Ciencias sociales : saberes coloniales y eurocéntricos / Edgardo Lander / - Europa modernidad y eurocentrismo / Enrique Dussel / - La colonialidad a lo largo y a lo ancho : el hemisferio occidental en el horizonte colonial de la modernidad / Walter D. Mignolo / - Naturaleza del poscolonialismo : del eurocentrismo al globocentrismo / Fernando Coronil / - El lugar de la naturaleza y la naturaleza del lugar : ¿globalización o postdesarrollo? / Arturo Escobar / - Ciencias sociales, (...) violencia epistémica y el problema de la invención del otro / Santiago Castro-Gómez / - Superar la exclusión, conquistar la equidad : reformas, políticas y capacidades en el ámbito social / Alejandro Moreno / - Abrir, impensar, y redimesionar las ciencias sociales en América Latina y el Caribe. ¿Es posible una ciencia social no eurocéntrica en nuestra región? / Francisco López Segrera / - Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina / Aníbal Quijano. (shrink)

El propósito de este libro es de examinar cuales fueron los órdenes epistemológicos, las prácticas discursivas y los mecanismos disciplinarios que hicieron posible en el siglo XX la construcción de un objeto de conocimiento llamado "Latinoamérica", y de una serie de saberes filosóficos sobre "lo latinoamericano". El autor realiza un ejercicio deconstructivo de aquellas narrativas que, con base a la creación de identidades homogéneas, buscaron presentar a Latinoamérica como lo "otro" de la modernidad occidental, e incluso como el continente llamado (...) a mostrar un camino nuevo de liberación para toda la humanidad. A través de un diálogo con pensadores como Foucault, Said, Rama, Lyotard, Mignolo y Spivak, el autor muestra que los principales temas, registros y motivos esgrimidos a favor de una "exterioridad" latinoamericana con respecto a la modernidad, son en realidad discursos pertenecientes a un orden moderno del saber. (shrink)

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that “Latin America” is not so much a geographical entity, a culture, or a place, but rather an object of knowledge produced by a family of discourses in the humanities that (...) are inseparably linked to colonial power relationships. Using the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault, he analyzes the political, literary, and philosophical discourses and modes of power that have contributed to the making of “Latin America.” Castro-Gómez examines the views of a wide range of Latin American thinkers on modernity, postmodernity, identity, colonial history, and literature, also considering how these questions have intersected with popular culture. His critique spans Central and South America, and it also implicates broader and protracted global processes. This book presents this groundbreaking work of contemporary critical theory in English translation for the first time. It features a foreword by Linda Martín Alcoff, a new preface by the author, and an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta situating Castro-Gómez’s thought in the context of critical theory in Latin America and the Global South. Two appendixes feature an interview with Castro-Gómez that sheds light on the book’s composition and short provocations responding to each chapter from a multidisciplinary forum of contemporary scholars who resituate the work within a range of perspectives including feminist, Francophone African, and decolonial Black political thought. (shrink)

Las relaciones entre la filosofía y la literatura han estado determinadas por la discusión y exclusión recíprocas. En este trabajo se plantea el origen de estas relaciones, considerando mito y logos como manifestación de una realidad única. Esta realidad se configura a partir de la confusión que se produce entre ser y parecer, que se plantea en el desvelamiento de la realidad a través de la creación materializada en la escritura. En este sentido, se puede considerar que la filosofía es (...) literatura de conocimiento' porque en su esfuerzo por esclarecer la realidad, por descubrir la verdad de las cosas y por hacer comprensible el bagaje conceptual de que dispone, hace uso de la belleza estilística que le brinda la literatura. (shrink)

Introducción : la translocalización discursiva de "Latinoamérica" en tiempos de la globalización / Eduardo Mendieta, Santiago Castro-Gómez / - Posoccidentalismo : el argumento desde América Latina / Walter D. Mignolo / - Fragmentos globales : latinoamericanismo de segundo orden / Alberto Moreiras / - Hegemonía y dominio : subalternidad, un significado flotante / Ileana Rodríguez / - Más allá del accidentalismo : hacia categorías neohistóricas no imperialistas / Fernando Coronil / - Modernidad, posmodernidad y poscolonialidad : una búsqueda (...) esperanzadora del tiempo / Eduardo Mendieta / - Latinoamericanismo, modernidad, globalización. Prolegómenos a una crítica poscolonial de la razón / Santiago Castro-Gómez / - Realismo mágico y poscolonialismo : construcciones del otro desde la otredad / Erna von der Walde. (shrink)

