Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Pluriversalizing Europe: challenging belonging, revisiting history, disrupting homogeneity

2014; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13688790.2014.966413

1466-1888

Julia Suárez-Krabbe,

European Cultural and National Identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes on ContributorJulia Suárez-Krabbe is Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Associate Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. With co-funding from the Danish Social Science Research Council she is currently involved in the research project 'ALICE—Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons' (alice.ces.uc.pt), coordinated by Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Julia's research has emphasized questions of race and racism in relation to human rights, citizenship, development, anti-racist social movements, 'other' knowledges, existentialism, theories from the south, and decolonial social change. Her most recent publications are: 'Democratising Democracy, Humanising Human Rights. European Decolonial Movements and the "Alternative Thinking of Alternatives"' (Migration Letters, 2013); and 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights: Contributions from the Global South' (Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, 2013).Notes1 This article was developed in the context of the participation of the Decoloniality Europe network in the research project 'ALICE—Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons', coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (alice.ces.uc.pt) at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. The project is funded by the European Research Council, 7th Framework Program of the European Union (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement n. [269807]. The Danish Social Science Research Council also funds the specific sub-project in which the researcher is engaged concerning the contributions to Europe from the south inside the north.2 The article presents my take on the issues raised, and does not necessarily represent that of the movements involved in the network. I coordinated the network between 2010 and 2013, and worked in a collaborative research project with some of its movements regarding 'human rights and other grammars of human dignity' in the above-mentioned ALICE research project. In this period, the Decoloniality Europe network aimed at fomenting communication, discussion and collaboration between scholars and activists working towards decolonization inside the European geographical space (paraphrase of webpage: http://decolonialityeurope.wix.com/decoloniality#!about/component_74511). From the spring of 2014, the network is undergoing several structural adjustments, which imply a more concrete political orientation and goals, which will be made available in the new webpage of the network.3 Marisol De la Cadena, 'Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond "Politics"', Cultural Anthropology 25(2), 2010, pp 334–370.4 Shelley Wright, International Human Rights, Decolonisation and Globalisation: Becoming Human, London: Routledge, 2001; Walter D Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; Walter Mignolo, 'Islamophobia/Hispanophobia: The (Re) Configuration of the Racial Imperial/Colonial Matrix', Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 5(1), 2006, pp 13–28; Ramón Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century', Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11(1), 2013, pp 73–90; Ramón Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza', Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 7(2), 2009, pp 89–102; Ramón Grosfoguel and Eric Mielants, 'The Long-Durée Entanglement Between Islamophobia and Racism in the Modern/Colonial Capitalist/Patriarchal World-System', Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 5(1), 2006, pp 1–12.5 The definition of 'colonial Europe' used by the Decoloniality Europe network (2010–2013) is the following: 'Colonial Europe: Refers to contemporary problems that emerged with the Europe that was invented with colonialism since the 16th century, and that was erected as the centre of the world and as the beginning and end of history. This colonial Europe was built upon the negation of the "other" inside and outside of Europe. This means that the colonial universalized Europe is not the same as the geographic Europe. Neither does it represent the totality of its population, but it does extend beyond the geographical European space, and is to be found in the minds and actions of people and groups worldwide. In this sense, when speaking about a colonial Europe, we refer to an epistemic, political, existential and (non-)ethical place, which is based upon the negation of the non-European "other", and the violence, racism, epistemicide and genocide against him and her. Colonial Europe is constituted as the originary site of the white political field, and is thus dependent upon maintaining the racial hierarchies.' Taken from the Decoloniality Europe webpage (2010–2013): http://decolonialityeurope.wix.com/decoloniality#!key-concepts/c18i9 (accessed 1 May 2014). For the conceptualization