographical region of Europe. This is what the author is

questioning by referring to the ‘concealment’ of geo-historical privilege. Mignolo also draws critical attention to the couplings of race, language, and power. He writes (2009): Behind the six modern European languages of knowledge lay its foundation: Greek and Latin – not Arabic or Mandarin, Hindi or Urdu, Aymara or Nahuatl…The six mentioned languages based on Greek and Latin provided the ‘tool’ to create a given conception of knowledge that was then extended to the increasing European colonies from the Americas to Asia and Africa. (p. 164) The author is demonstrating how modern epistemologies distributed throughout the colonies of Europe are inherently racialized. The higher degree of cultural value that historically accompanied the spread of Enlightenment and Renaissance ideals is a prime example of how Europe is presumed to be the universal bringer of knowledge and modernity. In illuminating these contradictions, Mignolo is most concerned with particular moments in which third world thinkers have spoken back to, and critiqued the foundations of Western epistemology. In his assessment of Maori decolonial scholar Linda T. Smith, he writes: No, she is not still practicing Western anthropology: she is precisely shifting the geography of reasoning and subsuming anthropological tools into Maori (instead of Western) cosmology and ideology…you can choose the decolonial option: engage in knowledge-making to advance the Maori cause rather than to ‘advance’ the discipline (eg. anthropology). (p. 172) Mignolo therefore views the subject positioning as a crucial factor in shifting the traditional paradigms plagued by modernity and its racialized manifestations. One of these manifestations of course, is global capitalism. The author states:

A common topic of conversation today, after the financial crisis on Wall Street, is ‘how to save capitalism’. A decolonial question would be: ‘Why would you want to save capitalism and not save human beings? Why save an abstract entity and not the human lives that capitalism is constantly destroying?’ In the same vein, geo- and body-politics of knowledge, decolonial thinking and the decolonial optioin place human lives and life in general first rather than making claims for the ‘transformation of the disciplines.’ (2009, p. 178) Mignolo is demonstrating how knowledge, and its imperial legacies in relation to colonized subjects, has been ideologically and culturally privileged by stemming from European thinkers. Euro-centric logic prevails in such hegemonic and clandestine modalities, that it is almost inconceivable to imagine a world outside of global capitalism. Therefore, Mignolo’s argument moves beyond mere scholarly critique, and actively changes the terms of the conversation. Although, Chela Sandoval does see decolonial value in the notion of ‘transforming of disciplines,’ as I will discuss next. Sandoval’s 3rd chapter, “On Cultural Studies: An Apartheid of Theoretical Domains” in her text, Methodology of the Oppressed, argues for critical reinterpretation of the categorical mapping of theories across multiple disciplines. She dislodges the rhetoric of ruling out critical theoretical foundations on the basis of the respective identity categorizations that the authors possess. Sandoval (2000) claims: In spite of the profoundly similar theoretical and methodological foundation that underlies such seemingly separate domains, there is a prohibitive and restricted flow of exchange that connects them, and their terminologies are continuing to develop in a dangerous state of theoretical apartheid that insists on their differences. (p. 70)

The author is pointing to the way disciplines of knowledge are separated by the structure of society in a manner that hinders their critical possibilities. She claims that this racializes theoretical domains by categorizing them and in turn, essentializes them. Sandoval argues that semiotics and deconstruction are two pivotal tools in resisting neocolonial powers. Her detailed methodology of Roland Barthes’ semiotic analysis is aimed at providing the theoretical language through which an oppositional agent can give voice to his or her differential mode of consciousness, resisting and deconstructing power relations simultaneously in any given context. While Mignolo might be critical of such a meticulous engagement with a white, European thinker, Sandoval demonstrates not only a justification, but a critical standpoint in adapting Barthes’ work: In the interest of furthering the aim of mapping, negotiating, and reconfiguring the contemporary social landscape and its academic outposts, the terminologies developed by first world thinkers are transcoded in order to advance the differential mode of consciousness…The idea here is to advance the possibility of connection, of a ‘coalitional consciousness’ in cultural studies across racialized, sexualized, genderized theoretical domains (2000, p. 79). Here, Sandoval is calling for a critical reassessment of the way scholars and thinkers naturalize the categorical separations that restrict a more open, fluid exchange of ideas, theories, and analytical tools. Sandoval’s re-articulation of Barthes as a de-colonial theorist is critical for understanding how she centers the ‘tools’ of decolonizing paradigms rather than the agents themselves (as Mignolo does). In a departure from how Mignolo makes sense of the ‘zero-point’ epistemology (i.e. an allegedly ‘detached’ and neutral subject positioning), Sandoval examines Barthes’ contribution of radical semiology:

The only way to understand this new emancipatory method …is to first understand ideology as ‘a double system: its point of departure is constituted by the arrival of a meaning’…what Barthes calls the ‘zero degree of meaning’, that place from which substance arises…grounded once again. (2000, p. 96) What this demonstrates is that Sandoval does not see this ‘zero-point’ as necessarily problematic. The zero degree of meaning is the site through which the decolonial practices of radical deconstruction and semiotics can apply critical counter-meanings, signs, and signifiers to liberate meanings and ideologies. Unlike the emphasis on a detached and transcendental subject positioning (as Mignolo interprets), Sandoval is much more concerned with a theoretical and oppositional praxis, emanating from the zero degree of meaning. In this sense, the zero degree of meaning is not an objective or positivistic position of hubris, but rather, a point of departure, wherein subjects can deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness, and subsequently create their own meaning. Here I will draw some connections between both authors in order to articulate a general practice of critical opposition to Western modernity’s grasp on knowledge production. I will center two examples of secondary citations that the authors use. Mignolo cites Partha Chatterjee on the way in which colonialism shaped ideas of modernity for racialized subjects: We would forever remain consumers of universal modernity; never would we be taken as serious producers. It is for this reason that we have tried…to take our eyes away from this chimera of universal modernity and clear up a space where we might become the creators of our own modernity. (2009, p. 170) Here, Mignolo is again critical of ‘universal modernity’ which calls back to the critique of the zero point, but on the other hand Sandoval’s very first epigraph in her book should be

considered in relation to this: “We seek a world in which there is room for many worlds” (x). This first epigraph is from Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson of the Zapatisa Army of Liberation in Chiapas, Mexico. I find this overlap very significant for bridging a praxis of social justice that is artdiculated through both Mignolo and Sandoval’s frameworks. While Mignolo argues for decolonizing the paradigms set forth by ideas of modernity, Sandoval’s use of Subcomandante Marcos mirrors the need to create a new theoretical space, for harmony amongst seemingly conflicting methodological foundations, which as Mignolo notes, have been silenced by modernity. Mignolo argues for the epistemological break that is represented in third world thinkers, while Sandoval argues for a strategic use of semiotic resistance against the absorption and co-opting nature of postmodern neocolonialism. In a metaphorical sense, I would argue that Mignolo is centering the de-colonial artist, and the subsequent rejection of the epistemological canvas rooted in Western thought, while Sandoval is creating the de-colonial art piece herself, effectively transforming first world thinker’s literary and theoretical strategies for furthering a de-colonized, rhetorical methodology. Mignolo examines scholars who embody the practice of oppositional epistemologies while Sandoval connects theoretical paradigms between and amongst scholars in order to demonstrate a method in resisting epistemological foundations. Both author’s rejection of the traditional Western model of thought actually yields a flexible platform through which each respective framework can be mapped onto the other’s. My argument, in other words, is that each of the author’s distinct call for an epistemological break from Western thinking sets the stage for their theoretical frameworks to intersect, or overlap. Sandoval’s critique of what she calls the ‘racialization of theoretical domains’ and her subsequent call for a coalitional paradigm of critical methodologies, constitutes an epistemic disobedience in Mignolo’s words. And