Empire lacks an anlysis of the shift from the colonial to the postcolonial. For Hardt and Negri, the hegemony of immaterial labor relegates the center/periphery dichotomies and the forms of colonial domination to the past. The gap lies in their genealogy of modernity : by paying attention to Europe alone, and by ignoring the world-system, they miss the « dark side » of Empire, its colonial and now postcolonial face. Yet we are witnessing a reorganization of coloniality, based on new (...) representations of development that reinforce the hierarchies between the legitimate knowledge of some, and the non-knowledge of others. (shrink)

This article is a slightly modified version of the first part of Chapter 4 of Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek’s y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno (Madrid: Akal, 2015) translated by Douglas Kristopher Smith and Nicolas Lema Habash. This text seeks to overcome the scission between Slavoy Žižek and Michel Foucault by challenging the notion that Foucault lacks an ontology of power, beyond contingent historical processes. By exposing the underlying Nietzschean relational ontology of struggle—as distinct from a fundamental, positive grounding—in (...) Foucault’s work, the piece shows how this aspect has been largely misunderstood—including by Žižek himself. Furthermore, it demonstrates how this agonistic ontology of human experience can serve to shed light on Žižek’s notion of the incompleteness of the subject by bringing it into the realm of politics. (shrink)

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

Dès son origine, l'Unesco a eu un rôle important en faveur de la communication dans le monde. Ce texte témoigne des actions que l'Organisation a entreprises pour faciliter la circulation internationale de l'information, par la création notamment d'espaces d'échanges entre acteurs au niveau international. Son engagement a permis de dépasser certaines difficultés imposées par le contexte historique de ses premières décennies d'existence. Cette analyse des contradictions politiques initiales et de la dynamique qui s'en est suivie nous montre l'importance décisive qu'a (...) pu jouer l'Unesco en tant que forum d'échanges internationaux en faveur de la communication et des médias.Since its inception, UNESCO has played an important role for the communication in the world. This text reflects the actions that the organization has undertaken to facilitate the international flow of information, including through the creation of spaces for exchanges between actors at the international level. His commitment has overcome some difficulties imposed by the historical context of its first decades of existence. This initial analysis of the political contradictions and dynamics that ensued shows the decisive importance has played Unesco as a forum for international exchange of communication and media. (shrink)

Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the ‘castes’. Epistemic violence—and not only physical violence—is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

In the three previous chapters we mapped out Žižek’s philosophical thinking—territory in which we situated his critique of “postmodern historicism”, as well as his bleak assessment of the struggles of the contemporary left. We have also examined his theory of revolution and his recourse to Christianity as a paradigm for communist brotherhood that may well function as a real alternative to capitalism. Throughout this interpretative and reconstructive exercise, I subjected Žižek’s proposals to a hail of critical questions and commentary, on (...) which I have not yet adequately elaborated. This will precisely be the task that I will undertake in the last two chapters of the book. Our starting point will be to pick up on some of Žižek’s central ideas with which I agree, while taking them to a philosophical terrain that will help us avoid their fatidic consequences: the avowal of subjectless revolutions. I am referring to two Žižekian motifs that are worth reconsidering: the ontology of incompleteness and the universal dimension of politics. Our goal is to “de-Lacanize” those concepts and to see how they could operate in a different kind of political ontology that does not resort to the figure of a transcendental subject, and that renders power as an inescapable condition of experience. I would then like to articulate the two aforementioned concepts with a third one—the Gramscian notion of hegemony—but read alongside the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The purpose of this exercise is to create the conceptual conditions to formulate an emancipatory theory of democracy—a matter that will be taken up in the following chapter. (shrink)

From the most prominent thinkers in Latin American philosophy, literature, politics, and social science comes a challenge to conventional theories of globalization. The contributors to this volume imagine a discourse in which revolution requires no temporalized march of progress or takeovers of state power but instead aims at local control and the material conditions for human dignity.

