The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century.
Grosfoguel, Ramon
I. INTRODUCTION
The work of Enrique Dussel, liberation theologian and liberation
philosopher, is fundamental for anybody interested in the decolonization
of knowledge and power. He has published more than 65 books. His titanic
effort has been dedicated to demolish the philosophical foundations and
world-historical narratives of Eurocentrism. He has not only
deconstructed dominant knowledge structures but also constructed a body
of work in Ethics, Political Philosophy and Political Economy that has
been internationally very influential. His work embraces many fields of
scholarship such as Political-Economy, World-History, and Philosophy,
among others.
This article has been inspired by Dussel's critique of
Cartesian philosophy and by his world-historical work on the conquest of
the Americas in the long 16th century. (1) Inspired by Dussel's
insights, the article adds another dimension to his many contributions
by looking at the conquest of the Americas in relation to three other
world-historical processes such as the Conquest of Al-Andalus, the
enslavement of Africans in the Americas and the killing of millions of
women burned alive in Europe accused of being witches in relation to
knowledge structures. (2) As Dussel focused on the genocidal logic of
the conquest, this article draws the implications of the four genocides
of the 16th century to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010) calls
"epistemicide," that is, the extermination of knowledge and
ways of knowing. The focus of this article is fundamentally on the
emergence of modern/ colonial structures of knowledge as the
foundational epistemology of Westernized universities and its
implications for the decolonization of knowledge.
The main questions addressed are the following: How is it possible
that the canon of thought in all the disciplines of the Social Sciences
and Humanities in the Westernized university (Grosfoguel 2012) is based
on the knowledge produced by a few men from five countries in Western
Europe (Italy, France, England, Germany and the USA)? How is it possible
that men from these five countries achieved such an epistemic privilege
to the point that their knowledge today is considered superior over the
knowledge of the rest of the world? How did they come to monopolize the
authority of knowledge in the world? Why is it that what we know today
as social, historical, philosophical, or Critical Theory is based on the
socio-historical experience and world views of men from these five
countries? When one enters any department in the Social Sciences or the
Humanities, the canon of thought to be learned is fundamentally founded
on theory produced by men of the five Western European countries
outlined before (de Sousa Santos 2010).
However, if theory emerges from the conceptualization based on the
social/historical experiences and sensibilities as well as world views
of particular spaces and bodies, then social scientific theories or any
theory limited to the experience and world view of only five countries
in the world are, to say the least, provincial. But this provincialism
is disguised under a discourse about "universality." The
pretension is that the knowledge produced by men of these five countries
has the magical effect of universal capacity, that is, their theories
are supposed to be sufficient to explain the social/historical realities
of the rest of the world. As a result, our job in the Westernized
university is basically reduced to that of learning these theories born
from the experience and problems of a particular region of the world
(five countries in Western Europe) with its own particular time/space
dimensions and "applying" them to other geographical locations
even if the experience and time/space of the former are quite different
from the latter. These social theories based on the social-historical
experience of men of five countries constitute the foundation of the
Social Sciences and the Humanities in the Westernized universities
today. The other side of this epistemic privilege is epistemic
inferiority. Epistemic privilege and epistemic inferiority are two sides
of the same coin. The coin is called epistemic racism/ sexism
(Grosfoguel 2012).
In Westernized universities, the knowledge produced by other
epistemologies, cosmologies, and world views arising from other
world-regions with diverse time/ space dimensions and characterized by
different geopolitics and body-politics of knowledge are considered
"inferior" in relation to the "superior" knowledge
produced by the few Western men of five countries that compose the canon
of thought in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The knowledge
produced from the social/historical experiences and world views of the
Global South, also known as "non-Western," are considered
inferior and not part of the canon of thought. Moreover, knowledge
produced by women (Western or non-Western) are also regarded as inferior
and outcast from the canon of thought. The foundational structures of
knowledge of the Westernized university are simultaneously epistemically
racist and sexist. What are the world-historical processes that produced
structures of knowledge founded on epistemic racism/sexism?
To answer these questions, we need to go back several centuries and
discuss the formation of racism/sexism in the modern world and its
relation to the long duree of modern structures of knowledge. Since the
Cartesian legacy has been so influential in Western structures of
knowledge, this article begins in the first part with a discussion on
Cartesian philosophy. The second part is on the Conquest of Al-Andalus.
The third part is on the conquest of the Americas and its implications
for the population of Muslim and Jewish origin in 16th century Spain as
well as for African population kidnapped in Africa and enslaved in the
Americas. The fourth part is on the genocide/epistemicide against
Indo-European women burned alive by the Christian Church accused of
being witches. The last part is on Enrique Dussel's project of
transmodernity and what it means to decolonize the Westernize
university.
II. CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY
We need to begin any discussion of the structures of knowledge in
Westernized universities with Cartesian philosophy. Modern philosophy is
supposed to have been founded by Rene Descartes (2013). (3)
Descartes' most famous phrase "I think, therefore I am"
constitutes a new foundation of knowledge that challenged
Christendom's (4) authority of knowledge since the Roman Empire.
The new foundation of knowledge produced by Cartesianism is not anymore
the Christian God but this new "I." Although Descartes never
defines who this "I" is, it is clear that in his philosophy
this "I" replaces God as the new foundation of knowledge and
its attributes constitute a secularization of the attributes of the
Christian God. For Descartes, the "I" can produce a knowledge
that is truth beyond time and space, universal in the sense that it is
unconditioned by any particularity--"objective" being
understood as equal to "neutrality" and equivalent to a
God-Eye view.
To make the claim of an "I" that produces knowledge
equivalent to a God-Eye view, Descartes makes two main arguments: one is
ontological and the other epistemological. Both arguments constitute the
condition of possibility for the claim that this "I" can
produce a knowledge that is equivalent to a God-Eye view. The first
argument is ontological dualism. Descartes claims that the mind is of a
different substance from the body. This allows for the mind to be
undetermined, unconditioned by the body. This way Descartes can claim
that the mind is similar to the Christian God, floating in heaven,
undetermined by anything terrestrial and that it can produce a knowledge
equivalent to a God-Eye view. The universality here is equal to
Christian God's universality in the sense that it is not determined
by any particularity, it is beyond any particular condition or
existence. The image of God in Christendom is that of a White, old,
bearded man with a cane sitting in a cloud, watching everybody and
punishing anybody who misbehaves.
