Decolonial Studies: A Modest Reading List
Decolonial Studies
Lately I’ve been finding myself giving the same handful of readings out to various people who want to acquaint themselves with decolonial studies as a field, and I thought today I would consolidate by making a post about this area of study that has so profoundly informed my own work, and which seems to be of increasing interest and usefulness to scholars working far beyond its origin point of Latin America. Nevertheless, before I begin I want to briefly talk about Decolonial studies’ roots as a field, and why it is necessary to ground ourselves in that history before expanding.
My advice to scholars and students looking to work on the subject of deconstructing Eurocentrism or who are simply trying to figure out where their research on traditionally ignored histories, literatures, and objects (which, in the Western academy means any culture that is not one of a handful of privileged and hegemonic Western countries and cultures) is always to take a look at postcolonial and decolonial work, but in my opinion decolonial work in particular is useful for its broader view of history and its movement away from the European “post-structuralist” movement that postcolonial studies (like so many fields) used to rethink colonial forms of knowledge.
Decolonial scholarship grounds itself in “the view from below” a critical point of view for many marginalized discourses that argues that no knowledge is objective and all knowledge is written from a particular point of view. In the case of decolonial scholarship this was “the view from Latin America” as it was substantially different from postcolonial work grounded in examining the after effects of nineteenth century empires. While postcolonial studies isn’t antagonistic to Latin Americanist work anymore, per se, there was a period when Latin America research was excluded from postcolonial studies, this in spite (and because) of the fact that the Latin American postcolonial context differed so profoundly from the postcolonial nations of the 20th century. This difference continues to structure the discourses to this day, but what decolonialists tend to foreground is that where postcolonial theory has been thought by and from U.S. institutions, decolonial theory has been informed by and thought from Latin America. In other words, not from a hegemonic imperial center in the world today.
Part of what makes decolonial studies particularly useful in thinking through the continuing effects of colonialism is that it never tries to limit its temporality to a particular moment. For decolonialists, the “discovery” of the Americas marks a foundational moment or a fissure from the past that moves us into a Eurocentric age of knowledge that has had a profoundly longer lasting effect than administrative/formal/governmental colonialism or literal colonialism. Decolonialists ground their research not in the traditional humanistic terms of “modernity” but rather in adapting Immanuel Wallerstein’s “world-systems analysis” so some facility with the concept of world-systems analysis is helpful. Decolonialists reframe this as “the colonial world system,” an age that begins in 1492 and extends to the present day. But decolonial work is a growing body of discourse not limited to Latin America any longer. Indigenous scholars have embraced decolonial thought, and more and more across the globe this body of work is being put to use to discuss the way the legacy colonialism haunts us to this day much more pervasively than even the concept of “neocolonialism” can quite encompass. Decolonialists have a word for this ongoing legacy of the colonial-world system as it extends beyond formal colonialism: coloniality.
For those of you working outside of Latin America, there are three scholars whose work is seminal and unavoidable if you want to put together your own framework of decolonial studies. These foundational figures are Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano, and Enrique Dussel. Depending on your engagement with the discourse it is possible to read these three before moving on to study scholarship specifically on the region that you plan to study, though I think Santiago Castro-Gómez also offers an incredibly understandable history of the field that can help immensely with synthesizing what makes decolonial studies decolonial studies.
So, without further ado, here are the three texts I always recommend beginning with prior to pursuing your own decolonial research and work. Each of these texts can be found in an anthology I highly recommend Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debates, an anthology that offers a comprehensive overview on what decolonial studies is and how it has evolved. You can also find these works by googling them or looking them up in databases like Project Muse so it is possible to acquire these three texts without purchasing the anthology, though, if you’re planning on deeply engaging with decolonial studies as a framework for your research I think the purchasing of a single anthology remains, itself, a very modest reading list.
Walter Mignolo’s “The Geopolitics of Knowledge”
Walter Mignolo is a central figure in decolonial discourse because his work unerringly defines exactly what decolonial studies is and why it is important to study. His “The Geopolitics of Knowledge” appears in a number of places, including at the beginning of his book The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, which illustrates the role it plays across his body of work as well as in decolonial studies at large for defining exactly what decolonial studies is. It is also in the anthology Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. The other two readings are proto-decolonial, meaning they become the foundation of decolonial studies through Mignolo, but Mignolo’s article is where you can find the definition of what decolonial studies is, does, and stands for. Here you will find definitions of key decolonial concepts and strategies. Look out for the word coloniality, this is a central concept to decolonial studies and its relationship to modernity is one of the tenets of decolonial studies. In Mignolo coloniality is “the darker side of Western Modernity.” The moment Europeans landed in “The Americas” there is a shift, for Mignolo, in world history toward modernity, so that European modernity as a possibility is always a consequence of European colonialism. Coloniality then proceeds to extend to the present day, because it is the foundation on which our current global hierarchies of “First and Third” and “North and South” are predicated. For Mignolo, literal colonies may be a thing of the past but colonialism and its legacy are alive and well in the way that privilege, wealth, and rights are globally distributed.