The scene takes place in O'Higgins Park, in Santiago, Chile, on 1 October 1995. Some women have just taken their place on the stage and the enthusiastic audience is applauding, the women have started singing accompanied by a guitar, but they cannot be heard, for the audience is still applauding. One of the women gets up. Like the others, she is wearing a white blouse and a long black skirt, she is old and her hair is grey. She moves (...) to the front of the stage, chooses her place and stops, her eyes search the horizon but do not wander aimlessly, her eyes are fixed somewhere between the here and the hereafter. When she finds what she is looking for, she raises her right hand to wave a white handkerchief, and the dance begins. The audience, suddenly attentive, watches. And what do they see? Not the woman alone on the stage, but the empty space which she traces. The empty space disturbs us, as Chilean spectators, because the cueca, the national folklore dance, is danced by two people, or it is not danced at all. The invisible other is invoked by this woman's every gesture and we do not smile when faced with the absence of her man because we have a premonition that she is not pretending, we have a premonition that she can see him. The image of women dancing alone has become one of the symbols of the struggle of the families of the disappeared under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. The families are commemorating, on 1 October 1995, the twentieth anniversary of their organization into an association in 1975. The term “the disappeared” has progressively become accepted to indicate the victims of a novel, coercive practice in Chile, since the coup d’état on 11 September 1973. The forced disappearance of people differs from political assassination, as Amnesty International never ceases to indicate in the various reports which it commissions on them. In the Chilean case, this speciality is in part due to the security system which has taken on the responsibility of destroying all organized opposition to the military dictatorship: the DINA, the intelligence service created by the military junta, which is only answerable for its actions to the junta. More fundamentally, the special character of disappearance is due to the invisibility of the victim's body and to the doubt that this invisibility arouses within the victim's family circle: the disappeared is not identified as dead because his death is never certified, on the other hand his sudden and unexplained absence indicates that he is a person in danger and that this danger extends to all those who notice his absence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article elaborates a concept of localization through interpreting key arguments in Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez’s early works grouped by the author under the name “genealogies of coloniality.” Following the role localization in his genealogies of coloniality reveals what Castro-Gómez calls “heterarchic articulations.” Heterarchic articulations delineate an analytic model of power that traces how multiple technologies and formations of power operating at different levels, from colonial geopolitics to individual “corpopolitics” of desire, converge and configure radically localized (...) processes of subjectivation. Localization understood in these terms, the author argues, allows Castro-Gómez to radicalize, transform, and combine Foucault’s genealogical approach and decolonial theory. The article concludes by showing that, besides radicalizing and combining genealogy and decoloniality, the localization at work in Castro-Gómez’s genealogies of coloniality serves to interpret theorizations and phenomena of contemporary violence by turning to Mexican transfeminist philosopher Sayak Valencia’s analysis of “gore capitalism.”. (shrink)

RESUMEN El objetivo de este artículo fue analizar cómo es subsumido el sentido de lo transmoderno por el filósofo colombiano Santiago Castro-Gómez para proponer una política emancipatoria. La transmodernidad es un proyecto decolonial planteado por Enrique Dussel en 1994. La modernidad, definida como mito sacrificial -eurocéntrica, colonizadora y capitalista- sería superada desde el momento en que se pueda afirmar la alteridad de las culturas universales -analéctica-. Tal proyecto de la Filosofía de la Liberación se puede concebir como un (...) método que tomaría lo mejor de la modernidad -su carácter racional-, pero en sentido contrario a la dominación política, cultural y económica. Castro-Gómez asume este método para proponer un republicanismo transmoderno. En este texto se establece como hilo conductor el posible diálogo modernidad/colonialidad establecida por estos dos filósofos para determinar cómo es posible plantear una nueva forma de entender la ontología de la política emancipatoria que presenta el filósofo colombiano. ABSTRACT This article seeks to analyze how the sense of transmodernity is subsumed in philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, to propose an emancipatory policy. Transmodernity is a decolonial project proposed by Enrique Dussel in 1994. Modernity, defined as a sacrificial myth -eurocentric, colonizing, and capitalist- would be overcome from the moment in which it is possible to affirm the otherness of the universal cultures -ana-lectic-. Such a project of the Philosophy of Liberation can be conceived as a method that would take the best of modernity -its rational character-, but in an opposite sense to political, cultural, and economic domination. Gastro-Gómez assumes this method to propose a transmodern republicanism. In this text, the possible modernity/ coloniality dialog, corroborated by these two philosophers, will be established as the guiding thread to determine how a new way of understanding the ontology of emancipatory politics, presented by the Colombian philosopher, is possible. (shrink)