What would happen to the "God-Eye view" argument if the
mind is of a similar substance to the body? The main implication would
be that the claim that a human "I" can produce a God-Eye view
falls apart. Without ontological dualism, the mind would be located in a
body, would be similar in substance to the body and, thus, conditioned
by the body. The latter would mean that knowledge is produced from a
particular space in the world and, thus, there is no unsituated
knowledge production. If this is the case, then it cannot be argued
anymore that a human "I" can produce a knowledge equivalent to
a God-Eye view. (5)
The second argument of Descartes is epistemological. He claims that
the only way the "I" can achieve certitude in knowledge
production is through the method of solipsism. How can the "I"
fight skepticism and be able to achieve certitude in knowledge
production? The answer given by Descartes is that this could be achieved
through an internal monologue of the subject with himself (the gender
here is not accidental for reasons that will be explained later). With
the method of solipsism, the subject asks and answers questions in an
internal monologue until it reaches certitude in knowledge. What would
happen if human subjects produce knowledge dialogically, that is, in
social relations with other human beings? The main implication would be
that the claim about an "I" that can produce certitude in
knowledge isolated from social relations with other human beings falls
apart. Without epistemic solipsism, the "I" would be located
in particular social relations, in particular social/historical contexts
and, thus, there is no monological, unsituated and asocial knowledge
production. If knowledge is produced in particular social relations,
that is, inside a particular society, then it cannot be argued that the
human "I" can produce a knowledge equivalent to a God Eye
view.
Cartesian philosophy have been highly influential in Westernized
projects of knowledge production. The unsituatedness of Descartes'
philosophy inaugurated the ego-politics of knowledge: an "I"
that assumes itself to be producing a knowledge from no-where. As
Colombian philosopher, Santiago Castro-Gomez (2003) argues, Cartesian
philosophy assumes a point zero epistemology, that is, a point of view
that do not assumes itself as a point of view. The importance of Rene
Descartes for Westernized epistemology can be seen in that after 370
years, Westernized universities still carry the Cartesian legacy as a
criteria of validity for science and knowledge production. Even those
who are critical of Cartesian philosophy, still use it as criteria for
what differentiates science from non-science. The
"subject-object" split, "objectivity" understood as
"neutrality," the myth of an EGO that produces
"unbiased" knowledge unconditioned by its body or space
location, the idea of knowledge as produced through an internal
monologue without links with other human beings and universality
understood as beyond any particularity are still the criteria for valid
knowledge and science used in the disciplines of the Westernized
university. Any knowledge that claims to be situated in body-politics of
knowledge (Anzaldua 1987; Frantz Fanon 2010) or geo-politics of
knowledge (Dussel 1977) as opposed to the myth of the unsituated
knowledge of the Cartesian ego-politics of knowledge is discarded as
biased, invalid, irrelevant, unserious, that is, inferior knowledge.
What is relevant to the "Western men tradition of
thought" inaugurated by Cartesian philosophy is that it constituted
a world-historical event. Prior to Descartes, no tradition of thought
claimed to produce an unsituated knowledge that is God-like or
equivalent to God. This idolatric universalism of "Western men
tradition of thought" inaugurated by Descartes (2013) in 1637,
pretends to replace God and produce a knowledge that is God-like. The
Dusselian questions are: What are the political, economic, historical,
and cultural conditions of possibility for someone in the
mid-seventeenth century to produce a philosophy that claims to be
equivalent to God's Eye and to replace God? Who is speaking and
from which body-politics of knowledge or geo-politics of knowledge is he
speaking from?
Enrique Dussel (2005) responds to these questions with the
following argument: Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"
is preceded by 150 years of "I conquer, therefore I am." The
ego conquiro is the condition of possibility of Descartes's ego
cogito. According to Dussel, the arrogant and idolatric Godlike
pretention of Cartesian philosophy is coming from the perspective of
someone who thinks of himself as the center of the world because he has
already conquered the world. Who is this being? According to Dussel
(2005), this is the Imperial Being. The "I conquer" that began
with the European men colonial expansion in 1492, is the foundation and
condition of possibility of the "I think" that secularizes all
the attributes of the Christian God and replaces God as the new
foundation of knowledge. Once European men conquered the world, God is
disposable as a foundation of knowledge. After having conquered the
world, European man achieve "God-like" qualities that gave
them epistemic privilege.
However, there is a missing link between the "I conquer,
therefore I am" and the "I think, therefore I am." There
is no inherent necessity to derive from the "I conquer, therefore I
am" the "idolatric universalism" (the God-Eye view) nor
the "epistemic racism/sexism" (the inferiority of all
knowledges coming from human beings that are classified as non-Western).
What links the "I conquer, therefore I am" (ego conquiro) with
the idolatric, God-like "I think, therfore I am" (ego cogito)
is the epistemic racism/sexism produced from the "I exterminate,
therefore I am" (ego extermino). It is the logic of
genocide/epistemicide together that mediates the "I conquer"
with the epistemic racism/sexism of the "I think" as the new
foundation of knowledge in the modern/colonial world. The ego extermino
is the socio-historical structural condition that makes possible the
link of the ego conquiro with the ego cogito. In what follows, it will
be argued that the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century
are the socio-historical condition of possibility for the transformation
of the "I conquer, therefore I am" into the epistemic
racism/sexism of the "I think, therefore I am." These four
genocides/epistemicides in the long 16th century are: 1) against Muslims
and Jews in the conquest of Al-Andalus in the name of "purity of
blood"; 2) against indigenous peoples first in the Americas and
then in Asia; 3) against African people with the captive trade and their
enslavement in the Americas; 4) against women who practiced and
transmitted Indo-European knowledge in Europe burned alive accused of
being witches. These four genocides/epistemicides are frequently
discussed as fragmented from each other. The attempt here is to see them
as interlinked, inter-related to each other and as constitutive of the
modern/colonial world's epistemic structures. These four genocides
were at the same time forms of epistemicide that are constitutive of
Western men epistemic privilege. To sustain this argument we need to not
only go over the history but also explain how and when racism emerged.
