"Walter Mignolo, one of America's most eminent
postcolonialists, presents a challenging new paradigm for
understanding the realities of a planetary 'coloniality of
power, ' and the limits of area studies in the United States.
Local History/Global Designs is one of the most important books in
the historical humanities to have emerged since the end of the Cold
War University. This is vintage Mignolo: packed with insights,
breadth, and intellectual zeal."--Jos David Saldvar,
University of California, Berkeley
This book is an extended argument on the "coloniality" of
power by one of the most innovative scholars of Latin American
studies. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as
East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo
points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences
and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of
"colonial difference" into study of the modern colonial
world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge,
which he calls "border thinking."
Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way
in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by employing the terms
and concerns of New World scholarship. His concept of "border
gnosis," or what is known from the perspective of an
empire's borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist
perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.
The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with
epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with
the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the
languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces
the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization
and argues that, rather than one "civilizing" process
dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices
break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural
imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization
and mundializacion, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border
epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.
Table of contents:
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction On Gnosis and the Imaginary of the Modern/Colonial
World System
PART ONE: IN SEARCH OF AN OTHER LOGIC
Border Thinking and the Colonial Difference
PART TWO: I AM WHERE I THINK: THE GEOPOLITICS
OF KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIAL EPISTEMIC DIFFERENCES
Post-Occidental Reason: The Crisis of Occidentalism and the
Emergenc(y)e of Border
Thinking
Human Understanding and Local Interests: Occidentalism and the
(Latin) American
Argument
Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and
Sensibilities
of Geohistorical Locations
PART THREE: SUBALTERNITY AND THE COLONIAL
DIFFERENCE: LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND KNOWLEDGES
``An Other Tongue'': Linguistics Maps,
Literary Geographies, Cultural Landscapes
Bilanguaging Love: Thinking in between
Languages
Globalization/Mundializacion: Civilizing
Processes and the Relocation of Languages and Knowledges
Afterword An Other Tongue, An Other Thinking,
An Other Logic
Bibliography
Index
"Walter Mignolo, one of America's most eminent
postcolonialists, presents a challenging new paradigm for
understanding the realities of a planetary 'coloniality of
power,' and the limits of area studies in the United States.
Local History/Global Designs is one of the most important books in
the historical humanities to have emerged since the end of the Cold
War University. This is vintage Mignolo: packed with insights,
breadth, and intellectual zeal."--José David Saldívar,
University of California, Berkeley
Postmodernism would remain Eurocentric without a counteracting postcoloniality--without the subaltern rationality that Mignolo sees emerging at the border of modernity/coloniality. -- Barry Allen Common Knowledge
Inhaltsangabe
Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction On Gnosis and the Imaginary of the Modern/Colonial World System PART ONE: IN SEARCH OF AN OTHER LOGIC Border Thinking and the Colonial Difference PART TWO: I AM WHERE I THINK: THE GEOPOLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIAL EPISTEMIC DIFFERENCES Post-Occidental Reason: The Crisis of Occidentalism and the Emergenc(y)e of Border Thinking Human Understanding and Local Interests: Occidentalism and the (Latin) American Argument Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and Sensibilities of Geohistorical Locations PART THREE: SUBALTERNITY AND THE COLONIAL DIFFERENCE: LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND KNOWLEDGES "An Other Tongue": Linguistics Maps, Literary Geographies, Cultural Landscapes Bilanguaging Love: Thinking in between Languages Globalization/Mundializacion: Civilizing Processes and the Relocation of Languages and Knowledges Afterword An Other Tongue, An Other Thinking, An Other Logic Bibliography Index