conversely, Mignolo’s case-studies of third world thinkers and their methods of epistemic disobedience, contain several components of oppositional consciousness in Sandoval’s terms. Now I will contrast the limits of each author’s claims by focusing on moments of nuanced contradictions between and amongst their respective frameworks. For all of it’s theoretical, discursive, and semantic innovation, Sandoval’s methodology of the oppressed is still located in a highly nuanced and ideological space (i.e. literary theory and semiotics) that might not be as accessible to most readers as the author hopes. Also, it is difficult to quantify the author’s exact definition of what she calls ‘differential consciousness,’ possibly due to the fluid and dynamic critical nature that it represents. Like Marx and Foucault before her, the utopia of an interdisciplinary and revolutionary cyberspace for critical thought has yet to come, though this does not weaken Sandoval’s theoretical intervention. I would argue that the only reason most readers are not familiar with Sandoval’s critical tools and methodology is based precisely on her claim of a racialized structure of theoretical apartheid. Sandoval’s call for a rupture and delinking of theoretical domains is the praxis that is critically necessary for her conceptualization of a ‘theory uprising.’ Mignolo’s strength on the other hand, (and in a sense, definitively clearer than Sandoval) is seen in his focus on what he calls ‘body-politics’, a departure from Michel Foucault’s biopolitics. According to Mignolo, body-politics consist of: Decolonial technologies enacted by bodies who realized that they were considered less human…the lack of humanity is placed on imperial actors, institutions and knowledges that had the arrogance of deciding that certain people they did not like were less human. Body-politics is a fundamental component of decolonial thinking, decolonial doing and the decolonial option. (p. 174)

This is a critical intervention by Mignolo’s de-linking practices for foregrounding an emphasis on indigenous lives, humanity, and dignity. But in addressing the limits and initial questions I make in my introduction, why does the author insist on redefining paradigms from post-structuralist foundations? It would be a much more critical intervention to create a new set of theoretical paradigms, codes, and languages which can in fact speak out of the ‘zero degree of meaning,’ in effect creating new oppositional sets of strategies. This confirms my claim that at some point or another, decolonial thinkers and scholars have to contend, speak back to, or at least transform the ‘master’s tool’s,’ as Audre Lorde describes. Another critique I have of Mignolo is that he privileges a certain idea of authenticity when it comes to these third world thinkers. Embodied by people such as Hountondji and Smith, this framework of privilege contradicts Mignolo’s distinction over identity politics. He claims: “A politics of identity is different from identity politics – the former is open to whoever wants to join, while the later tends to be bounded by the definition of a given identity” (p. 173). If Mignolo’s insight on identity politics is taken into consideration, then how can it be said that he is resisting the essentialism that weighs down identity politics? This is where Sandoval’s methodological framework is more transformative. In an almost alchemic fashion, Sandoval manages to take theoretical paradigms from white intellectuals and demonstrates their utilization towards decolonizing goals. Furthering a critical and in particular, interdisciplinary mode of scholarship can bridge the gaps that hinder the progress of resistant, oppositional, and critical pedagogies. Both authors are calling for a critical reimagining of tenants of modern, Western epistemology. They both question how in particular, the rise of post-structuralism failed to address the historically simultaneous advent of decolonization and international liberation movements. Mignolo’s

methodology may do a better job of framing race, power, and the physical bodies of the colonized, but Sandoval’s articulation of an emancipatory methodological framework speaks to the various oppressive circumstances that different citizen-subjects have to navigate through. If the unfortunate outcome of the rise of postmodern theory was its insistence on the futility of resistance, then it is clear that new epistemological ruptures and transformations are necessary to address these limitations. Furthermore, the real hubris of intellectualism is to claim that its praxis ends in the classroom and other exclusively academic contexts. By redefining and transforming academic disciplines and spaces as interdisciplinary scholars, there is already in motion a praxis of epistemic disobedience; one need not be bogged down by arguments over which is more ‘disobedient’ or radical. Ultimately, I argue that neither of the authors are limited by their use of the ‘master’s tools’ because they are utilizing critical modes of Western intellectual thought for the explicit purpose of decolonization.

References Mignolo, W. D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7-8), 159-181. Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.