III. THE CONQUEST OF AL-ANDALUS: GENOCIDE/EPISTEMICIDE AGAINST
MUSLIMS AND JEWS
The final conquest of Al-Andalus in the late 15th century was done
under the slogan of "purity of blood." This was a proto-racist
discourse against Muslim and Jewish populations during the Catholic
Monarchy colonial conquest of Andalusian territory to destroy the
sultanate of Granada which was the last Muslim political authority in
the Iberian Peninsula (Maldonado-Torres 2008a). The practice of ethnic
cleansing of the Andalusian territory produced a physical genocide and
cultural genocide against Muslims and Jews. Jews and Muslims who stayed
in the territory were either killed (physical genocide) or forced to
conversion (cultural genocide). This ethnic cleansing was achieved
through the following genocide (physical) and epistemicide (cultural):
1- The forced expulsion of Muslims and Jews from their land
(genocide) led to the repopulation of the territory with Christian
populations from the North of the Iberian Peninsula (Caro Barojas 1991;
Carrasco 2009). This is what in the literature is called today
"settler colonialism."
2- The massive destruction of Islamic and Judaic spirituality and
knowledge through genocide, led to the forced conversion (cultural
genocide) of those Jews and Muslims who decided to stay in the territory
(Barrios Aguilera 2009, Kettami 2012). By turning Muslims into Moriscos
(converted Muslims) and Jews into Marranos (converted Jews), their
memory, knowledge and spirituality were destroyed (cultural genocide).
The latter was a guarantee that future descendants of Marranos and Moros
will be born fully Christians without any memory trace to their
ancestors.
The Spanish state discourse of "purity of blood" was used
to surveil the Muslim and Jewish populations who survived the massacres.
In order to survive and stay in the territory, they were forced to
convert to Christianity (Galan Sanchez 2010). Those populations that
were forced to convert or that had Jewish or Muslim ancestry, were
surveilled by the Christian monarchy in order to assure that they were
not faking conversion. "Purity of blood" was a discourse used
to surveil the converts or descendants of the converts. It referred to
the "family tree" of the population. The "family
tree" provided to state authorities the information needed in order
to know if the ancestry of an individual or a family was
"purely" Christian or "non-Christian" in the case
they were Christian converts. The discourse of "purity of
blood" did not question the humanity of the victims. What it aimed
was to surveil those populations with non-Christian ancestry in terms of
how far or close they were to Christianity in order to confirm if the
conversion was real or not. For the Castillian Christian Monarchy,
Muslims and Jews were humans with the "wrong God" or
"wrong religion." They were perceived as a "fifth
column" of the Ottoman sultanate in the Iberian Peninsula (Martin
Casares 2000; Carrasco 2009; Galan Sanchez 2010). Thus, the old European
Medieval religious discriminatory discourses such as the old anti-semite
discourses (judeophobic or islamophobic) were used against Jews and
Muslims in the conquest of Al-Andalus.
It is important to emphasize that since the possibility of
conversation was still open, the old anti-semitic European Medieval
religious discrimination of the Castillian Christian Monarchy (at the
end of the 15th century) was not yet racial and included among semitic
people both Muslims and Jews (6). As long as the Muslims and Jews
converted to Christianity, the doors for integration were open during
the Medieval Spanish Monarchy conquest of Al-Andalus (Galan Sanchez
2010; Dominguez Ortiz 2009). The humanity of the victims was not in
question. What was in question was the religious identity of the social
subjects. The social classification used at the time was related to a
theological question about having the "wrong God" or the
"wrong religion" to stratify society along religious lines.
In sum, what is important here is that the "purity of
blood" discourse used in the conquest of Al-Andalus was a form of
religious discrimination that was not yet fully racist because it did
not question in a profound way the humanity of its victims.
III. THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS IN RELATION TO THE CONQUEST OF
AL-ANDALUS: GENOCIDE/EPISTEMICIDE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, MARRANOS,
MORISCOS, AND AFRICANS
When Christopher Columbus presented for the first time the document
known as "The Indian Enterprise" to the King and Queen of the
Castilian Monarchy, their response was to accept it and postpone it
until after the conquest of all the territory known as Al-Andalus. They
ordered Columbus to wait until the final conquest over the "Kingdom
of Granada," the last sultanate in the Iberian Peninsula. The idea
of the Castilian Christian Monarchy was to unify the whole territory
under its command by the rule of "one state, one identity, one
religion" in contrast to Al-Andalus where there were multiple
Islamic states (sultanates) with recognition of rights to the
"multiple identities and spiritualities inside their territorial
boundaries" (Maillo Delgago 2004; Kettami 2012).
The project of the Castillan Christian Monarchy to create a
correspondence between the identity of the state and the identity of the
population within its territorial boundaries, was the origin of the idea
of the nation-state in Europe. The main goal that the Queen and the King
expressed to Columbus was the unification of the whole territory under
the power of the Christian Monarchy as a first step before going abroad
to conquest other lands beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
The final conquest over Muslim political authority in the Iberian
Peninsula was finalized in January 2, 1492 with the capitulation of
Granada's Nazari emirate. Only nine days later, on January 11,
1492, Columbus met again with Queen Elizabeth. But this time the meeting
was held in Granada's Alhambra Nazari Palace where Columbus got the
royal authorization and resources for his first voyage overseas. Only
ten months later, on October 12, 1492, Columbus arrived at the shores of
what he named "Indias Occidentales" (West Indies) because he
wrongly believed that he had arrived to India.
The relationship between the conquest of Al-Andalus and the
conquest of the Americas has been under-researched in the literature.
The methods of colonization and domination used against Al-Andalus were
extrapolated to the Americas (Garrido Aranda 1980). The conquest of
Al-Andalus was so important in the minds of the Spanish conquerors that
Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, confused the Aztecs' sacred
temples with Mosques.
In addition to the genocide of people, the conquest of Al-Andalus
was accompanied by epistemicide. For example, the burning of libraries
was a fundamental method used in the conquest of Al-Andalus. The library
of Cordoba, that had around 500,000 books at a time when the largest
library of Christian Europe did not have more than 1000 books, was
burned in the 13th century. Many other libraries had the same destiny
during the conquest of Al-Andalus until the final burning of more than
250,000 books of the Granada library by Cardenal Cisneros in the early
16th century. These methods were extrapolated to the Americas. Thus, the
same happened with the indigenous "codices" which was the
written practice used by Amerindians to archive knowledge. Thousands of
"codices" were also burned destroying indigenous knowledges in
the Americas. Genocide and epistemicide went together in the process of
conquest in both the Americas and Al-Andalus.
