Work · Latin American & Caribbean Philosophy
Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America
The idea of race, born with the conquest of America, became the axis of a global hierarchy of labour and knowledge that outlived colonialism.
Introduction
Aníbal Quijano, a Peruvian sociologist, published the essay in English in 2000 in the journal Nepantla: Views from South; a Spanish version appeared the same year. He argues that with the conquest of the Americas from 1492 a new global pattern of power arose along two axes: the classification of the world’s population by “race”, a category invented in this process, and the control of labour for the world market, with paid labour largely reserved for white people. This “coloniality of power” outlived formal colonialism and still structures the distribution of work, authority and knowledge; Eurocentrism is its mode of knowledge. The concept became a foundation of the modernity/coloniality group around Walter Mignolo and others.
Connections
Builds on
- Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality1928 · José Carlos Mariátegui
Taken up in
- Local Histories/Global Designs2000 · Walter Mignolo
Criticized in
- Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System2007 · María Lugones
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