Changing the Ethics and Politics of Knowledge. A rationale of Imperial Coloniality and Post-Coloniality

Walter D. Mignolo
walter.mignolo@duke.edu
Duke University, Durham

Abstract:

From a modernity/coloniality’s perspective, this article exams the epistemic and geopoliticaldistinctions between postcolonial studies and subaltern studies, as well as the different gene-alogies and geopolitical articulations between the postmodern and the postcolonial. Likewise,it analyzes the epistemic shift from the ego-politics linked to the Cartesian subject to the bio-politics and geo-politics related with the historical movements which have made evident theirreducible difference of the bodies and places within the world system in the production ofknowledge. Finally, this article is focus on to show the specificities of a proposal based on «de-colonial thought» and the differences of the modernity/coloniality’s perspective in relationwith the predominant models of interpretation of the contemporary world system.

Keywords: De-colonial thought – Modernity/Coloniality — geopolitics of knowledge —postcolonial studies.