A similar process happened with the methods of evangelization used
against indigenous people in the Americas (Garrido Aranda 1980; Martin
de la Hoz 2010). It was inspired in the methods used against Muslims in
the Iberian Peninsula (Garrido Aranda 1980). It was a form of
"spiritualicide" and "epistemicide" at the same
time. The destruction of knowledge and spirituality went also together
in the conquest of both Al-Andalus and the Americas.
However, it is fundamental to also understand how the conquest of
the Americas affected the conquest of "Moriscos" (converted
Muslims) and "Marranos" (converted Jews) in the Iberian
Peninsula in the 16th century. The conquest of the Americas was at the
center of the new discourses and forms of domination that emerged in the
long 16th century with the creation of the modern/colonial world-system.
Here the contribution of Nelson Maldonado-Torres is crucial when he said
that the 16th century transformed the ancient forms of imperial social
classification that existed since the 4th century when with Constantine,
Christianity became the dominant ideology of the Roman Empire. As
Maldonado-Torres (2008a) said:
... the conceptual coordinates that
defined the 'fight for the empire'
and the forms of social classification
of the 4th century and of later
centuries prior to the "discovery"
and conquest of the Americas
change drastically in the 16th century.
The relationship between religion
and empire would be at the
center of a dramatic transformation
from a system of power based on
religious differences to one based
on racial differences. It is for this
reason that in modernity, the dominant
episteme would not only be
defined by the tension and mutual
collaboration between the idea of
religion and the imperial vision of
the known world, but, more precisely,
through a dynamic relation
between empire, religion, and race.
Ideas about race, religion, and empire
functioned as significant axes
in the imaginary of the emergent
modern/colonial world ... (p. 230)
If the military and evangelization methods of conquest used in
Al-Andalus to achieve genocide and epistemicide were extrapolated to the
conquest of indigenous people in the Americas, the conquest of the
Americas also created a new racial imaginary and racial hierarchy that
transformed the conquest of Moriscos and Marranos in 16th century
Iberian Peninsula. The conquest of the Americas affected the old forms
of Medieval religious discrimination against Moriscos and Marranos in
16th century Spain. The first point to emphasize in this history is that
after months of navigation through the Atlantic Ocean, the moment
Columbus stepped out of the ship he wrote in his diary the following on
October 12, 1492:
... it seemed to me that they were a
people very poor in everything. All
of them go around as naked as their
mothers bore them. They should
be good and talent servants, for I observed
that they quickly took in what
was said to them. And I believe that
they would easily be made Christians,
as it appeared to me that they
had no sect. (my own translation)
This statement by Christopher Columbus opened a debate for the next
60 years (1492-1552). As Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2008a) argues, in the
late 15th century, Columbus' notion of "people without
sect" ("people without religion") meant something new. To
say "people without religion" today means "atheist
people." But in the Christian imaginary of the late 15th century,
the phrase "people without religion" had a different
connotation. In Christian imaginary, all humans have religion. They
could have the "wrong God" or "wrong Gods," there
could be wars and people could kill each other in the fight against the
"wrong God," but the humanity of the other, as a trend and as
a form of domination, was not yet put in question. What was being
questioned was the theology of the "other." The latter was
radically modified after 1492 with the conquest of the Americas and the
characterization of indigenous peoples by Christopher Columbus as
"people without religion." An anachronistic reading of this
phrase might lead us to think that Columbus referred to "atheist
people." But not having religion in the Christian imaginary of the
time was equivalent to not having a soul, that is, being expelled from
the realm of the human. As Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2008a) said:
To refer to the indigenous as subjects
without religion removes them
from the category of the human. Religion
is universal among humans,
but the alleged lack of it among natives
is not initially taken to indicate
the falseness of this statement, but
rather the opposite, that there exist
subjects in the world who are not
fully human.... Columbus' assertion
about the lack of religion in indigenous
people introduces an anthropological
meaning to the term.
In light of what we have seen here,
it is necessary to add that this anthropological
meaning is also
linked to a very modern method of
classifying humans: racial classification.
With a single stroke, Columbus
took the discourse on religion
from the theological realm into a
modern philosophical anthropology
that distinguishes among different
degrees of humanity through
identities fixed into what would
later be called races. (p. 217)
Contrary to the contemporary common sense, "color racism"
was not the first racist discourse. "Religious racism"
("people with religion" vs. "people without
religion" or "people with soul" vs. "people without
a soul") was the first marker of racism in the
"Capitalist/Patriarcal Western-Centric/ Christian-centric
modern/colonial world-system" (Grosfoguel 2011) formed in the long
16th century. The definition of "people without religion" was
coined in late 15th and early 16th century Spain. The debate provoked by
the conquest of the Americas was about whether the "people without
religion" found in Columbus' voyages were "people with a
soul or without a soul." The logic of the argument was as follows:
1) if you do not have religion, you do not have a God; 2) if you do not
have a God, then you do not have a soul; and 3) if you do not have a
soul, you are not human but animal-like.
The debate turned "people without religion" into
"people without a soul." This colonial racist debate produced
a boomerang effect that redefined and transformed the dominant imaginary
of the times and the Medieval religious discriminatory discourses. The
concept of "purity of blood" acquired a new meaning.
"Purity of blood" was not any more a technology of power to
surveil persons that have a Muslim or Jewish ancestry in the family tree
in order to make sure he/she is not faking conversion as in 15th century
conquest of Al-Andalus. The meaning of "purity of blood" after
the conquest of the Americas with the emergence of the concept of
"people without a soul" shifted from a theological question
about having the "wrong religion" into a question about the
humanity of the subject practicing the "wrong religion." (7)
As a result, the great debate in the first five decades of the 16th
century was about whether "Indians" have a soul or not. In
practice, both the Church and the Spanish imperial state were already
massively enslaving indigenous people assuming the notion that
"Indians" have no soul. State racism is not a post-18th
century phenomenon, but a phenomenon that emerged following the conquest
of the Americas in the 16th century. However, there were critical voices
inside the Church questioning this idea and proposing that
"Indians" have a soul but were barbarians in need of Chris
tianization (Dussel 1979; 1992). They claimed that since the
"Indians" have a soul, it is a sin in the eyes of God to
enslave them and the job of the Church should be to Christianize them
using peaceful methods. This debate was the first racist debate in world
history and "Indian" as an identity was the first modern
identity.