of the 'non-ethical' see Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War, Views from the Underside of Modernity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. For a definition of the 'white political field', a concept of the Indigènes de la République, see the same link above.6 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 'The Processes of Globalisation', Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais and Eurozine, 2002, pp 1–48.7 Gurminder K Bhambra, Connected Sociologies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 (forthcoming). This quote and the next are from the conclusion of the book, section IV.8 Ramón Grosfoguel, 'Race and Ethnicity or Racialized Ethnicities? Identities within Global Coloniality', Ethnicities 4(3), 2004, pp 315–336.9 See also Salman Sayyid, 'Slippery People, the Immigrant Imaginary and the Grammar of Colours', in Ian Law, Deborah Philips and Laura Turney (eds), Institutional Racism in Higher Education, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 2004, pp 149–159; and Silvia Rodríguez Maeso and Marta Araújo, 'Portuguese (Post-)Colonial Situations, National Identity and the Understanding of Racism: The Politics of Academic Narratives', unpublished working paper (July 2010), TOLERACE research project, Coimbra: Centre for Social Studies.10 See also Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 'Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges', Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais and Eurozine, 2007, pp 1–35, p 25.11 See also Bhambra, Connected Sociologies.12 Santos, 'Beyond Abyssal Thinking', p 25.13 See also Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (Charles Lam Markman, trans), London: Grove Press, 1967; and Julia Suárez-Krabbe, 'Identity and the Preservation of Being', Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 18(1), 2012, pp. 335–353.14 John Stratton, '"It Almost Needn't Have Been the Germans": The State, Colonial Violence and the Holocaust', European Journal of Cultural Studies 6, 2003, pp 507–527, p 509.15 See Julia Suárez-Krabbe, 'At the Pace of Cassiopeia: Being, Nonbeing, Human Rights and Development', unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University, 2011; and Julia Suárez-Krabbe, '"El emperador está desnudo!": Crítica de las prácticas hegemónicas de derechos humanos y desarrollo y alternativas desde el sur global', in Jhon Losada Cubillos (ed), Lecturas críticas del Desarrollo. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas, Bogotá: Editorial Universidad San Buenaventura, forthcoming.16 Aníbal Quijano, 'Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America', Nepantla 1(3), 2000, pp 533–580.17 See also Arturo Escobar, '"Mundos y conocimientos de otro modo". El programa de investigación de modernidad/colonialidad latinoamericano', Tabula Rasa 1, 2003, pp 51–86.18 Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities'.19 Mignolo, 'Islamophobia/Hispanophobia'.20 Wright, International Human Rights.21 Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities'. Grosfoguel's point is that these four more or less simultaneous genocides translate into a predator-subjectivity, the I exterminate, that precedes the I conquer of the first modernity, and hence also the Cartesian I think of the second modernity. In relation to the I conquer see Enrique Dussel, 1492. El encubrimiento del Otro. Hacia el origen del mito de la modernidad, La Paz: Biblioteca Indígena. 1995; in English: The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of 'the Other' and the Myth of Modernity (Michel D Barber, trans), New York: Continuum; Enrique Dussel, 'Meditaciones anti-cartesianas: sobre el origen del anti-discurso filosófico de la Modernidad', Tabula Rasa 9, 2008, pp 153–197; Nelson Maldonado-Torres, 'On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept', Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 2007, pp 240–270.22 Mignolo, 'Islamophobia/Hispanophobia', p 18. The seminal texts upon which Mignolo elaborates his thesis are Aníbal Quijano, 'Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad', Peru Indigena 13(29), pp 11–20; Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, 'Americanity as a Concept: Or The Americas in the Modern World-System', International Journal of Social Sciences 134, 1992, Paris: UNESCO; and Sylvia Wynter, '1492: A New World View', in Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (eds), Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, pp 5–57.23 Silvia Federici also takes up some of these entanglements, having an eye for the gender dimensions, in Silvia Federici, Calibán y la bruja, Mujeres, cuerpo y acumulación originaria, Translated by: Verónica Hendel and Leopoldo Sebastián Touza, Madrid: Traficantes de sueños.24 Sylvia Wynter, 'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument', New Centennial Review 3(3), 2003, pp 257–337.25 See, for example, Edgardo Lander (ed), La colonialidad del saber. Eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas, Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2000; and Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs.26 See, for example, Kelvin Santiago-Valles, '"Race," Labor, "Women's