While reading ask yourself:
What is coloniality?
What is decolonial studies and how does Mignolo differentiate it from postcolonial studies?
What is decoloniality and how is it different from decolonization? (because decolonial studies is not decolonization in the sense that decolonization as a process both has and has not happened, the history of decolonization is itself something that needs to be interpreted decolonially now that we have the benefit of hindsight).
Aníbal Quijano’s “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”
Aníbal Quijano’s work predates decolonial studies and theory as a field and at the same time it lays the groundwork for that field and becomes a catalyst or jumping off point for the field. He is the scholar who adapted Immanuel Wallerstein’s “World Systems Analysis” in order to focus on Latin America as the place where we experienced the paradigm shift into a modern world system, something that decolonialists call “the colonial world system” and this concept of a “colonial world system” is coined by Aníbal Quijano, who actually cowrote an article with Wallerstein. As you read think about:
What is the colonial world system and how is it historicized?
What is the “coloniality of power?”
How does Latin American colonialism create the possibility for Eurocentrism? Or, how does Europe begin to be able to conceive of itself as a center? Because decolonialists rightly argue Europe was, itself, a periphery for much of history up to this point.
How does Quijano’s writing create the possibility for decolonial studies as a field to emerge as a coherent field?
Enrique Dussel “Philosophy of Liberation, the Postmodern Debate, and Latin American Studies”
Like Quijano, Enrique Dussel is another proto-decolonial figure. His Philosophy of Liberation was written before decolonial studies became a field, so he did not write his philosophy of liberation as a contribution to decolonial studies but his writing of a philosophy of liberation perhaps creates the conditions of thought necessary for the field to emerge. Dussel’s theory of liberation is, and here we can think of him being aligned with figures like Franz Fanon and Henry Louis Gates, about thinking away from and outside of the European hegemony of thought in order to begin to develop a liberated body of thought. All of decolonial work, is, in a sense, in service to the liberation of people, and especially Latin Americans, from the hegemony of Western thought and Western systems. A lot of decolonialism is about thinking otherwise, imagining the possibilities outside of the sanctioned body of knowledge created by the West. It isn’t that Dussel wholesale rejects Western thought, he incorporates thinkers he sees resisting into his philosophy of liberation, what Dussel wants to do is to re-organize how we understand knowledge. The idea that there is a liberation that can be performed by unyoking ourselves from the traditional history of philosophy is key to decolonial thought.
Things you can ask yourself include:
What does it mean to be liberated?
What archive does Dussel build?
How does Dussel's work create the possibility of Mignolo and decolonial studies at large? (this last question is one that you may only begin to understand as you go on to collect decolonial work related to your own geographic area of study, but familiarize yourself with his work so that eventually you can start making these connections.
My first inroad to Dussel was actually another book he wrote, The Invention of the Americas, which he has made freely available as a pdf on his website. I find this work a lot easier to read and more accessible than his work on the philosophy of liberation (also available on his website for free), so I highly recommend it if you find yourself struggling with understanding the “Philosophy of Liberation.” For me, The Invention of the Americas is what the Philosophy of Liberation looks like in practice, but, in terms of influencing the field it is important to eventually reach the point where you are engaging with and grasping Dussel’s philosophy so that is why I did not make The Invention of the Americas my selected work.
Anyway, this seems like enough work for you to do, for now. The above three articles are a starting point and are the foundation of all of decolonial thought. If you do invest in Coloniality at Large you will see that these three names recur uniformly in Latin Americanist thought and are pivotal historical works for the field as it has now spread across the world. If you are a researcher looking to incorporate decolonial work into your research I do strongly encourage you to get the anthology as a jumping off point to deepen your engagement with decolonial studies and check back in here periodically for additional blog posts as I deepen my own knowledge of the field. I do plan to do an overview of some of the seminal anti-imperialist and postcolonial works that come up repeatedly in decolonial studies and that also form a part of the archive of decolonial thought so keep an eye out for that.
Finally: One thing to do as you turn to works related to your specific research geography is to, as I have done here, begin to differentiate between works that are consciously decolonial (and written after the formation of decolonial studies) and which works have been claimed by decolonialists in your area as works that fit with, illustrate, or further the decolonial mission even though they may not have been consciously written as decolonial works.
And, as usual, I encourage you to TRY to find alternative sources to amazon (I realize particularly with a global audience this isn’t always practical as we seek out scholarly works). The link to the anthology that I have provided you here is to my bookshop at bookshop.org so if you want to financially support the Maison and know you are going to buy the anthology you can buy it through my link. Bookshop is a great alternative to Amazon more broadly if you are living in the United States and I’m sure there are other bookstores on there that you can choose to support as well, so take an opportunity to see if your favorite bookstore is represented there. It is possible your local bookstore can order this anthology for you if you give them the chance by asking, so check in and see if perhaps THEY can get it for you. And also, remember, much of this work is available for free so don’t let the lack of money stop you from becoming a decolonialist, because decolonialists like Dussel would rather give away his work and liberate your thinking than make money (even though…decolonialists need to eat too, so if you have the ability, support them).