The category of "Indian" constituted a new
modern/colonial identity invention that homogenized the heterogeneous
identities that existed in the Americas before the arrival of the
Europeans. It is also important to remember that Columbus thought he had
arrived in India and, thus, leading to the use of the term
"Indian" to name the populations he encountered. Out of this
eurocentric geographical mistake, emerges "Indian" as a new
identity. But to question if "Indians" have a soul or not was
already a racist question that referred directly to the question of
their humanity. (8)
In 16th century Christian imaginary, this debate had important
implications. If "Indians" did not have a soul, then it is
justified in the eyes of God to enslave them and treat them as animals
in the labor process. But if they had a soul, then it was a sin in the
eyes of God to enslave, assassinate, or mistreat them. This debate was
crucial in the mutation of the old European medieval religious
discriminatory discourses and practices. Until the end of the 15th
century, the old islamophobic and judeophobic discourses were related to
having the "wrong God," the "wrong theology," and to
the influence of Satan in the "wrong religion," without
questioning the humanity of their practitioners. (9) The possibility of
conversion was available for the victims of these discriminatory
discourses. But with the colonization of the Americas, these old
medieval discriminatory religious discourses mutated rapidly,
transforming into modern racial domination.
Even though the word "race" was not used at the time, the
debate about having a soul or not was already a racist debate in the
sense used by scientific racism in the 19th century. The theological
debate of the 16th century about having a soul or not had the same
connotation of the 19th century scientificist debates about having the
human biological constitution or not. Both were debates about the
humanity or animality of the others articulated by the institutional
racist discourse of states such as the Castilian Christian monarchy in
the 16th century or Western European imperial nation-states in the 19th
century. These institutional racist logics of "not having a
soul" in the 16th century or "not having the human
biology" in the 19th century became the organizing principle of the
international division of labor and capitalist accumulation at a
world-scale.
The debate continued until the famous Valladolid trial of the
School of Salamance in 1552. Since Christian theology and church was the
authority of knowledge at the time, the Spanish Christian imperial
monarchy put in the hands of a tribunal among Christian theologians the
question about whether "Indians have a soul or not." The
theologians were Bartolome de las Casas and Gines Sepulveda. After 60
years (1492-1552) of debate, the Spanish imperial Christian monarchy
finally requested a Christian theological tribunal to make a final
decision about the humanity or lack of humanity of the
"Indians."
As is well-known, Gines Sepulveda argued in favor of the position
that "Indians" are "people without a soul" and,
therefore, they are animals that could be enslaved in the labor process
without being a sin in the eyes of God. Part of his argument to
demonstrate the inferiority of the "Indians" below the line of
the human was the modern capitalist argument that "Indians"
have no sense of private property and no notion of markets because they
produce through collective forms and distribute wealth through
reciprocity.
Bartolome de las Casas argued that "Indians" have a soul
but were in a barbarian stage in need of Christianization. Therefore,
for Las Casas it was a sin in the eyes of God to enslave them. What he
proposed was to "Christianize" them. Both Las Casas and
Sepulvera represent the inaguration of the two major racist discourses
with long lasting consequences that will be mobilized by Western
imperial powers for the next 450 years: biological racist discourses and
cultural racist discourses.
The biological racist discourse is a 19th century scientificist
secularization of Sepulveda's theological racist discourse. When
the authority of knowledge passed in the West from Christian theology to
Modern Science after the 18th century Enlightenment Project and the
French Revolution, the Sepulveda theological racist discourse of
"people without soul" mutated with the rise of natural
sciences to a biological racist discourse of "peoples without human
biology" and later "peoples without genes" (without the
human genetics). The same happened with the Bartolome De Las Casas
discourse. The De Las Casas theological discourse of "barbarians to
be Christianized" in the 16th century, transmuted with the rise of
the social sciences into an anthropological cultural racist discourse
about "primitives to be civilized."
The outcome of the Valladolid trial is also well known: although
Sepulvedas' view won in the long run, in the short run Las Casas
won the trial. Thus, the Spanish imperial monarchy decided that
"Indians" have a soul but are barbarians to be Christianized.
Therefore, it was recognized that it was a sin in the eyes of God to
enslave them. The conclusion seemingly meant the liberation of
"Indians" from the Spanish colonial rule. But this was not the
case. The "Indians" were transferred in the international
division of labor from slave labor to another form of coerced labor
known as the "encomienda." Since then it became
institutionalized in a more systematic way the idea of race and
institutional racism as an organizing principle of the international
division of labor and capitalist accumulation at a world-scale.
While "Indians" were placed in the "encomienda"
under a coerced form of labor, Africans who were already classified as
"people without a soul" were brought to the Americas to
replace "Indians" in slave labor. Africans were perceived at
the time as Muslims and the racialization of Muslims in 16th century
Spain was extended to them. The decision to bring captives from Africa
to enslave them in the Americas was directly related to the conclusion
of the 1552 Valladolid trial. Here begins the massive kidnapping and
captive trade of Africans that is going to be enforced for the next 300
years. With the enslavement of Africans, religious racism was
complemented with or slowy replaced by color racism. Since then,
anti-black racism became a foundational contitutive structuring logic of
the modern/colonial world.
The kidnapping of Africans and their enslavement in the Americas
was a major and significant world-historical event (Nimako and Willemsen
2011). Millions of Africans died in the process of being captured,
transported and enslaved in the Americas. This was a genocide at a
massive scale. But as with the other cases outlined above, the genocide
was inherently epistemicide. Africans in the Americas were forbidden
from thinking, praying or practicing their cosmologies, knowledges and
world views. They were submitted to a regime of epistemic racism that
forbade their autonomous knowledge production. Epistemic inferiority was
a crucial argument used to claim biological social inferiority below the
line of the human. The racist idea in late 16th century was that
"Negroes lack intelligence" which turned in the 20th century
to "Negroes have low IQ levels."
Another consequence of the debate about the "Indians" and
the Valladolid tribunal was its impact on the Moriscos and Marranos in
16th century Spain. The old islamophobic and judeophobic medieval
religious discriminatory discourses against Jews and Muslims were
transformed into racist discrimination. The question was not any more
about whether the religiously discriminated population have the wrong
God or wrong theology. The anti-indigenous religious racism that
questioned the humanity of the "Indians" was extrapolated to
the Moriscos and the Marranos questioning the humanity of those who pray
to the "wrong God." Those who prayed to the "wrong
God" were conceived as not having a soul, as "soul-less
subjects" ("sujetos desalmados"), non-humans or
sub-humans. Similar to indigenous people in the Americas, they were
expelled from the "realm of the human" being described as
"animal-like" (Perceval 1992; 1997). The latter represented a
radical transformation that goes from the inferiority of non-Christian
religions (Islam and Judaism) in Medieval Europe to the inferiority of
the human beings who practiced these religions (Jews and Muslims) in the
new emerging Modern Europe. Thus, it is as a result of the impact of the
conquest of the Americas in the 16th century that the old European
islamophobic and judeophobic anti-semitic religious discrimination going
back to the crusades and before, turned into racial discrimination. This
is the boomerang effect of colonialism coming back to hunt Europe.
