Discussion Group: Delinking
Reading: Walter D. Mignolo, 'Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality', Cultural Studies 21:2-3 (2007), 449-514.
Participants: Rosie Lavan (St Anne's/English), Kasia Szymanska (St Hugh's/MML); Dom Davies (St Anne's/English); Kaitlin Staudt (Brasenose/Oriental Studies); Rey Conquer (Somerville/German); Lianjiang Yu (English)
Introduction (from Dom Davies):
- Mignolo offers the least Eurocentric but globalised theory around issues of global hegemony.
- We've framed this discussion around the idea of post-post-colonialism, but those "posts" are more spatial than temporal.
- Key to Mignolo's project is there in the grammar of decoloniality: this is a dictionary coining terms. Since late 15th C and emergence of notions of modernity/coloniality critical theory and global knowledge have been Eurocentric.
- Post-colonialism and postmodernity are not necessarily complicit but they still emerge from this context.
- Mignolo's proposal is with the subaltern knowledges which exist outside the hegemonic web-to see whether they can be de-colonised, de-linked, and to see whether we can think in new subaltern ways.
- Are there problems with his pluriversal theory? Is this not just like another postmodern web?
Discussion:
- Mignolo gives very few examples throughout his discussion of how to implement the theories he proposes.
- Some of these things have been accounted for in the postcolonial project for decades-e.g. representations of the subaltern.
- His definition of "delinking" is very vague. Is he asking for a project to recover noncapitalist, non-modern perspectives, or for a theory from them? Can that exist?
- There is almost a metaproject here-an attempt to locate himself and who he represents, his colleagues in this endeavour, in relation/opposition to the grand narratives of the west. But he still has to write back to these in order to advance from them.
- His idea of border thinking, between local knowledges and universalities, to connect places where coloniality and modernity haven't penetrated, without reducing them to one thing-this too is problematic. Isn't it essentially postmodern? Which underpins capitalism and colonial thinking…?
o How different is border thinking to e.g. geomodernisms?
o Why confine his ideas in this way?
o Are there different things to be taken from this idea for a writer of literature than for a theorist? How can border thinking be conceptualised?
- Cf his idea of transmodernity: this too is vaguely defined and its meaning/use is not clear.
- He has a tendency to lapse into Marxist thinking and this too is problematic for his project.
- There is a gap between what he outlines as a consciousness, a way of thinking, and its possible realisation as a practical project.
- Who is he addressing in this article? The European-educated academy? Or emphatically not them? How does he position himself? Writing from the Global South, in Latin America, yet educated in France and teaching in North America…
- His endeavour to liberate certain terms around which associations cluster in postcolonial discourse is refreshing (e.g. hybridity).
- Questions raised about the politics of influence, of following someone and citing examples, by his discussion of Iran. There's an element of intentional provocation here-the target of his critique is western free market capitalism.
- He offers excellent intellectual tools, but how does he position himself within the realms of what a critic might be doing; how do we use those tools?
- Can his methodology be separated from the politics? Is there a framework here which is transferable beyond the specific de-coloniality project?
- Is what he's doing in this article an attempt to create space-to clear a gap within the academy that other voices can then speak into?