Reseña sobre el Libro de Santiago Castro.

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

Castro-Gómez, Santiago. Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno. Ciudad de México: Akal, 2015. 400 pp.

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. -/- In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

En este artículo nos disponemos desarrollar la tesis según la cual la crítica elaborada por Santiago Castro-Gómez a Enrique Dussel se trató de una desnaturalización del análisis del filósofo argentino sobre el proyecto moderno, en la cual Castro-Gómez puso de relieve las prácticas de las herencias coloniales como condición de posibilidad para la emergencia de la modernidad, sin necesidad de recurrir a la figura fundante del sujeto, aspecto que sí se encuentra presente en la propuesta del mendocino. (...) Esta tesis se demostrará mediante un diálogo crítico entre estos dos autores en torno al problema de la modernidad y la colonialidad a partir de tres claves analíticas, la posmodernidad, la modernidad y la descolonización, con el fin de pensar el modo en que las prácticas coloniales operaron en el proyecto moderno a través del uso de los valores presentes en la misma modernidad, sin que ello implique caer en una supuesta desmodernización. (shrink)

New media (highly interactive digital technology for creating, sharing, and consuming information) affords users a great deal of control over their informational diets. As a result, many users of new media unwittingly encapsulate themselves in epistemic bubbles (epistemic structures, such as highly personalized news feeds, that leave relevant sources of information out (Nguyen forthcoming)). Epistemically paternalistic alterations to new media technologies could be made to pop at least some epistemic bubbles. We examine one such alteration that Facebook has made in (...) an effort to fight fake news and conclude that it is morally permissible. We further argue that many epistemically paternalistic policies can (and should) be a perennial part of the internet information environment. (shrink)

Este artículo está escrito para una colección de ensayos introductorios sobre filosofía de las ciencias cognitivas. Es una revisión (selectiva) de la literatura sobre la psicología del juicio moral.

Johann Gottfried Herder, like his contemporaries, reflected on language and in 1772 published the Treatise on the Origin of Language, which in the previous year had earned the distinction of the Berlin Academy for best essay. However, even today, much of his thought is unknown, ignoring the fact that some of the modern approaches of contemporary philosophy, philosophical anthropology or even sociobiology are already stated there, namely in the narratives resulting from the enunciation of the four natural laws. More than (...) justifying the origin of language, the philosopher’s essay also allows us to understand human nature, inserting its genesis at the heart of philosophical anthropology and contradicting, if not even confronting in this way, the divine tradition of this attribution. Thus, at first, a generic analysis of the work will be carried out, highlighting the fundamental theses that will allow the establishment of a dialogue with some of the contemporary philosophical approaches. Then, admitting the possibility of a scenario of technological singularity, as stated by Irving John Good, Vernor Vinge or Ray Kurzweil, to verify the plausibility and validity of Herder’s theses regarding the scope of language and human nature and how this could constitute a frontier of resistance. (shrink)

Pothos & Busemeyer's (P&B's) query about whether quantum probability can provide a foundation for the cognitive modeling embodies so many underlying implications that the subject is far from exhausted. In this brief commentary, however, I suggest that the conceptual thresholds of the meaningful learning give rise to a typical Boltzmann's weighting measure, which indicates astatistical verisimilitudeof quantum behavior in the human cognitive ensemble.