The entanglement between the religious Christian-centric global
hierarchy and the racial/ethnic Western-Centric hierarchy of the
"capitalist/patriarcal Western-centric/Christian-centric
modern/colonial world-system" created after 1492, identified the
practitioners of a non-Christian spirituality with being racialized as
an inferior being below the line of the human. Contrary to Eurocentric
narratives such as Foucault (1996), that situates the transmutation from
religious anti-semitism to racial anti-semitism in the 19th century with
the emergence of scientific racism, anti-semitic racism emerged in 16th
century Spain when the old medieval anti-semitic religious
discrimination was entangled with the new modern racial imaginary
produced by the conquest of the Americas. The new racial imaginary
mutated the old religious anti-semitism into racial anti-semitism.
Contrary to Foucault, this anti-semitic racism of the 16th century was
already institutionalized as state biopolitical racism. (10)
The concept of "people without a soul" was not extended
to Moriscos immediately. It took several decades in the 16th century to
be extrapolated to Moriscos. It was after the mid-sixteenth century and,
specifically, during the Alpujarras (11) trial that Moriscos where
called "souless people" ("sujetos desalmados").
Moreover, after mid-16th century, as a consequence of being classified
as "souless people," Moriscos were massively enslaved in
Granada. Despite the Christian church prohibition to enslave Christians
and people baptized as Christian, Moriscos (Muslims converted to
Christianity) were still enslaved (Marin Casares 2000).
Now, "purity of blood" was related to "souless
people" making irrelevant the question about how assimilated they
were to Christianity. Their being was itself in question making their
humanity suspicious. Thus, from then on they were not considered truly
Christians nor equal to Christians. Anti-Morisco racism would be
intensified during the later part of the 16th century until their mass
expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1609 (Perceval 1992, 1997;
Carrasco 2009).
In sum, the conquest of the Americas in the 16th century extended
the process of genocide/epistemicide that began with the conquest of
Al-Andalus to new subjects such as indigenous people and Africans, while
simultaneously intensified through a new racial logic the
genocide/epistemicide against Christians from Jewish and Muslim origin
populations in Spain.
IV. THE CONQUEST OF INDO-EUROPEAN WOMEN: GENOCIDE/EPISTEMICIDE
AGAINST WOMEN
There is a fourth genocide/epistemicide in the 16th century that is
not frequently related to the history of the three genocides/
epistemicides outlined before. (12) This is the conquest and genocide of
women in European lands who transmitted Indo-European knowledge from
generation to generation. These women mastered indigenous knowledge from
ancient times. Their knowledge covered different areas such as
astronomy, medicine, biology, ethics, etc. They were empowered by the
possession of ancestral knowledge and their leading role inside the
communities organized around commune-like forms of economic and
political organization. The persecution of these women began from the
late Medieval era. However, it became intensified in the 16th and 17th
century (long 16th century) with the rise of "modern/colonial
capitalist/patriarchal" power structures.
Millions of women were burned alive, accused of being witches in
the Early Modern period. Given their authority and leadership, the
attack against these women was a strategy to consolidate
Christian-centric patriarchy and to destroy autonomous communal forms of
land ownership. The Inquisition was at the forefront of this offensive.
The accusation was an attack to thousands of women whose autonomy,
leadership and knowledge threatened Christian theology, Church authority
and the power of the aristocracy that turned into a capitalist class
transnationally in the colonies as well as in European agriculture. (13)
Silvia Federici (2004) argues that this witch hunt intensified
between 1550 and 1650. Her thesis is that the witch hunt against women
in European territory was related to primitive accumulation during the
early capitalist expansion in the formation of the labor reserve for
global capitalism. She linked the African enslavement in the Americas
with the witch hunt of Women in Europe as two sides of the same coin:
capital accumulation at a world-scale in need of incorporating labor to
the capitalist accumulation process. In order to achieve this,
capitalist institutions used extreme forms of violence.
Contrary to the epistemicide against Indigenous people and Muslims
where thousands of books were burned, in the case of the
genocide/epistemicide against Indo-European women there were no books to
burn because the transmission of knowledge was done from generation to
generation through oral tradition. The "books" were the
women's bodies and, thus, similar to the Andalusian and Indigenous
"books" their bodies were burned alive.
V. CONSEQUENCES OF THE FOUR GENOCIDES/EPISTEMICIDES FOR GLOBAL
STRUCTURES OF KNOWLEDGE: THE FORMATION OF EPISTEMIC/SEXIST STRUCTURES
AND THE HOPE FOR A FUTURE TRANSMODERN WORLD
The four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century discussed
before created racial/patriarchal power and epistemic structures at a
world scale entangled with processes of global capitalist accumulation.
When in the 17th century Descartes wrote "I think, therefore I
am" from Amsterdam (14), in the "common sense" of the
times, this "I" could not be an African, an indigenous person,
a Muslim, a Jew nor a woman (Western or non-Western). All of these
subjects were already considered "inferior" along the global
racial/patriarchal power structure and their knowledge was considered
inferior as a result of the four genocides/epistemicides of the 16th
century. The only one left as epistemically superior was the Western
man. In the hegemonic "common sense" of the times, this
"I" was that of a Western male. The four
genocides/epistemicides are constitutive of the racist/sexist epistemic
structures that produced epistemic priviledge and authority to Western
man's knowledge production and inferiority for the rest. As
Maldonado-Torres (2008b) affirms, the other side of the "I think,
therefore I am" is the racist/sexist structure of "I do not
think, therefore I am not." The latter expresses a
"coloniality of being" (Maldonando-Torres 2008b) where all of
the subjects considered inferior do not think and are not worthy of
existence because their humanity is in question. They belong to the
Fanonian "zone of non-being" or to the Dusselian
"exteriority."
