Coloniality of knowledge

This article is about the legacy of colonialism within the domains of knowledge. For the undoing of colonial legacies in knowledge, see Decolonization of knowledge.

Coloniality of knowledge is a theoretical concept developed by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano and adapted to the contemporary decolonial thinking. The concept critiques the Eurocentric system of knowledge, arguing that the legacy of colonialism survives within the domains of knowledge.

Origin

The coloniality of knowledge thesis can be traced back to an article written in 1992 by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, in which he coined the phrase "coloniality of power." Quijano developed this concept as part of a wider discussion on global systems of power, knowledge, racial hierarchy, and capitalism in the context of Latin American historical and cultural events from the fourteenth century to the present.

Background

According to Quijano, colonialism has had a particular influence on colonized cultures' modes of knowing, knowledge production, perspectives, visions, and systems of images, symbols, and modes of signification, along with their resources, patterns, and instruments of formalized and objectivised expression. For Quijano, this suppression of knowledge accompanied the annihilation of indigenous populations throughout the continent, as well as indigenous societies and traditions. Quijano believes that the patterns of suppression, expropriation, and imposition of knowledge created during the colonial period, as refracted through conceptions of race and racial hierarchy, persisted after colonialism was overturned as "an explicit political order."

Concept

According to the decolonial scholars, although colonialism has ended in the legal and political sense, the legacy of colonialism persists in numerous "colonial situations" in which individuals and groups in historically colonized regions are excluded and exploited.This ongoing legacy of colonialism is referred to by decolonial scholars as "coloniality," which describes colonialism's perceived legacy of oppression and exploitation across many interrelated domains, including the domains of subjectivity and knowledge.

For Nelson Maldonado-Torres, coloniality denotes the long-standing power structures that developed as a result of colonialism but continue to have an impact on culture, labor, interpersonal relations, and knowledge production, far beyond the formal boundaries of colonial administrations. As a result, coloniality thrives in the aftermath of colonialism. It lives on in literature, academic achievement standards, cultural trends, common sense, people's self-images, personal goals, and a variety of other aspects of modern life. While the coloniality of power refers to the interrelationship between modern forms of exploitation and domination, the coloniality of knowledge concerns the influence of colonialism on various domains of knowledge production.

Quijano characterizes Eurocentric knowledge as a "specific rationality or perspective of knowledge that was made globally hegemonic" through the intertwined operation of colonialism and capitalism. It works by constructing binary hierarchical relationships between "the categories of object" and symbolizes a specific secular, instrumental, and "technocratic rationality" that Quijano contextualizes in reference to the mid-seventeen century West European thought and the demands of nineteenth-century global capitalist expansion. For Quijano, it codifies relations between Western Europe and the rest of the world using categories such as "primitive-civilized," "irrational-rational," and "traditional-modern," and creates distinctions and hierarchies between them, so that "non-Europe" is aligned with the past, and thus "inferior, if not always primitive". Similarly, it codifies the relationship between Western Europe and "non-Europe" as one between subject and object, perpetuating the myth that Western Europe is the only source of reliable knowledge, as Quijano argues, by obstructing "every relation of communication, of knowledge interchange, and of modes of producing knowledge between... cultures."

According to the decolonial perspective, coloniality of knowledge thus refers to historically grounded, racially motivated practices that continuously elevate the forms of knowledge and "knowledge-generating principles" of colonizing civilizations while downgrading those of colonized societies. It stresses the role of knowledge in the "violences" that defined colonial rule, as well as the function of knowledge in sustaining the perceived racial hierarchization and oppression that were created over this time period.

The coloniality of knowledge asserts that educational institutions reflect "the entanglement of coloniality, power, and the epistemic ego-politics of knowledge", which explains the bias that promotes Westernised knowledge production as impartial, objective, and universal, while rejecting knowledge production influenced by "sociopolitical location, lived experience, and social relations" as "inferior and pseudo-scientific". The worldwide domination of the Euro-American university model epitomises coloniality of knowledge, which is reinforced through the canonization of Western curricula, the primacy of English language in instruction and research, and the fetishism of global rankings and Euro-American certification.

Effects

Silova et al contend that the coloniality of knowledge production has unwittingly formed academic identities, both socializing "non-Western or not-so-Western" researchers into Western ways of thought and marginalizing them in knowledge creation processes.

Sources

• Chambers, Paul Anthony (2020). "Epistemology and Domination: Problems with the Coloniality of Knowledge Thesis in Latin American Decolonial Theory". Dados. 63 (4). FapUNIFESP (SciELO). doi:10.1590/dados.2020.63.4.221. ISSN 1678-4588.
• Dreyer, Jaco S. (2017). "Practical theology and the call for the decolonisation of higher education in South Africa: Reflections and proposals". HTS Theological Studies. 73 (4): 1–7. doi:10.4102/hts.v73i4.4805. ISSN 0259-9422.
• Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2007). "On Coloniality of Being". Cultural Studies. 21 (2–3). Informa UK Limited: 240–270. doi:10.1080/09502380601162548. ISSN 0950-2386.
• Ndlovu, Morgan (2018). "Coloniality of Knowledge and the Challenge of Creating African Futures". Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies. 40 (2). California Digital Library (CDL). doi:10.5070/f7402040944. ISSN 2150-5802.
• Poloma, Asabe W.; Szelényi, Katalin (2018). "Coloniality of knowledge, hybridisation, and indigenous survival: exploring transnational higher education development in Africa from the 1920s to the 1960s". Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Informa UK Limited: 1–19. doi:10.1080/03057925.2018.1445962. ISSN 0305-7925.
• Silova, Iveta; Millei, Zsuzsa; Piattoeva, Nelli (2017). "Interrupting the Coloniality of Knowledge Production in Comparative Education: Postsocialist and Postcolonial Dialogues after the Cold War". Comparative Education Review. 61 (S1). University of Chicago Press: S74–S102. doi:10.1086/690458. ISSN 0010-4086.
• Tucker, Karen (2018). "Unraveling Coloniality in International Relations: Knowledge, Relationality, and Strategies for Engagement". International Political Sociology. 12 (3). Oxford University Press (OUP): 215–232. doi:10.1093/ips/oly005. ISSN 1749-5679.

Further reading

• Hoagland, Sarah Lucia (2020). "Aspects of the Coloniality of Knowledge". Critical Philosophy of Race. 8 (1–2). The Pennsylvania State University Press: 48-60. doi:10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0048. ISSN 2165-8684.
• Lowe, Lisa; Manjapra, Kris (2019). "Comparative Global Humanities After Man: Alternatives to the Coloniality of Knowledge". Theory, Culture & Society. 36 (5). SAGE Publications: 23–48. doi:10.1177/0263276419854795. ISSN 0263-2764.
• Pickren, Wade E. (2020). "Coloniality of being and knowledge in the history of psychology". Psychologie und Kritik. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-29486-1_15.

External links

• Coloniality of Knowledge — University of Rostock
• What Fundamentally is Coloniality of Knowledge? — The Sunday News