Proper Place," and the Birth of Nations: Notes on Historicizing the Coloniality of Power', New Centennial Review 3(3), 2003, pp 47–68; and Wynter, 'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being'.27 See also Mignolo, 'Islamophobia/Hispanophobia'.28 See also Wynter, 'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being'.29 Maldonado-Torres, 'On the Coloniality of Being'.30 Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities'.31 See also Julia Suárez-Krabbe, 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights: Contributions from the Global South', Critical Globalisation Studies 6, 2013, pp 78–102; and Suárez-Krabbe, 'At the Pace of Cassiopeia'.32 Maldonado-Torres, 'On the Coloniality of Being'.33 Julia Suárez-Krabbe, 'The Other Side of the Story: Human Rights, Race and Gender from a Historical Transatlantic Perspective', in Nikita Dhawan (ed), Decolonising the Enlightenment, 2014, Berlin: Barbrara Budrich, pp. 211–226.34 Suárez-Krabbe, 'The Other Side of the Story'.35 Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities'; and Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza'.36 See also Suárez-Krabbe, 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights'; and Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs.37 See also Wright, International Human Rights, esp. pp 46–61.38 Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs. Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza'.39 See also Sandew Hira's presentation about the decolonization of the mind in the following video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqWZkG7HMg&feature=player_embedded40 See also Santos, 'Beyond Abyssal Thinking'.41 Wynter, 'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being', p 297.42 Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Books, 1995.43 Grosfoguel, 'The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities'; Wright, International Human Rights.44 Wright, International Human Rights, p 50.45 Santiago-Valles, '"Race," Labor, "Women's Proper Place"'; Federici, Calibán y la bruja.46 Santiago-Valles, '"Race," Labor, "Women's Proper Place"', pp 61–62.47 In addition to those presented here, Stratton, '"It Almost Needn't Have Been the Germans"', and Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson, 'Bringing Africa as "Dowry" to Europe', Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 13(3), 2011, pp 443–463, give important clues in relation to the many nuances that come to light when disrupting the dominant narratives and frameworks of analysis.48 John Beverley, 'Spain, Modernity and Colonialism', in P Poddar, R Patke and L Jensen (eds), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, pp 599–601, Suárez-Krabbe, 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights', p 89.49 For an interesting analysis of this condition 'Between Prospero and Caliban' in the case of Portugal, see Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 'Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-Identity', Luso-Brazilian Review 39(2), 2002, pp 9–43.50 According to Robert Holloway, 'PIGS has been used as an abbreviation for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain since at least 1999, when they and eight other countries adopted the euro as a common currency', http://web.archive.org/web/20100420025605/http://blogs.afp.com/?post/2008/09/15/Pigs-in-muck-and-lipstick (accessed 20 April 2013).51 For a more elaborate review of the Black Legend as a layer of negation that is preceded by the Cartesian I think, and by the imperial doubt, see Suárez-Krabbe, 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights'.52 Gordon, Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism.53 See also Julia Suárez-Krabbe, 'Democratising Democracy, Humanising Human Rights: European Decolonial Social Movements and the "Alternative Thinking of Alternatives"', Migration Letters 10(3), pp 333–341.54 Wright, International Human Rights, p 52.55 See also Stratton, '"It Almost Needn't Have Been the Germans"'.56 Wright, International Human Rights, p 18.57 Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza', p 95. Capitalization retained.58 Suárez-Krabbe, 'Race, Social Struggles, and "Human" Rights', p 79.59 For an introduction to the Genocide Memorial Day, see www.ihrc.org.uk/component/content/article/100-research/9931-introduction-to-gmd60 Stratton, '"It Almost Needn't Have Been the Germans"'.61 Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza', p 95.62 For a more into depth and nuanced investigation of the processes of othering in relation to Jews in Europe that complements Grosfoguel's in important ways, see Stratton, '"It Almost Needn't Have Been the Germans"'.63 Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza', p 96.64 Grosfoguel, 'Human Rights and Anti-Semitism after Gaza', p 95. Capitalization retained.65 Suárez-Krabbe, 'Democratising Democracy, Humanising Human Rights'.66 Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.67 See also Maria Lugones, 'Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System', Hypatia 22(1), 2007, pp 186–209.68 Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.69 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.