Westernized universities internalized from its origin the
racist/sexist epistemic structures created by the four genocides/
epistemicides of the 16th century. These eurocentric structures of
knowledge became "commonsensical." It is considered normal
functioning to have only Western males of 5 countries to be producing
the canons of thought in all of the academic disciplines of the
Westernized university. There is no scandal in this because they are a
reflection of the normalized racist/sexist epistemic structures of
knowledge of the modern/colonial world.
When the Westernized university transformed in the late 18th
century from a Christian theological university into the secular
Humboldtian university, it used the Kantian anthropological idea that
rationality was embodied in the White man north of the Pyrenees
mountains classifying the Iberian Peninsula within the realm of the
irrational world together with Black, Red and Yellow people. The people
"lacking rationality" were epistemically excluded from the
Westernized university knowledge structures. It is from this Kantian
assumption that the canon of thought of the contemporary Westernized
university was founded.
When the center of the world-system passed from the Iberian
Peninsula to North-Western Europe in the mid-17th century after the
Thirty Years War when the Dutch defeated the Spanish armada, the
epistemic privilege passed together with the systemic power from the
empires of the Iberian Peninsula to North-Western European empires.
Kant's anthropological racist view placing the Pyrenees mountains
as a dividing line inside Europe to define rationality and irrationality
is just following this 17th century geopolitical power shift. Kant
applied to the Iberian Peninsula in the 18th century the same racist
views that the Iberian Peninsula applied to the rest of the world during
the 16th century. This is important in order to understand why
Portuguese and Spaniards are also out of the canon of thought in the
Westernized university today despite being at the center of the
world-system created after 1492. Since the late 18th century, it is only
men from five countries (France, England, Germany, Italy and the USA)
who are the ones monopolizing the privilege and authority of canons of
knowledge production in the Westernized university.
In the face of the challenge represented by Eurocentered modernity
and its epistemic racist/sexist colonial structures of knowledge,
Enrique Dussel proposes Transmodernity as the project to fulfill the
unfinished project of decolonization. The "Trans" of
Transmodernity means "beyond." What does it mean to go beyond
Eurocentered modernity?
If the Western colonial project of genocide/epistemicide was to
some extent successful in particular spaces around the world, it was a
huge failure in its overall results in most of the world. Critical
Indigenous, Muslim, Jewish, African and women thought as well as many
other critical knowledges from the Global South are still alive. After
500 years of coloniality of knowledge there is no cultural nor epistemic
tradition in an absolute sense outside to Eurocentered modernity. All
were affected by Eurocentered modernity and even aspects of Eurocentrism
were also internalized in many of these epistemologies. However, this
does not mean that every tradition is in an absolute sense inside and
that there is no outside to Western epistemology. There are still
non-Western epistemic perspectives that have a relative exteriority from
Eurocentered modernity. They were affected by genocide/epistemicide but
not fully destroyed. It is this relative exteriority that according to
Enrique Dussel, provides the hope and possibility for a Transmodern
world: "a world where many worlds are possible" to use the
Zapatista slogan.
The existence of epistemic diversity provides the potential for
struggles of decolonization and depatriarchalization that are not
centered anymore in Western-centric epistemologies and world views. To
move beyond Eurocentered modernity, Dussel proposes a decolonial project
that takes seriously the critical thinking of the epistemic traditions
of the Global South. It is from these diverse traditions that we can
build projects that will take different ideas and institutions
appropriated by Eurocentred modernity and to decolonize them in
different directions. In Eurocentric modernity, the West kidnapped and
monopolized the definition of Democracy, Human Rights, Women liberation,
Economy, etc. Transmodernity implies redefining these elements in
different directions according to the epistemic diversity of the world
towards a pluriverse of meaning and a pluriversal world.
If people from the Global South do not follow the Western hegemonic
definition, they are immediately denounced and marginalized from the
global community, being accused of fundamentalism. For example, when the
Zapatistas talk about democracy they are not doing it from a
Western-centric perspective. They propose a project of democracy that is
quite different from liberal democracy. They redefine democracy from the
indigenous perspective of "commanding while obeying" with the
"Caracoles" as the democratic institutional practice. However,
to use a different concept of democracy in Eurocentered modernity is
denounced as a form of fundamentalism. The same with the concept of
feminism. If Muslim women develop an "Islamic feminism" they
are immediately denounced by Eurocentered Western feminists as
patriarchal and fundamentalist. Transmodernity is an invitation to
produce from the different political-epistemic projects existing in the
world today a redefinition of the many elements appropriated by
Eurocentered modernity and treated as if naturally and inherently
European, toward a decolonial project of liberation beyond the
"Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
Modern/Colonial World-System." As Dussel states:
When I speak of Trans-modernity, I am referring to a global project
that seeks to transcend European or North American Modernity. It is a
project that is not post-modern, since post-Modernity is a
still-incomplete critique of Modernity by European and North America.
Instead, Trans-modernity is a task that is, in my case, expressed
philosophically, whose point of departure is that which has been
discarded, devalued, and judged useless among global cultures, including
colonized or peripheral philosophies ... (Dussel 2008b: 19-20)
Moreover, Transmodernity calls for inter-philosophical political
dialogues to produce pluriverses of meaning where the new universe is a
pluriverse. However, Transmodernity is not equivalent to a liberal
multiculturalist celebration of the epistemic diversity of the world
where the power structures are left intact. Transmodernity is a
recognition of epistemic diversity without epistemic relativism. The
call for epistemic pluriversality as opposed to epistemic universality
is not equivalent to a relativist position. On the contrary,
Transmodernity acknowledges the need for a shared and common universal
project against capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and coloniality. But
it rejects a universality of solutions where one defines for the rest
what "the solution" is. Uni-versality in European modernity
has meant "one that defines for the rest." Transmodernity
calls for a pluriverse of solutions where "the many defines for the
many." From different cultural and epistemic traditions there will
be different responses and solutions to similar problems. The
Transmodern horizon has as a goal to produce pluriversal concepts,
meanings and philosophies as well as a pluriveral world. As Dussel
states, Transmodernity is
... oriented towards a pluriversal future global philosophy. This
project is necessarily trans-modern, and thus also trans-capitalist ...
For a long time, perhaps for centuries, the many diverse philosophical
traditions will each continue to follow their own paths, but nonetheless
a global analogical project of a trans-modern pluriverse (other than
universal, and not post-modern) appears on the horizon. Now, 'other
philosophies' are possible, because 'another world is
possible'--as is proclaimed by the Zapatista Liberation Movement in
Chiapas, Mexico. (Dussel 2008b:20)
VI. CONCLUSION
This discussion has enormous implications for the decolonization of
the Westernized university. So far, the Westernized university operates
under the assumption of the uni-versalism where "one (Western men
from five countries) defines for the rest" what is truthful and
valid knowledge. To decolonize the structures of knowledge of the
Westernized university will require among other things to:
1) acknowledge the provincialism and epistemic racism/sexism that
constitute the foundational epistemic structures as a result of the
genocidal/epistemicidal colonial/patriarchal projects of the 16th
century;
2) break with the uni-versalism where one ("uni") defines
for the rest, in this case, the one is Western man epistemology;
3) bring epistemic diversity to the canon of thought to create a
pluri-verse of meanings and concepts where the inter-epistemic
conversation among many epistemic traditions produce new re-definitions
of old concepts and creates new pluriversal concepts with "the many
defining for the many" (pluri-verse) instead of "one for the
rest" (uni-verse).
If Westernized universities assume these three programmatic points,
it would stop being Westernized and a Uni-versity. It will turn from a
Westernized Uni-versity into a Decolonial Pluri-versity. If Kant's
and Humboldt's Eurocentered modern racist/ sexist epistemic
projects became the epistemic foundation of the Westernized university
since the late 18th century as a result of three hundred years of
genocide/epistemicide in the world, Enrique Dussel's Transmodernity
is the new epistemic foundation of the future Decolonial Pluri-versity
whose knowledge production will be at the service of a world beyond the
"Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric
Modern/Colonial World-System."
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Ramon Grosfoguel
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grosfogu@berkeley.edu
(1.) The Long 16th Century is the formulation of French historian,
Fernand Braudel, who has influenced the work of world-system scholar,
Immanuel Wallerstein (1974). It refers to the 200 years that covers the
period between 1450-1650. This is the period of the formation of a new
historical system named by Wallerstein as the Modern World-System, or
the European World-Economy, or the Capitalist World-Economy. The
historical process that formed this new system covers the 200 years of
the long 16th century. I will use Long 16th Century to refer to the long
duree processes that cover the initial formation of this historical
system and use the term 16th century to refer to the 1500s.
(2.) I believe that the best hommage to an intelectual is to take
his/her work seriously to bring new aspects provoked by their work.
(3.) I said "supposed" because as Enrique Dussel (2008a)
has demonstrated in his essay Anti-Cartesian Meditations, Descartes was
highly influenced by the Christian philosophers of the Spanish conquest
of the Americas.
(4.) Notice that I make a distinction between Christianity and
Christendom. Christianity is a spiritual/religious tradition,
Christendom is when Christianity becomes a dominant ideology used by the
state. Christendom emerged in the 4th century after Christ when
Constantine appropriated Christianity and turn it into the official
ideology of the Roman Empire.
(5.) For a very interesting discussion on this question see Enrique
Dussel (1995) and Donna Haraway (1988).
(6.) It is the recent Western European, North American and Israeli
Zionist orientalist literature that after Second World War excluded
Arabs from semite people and reduced the definition of anti-semitism to
racial discrimination against Jews. The latter is part of a perverse
Zionist strategy to conflate Arab-Muslims' critique to Zionism as
equivalent to anti-semitism (Grosfoguel 2009).
(7.) It is important to remember that Latin was the written
language of 16th century Europe. Since the Christian church was the
authority of knowledge through Christian theology, the debates about the
conquest of the Americas in Spain travelled to other European
territories through the Church networks. Thus, the debates about
Columbus and the Spanish Christian theologians on the New World and the
subjects found there were read with particular attention in other parts
of Europe.
(8.) This skepticism about the humanity of other human beings is
what Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2008b) called "misanthropic
skepticism."
(9.) I refer to the social classification of the social system. As
Maldonado-Torres argues, there were already individuals articulating
discourses that could be identified as racialist from a contemporary
point of view. However, the social classification of the population in
Medieval Europe was not based on racial classification, that is, it was
not organized around social logics related to a radical question about
the humanity of the social subjects. The social classification of the
population based on racist social logics was a post-1492 process with
the formation of the "Capitalist/Patriarchal
Western-centric/Christian-centric Modern/Colonial World-System"
(Grosfoguel 2011). Thus, in this article the argument about the
emergence of racism is related to a post-1492 global social system and
not to individual statements before 1492.
(10.) Scientific racism in the 19th century was not, as Foucault
argued, a resignification of the old European "race war"
discourse but a secularization of the old Christendom religious
theological racism of "people without a soul" in the 16th
century. The old discourse of "race war" inside Europe was not
the foundation of scientific racism as Foucault insisted on with his
"genealogy of racism." The foundation of scientific racism was
the old religious racism of the 16th century with roots in the European
colonial conquest of the Americas. Foucault is blind towards the
conquest of the Americas, colonialism and Spain's 16th century.
(11.) These were the trials against Moriscos that uprose in the
Alpujarras mountains outside the city of Granada after the mid-16th
century.
(12.) The seminal work of Silvia Federici (2004) is one of the few
exceptions. Although Federici's work does not link these four
processes in relation to genocide/epistemicide, she at least links the
witch hunt of women in the 16th/17th century with the enslavement of
Africans and the conquest of the Americas in relation to global
capitalist accumulation, in particular, the early formation of
capitalism, that is, "primitive accumulation." Her work is
focused on political-economy rather than structures of knowledge.
However, her contribution is crucial for the understanding of the
relation between the genocide/epistemicide of women and the other
genocide/epistemicides of the 16th century.
(13.) For an analysis of the transformation of the European
aristocracy into a capitalist class in relation to the formation of the
modern world-system see the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, specially his
Modern World-System, Vol. 1 (New York: Academic Press).
(14.) It is important to say that when the Dutch defeated the
Spaniards in the 30 years war, the new center of the new world-system
created after 1492 with Spain expansion to the Americas shifted from the
Iberian Peninsula to North-Western Europe, that is, Amsterdam.
Dussel's characterization of Descartes philosophy as one produced
by someone who is geopolitically thinking from the center of the
world-system, the imperial being, is not metaphorical.
Ramon Grosfoguel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Research Associate of
the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. He has published many
articles and books on the political economy of the world-system and on
Caribbean migrations to Western Europe and the United States.