Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge PDF
Preview Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge
Constructing the Pluriverse Constructing the Duke University Press · Durham and London · 2018 Pluriverse bernd reiter, editor The Geopolitics of Knowledge © 2018 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro and DIN by Westchester Publishing Services. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Reiter, Bernd, [date– ] editor. Title: Constructing the pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge / Bernd Reiter, editor. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2017060938 (print) | lccn 2018000304 (ebook) isbn 9781478002017 (ebook) isbn 9781478000013 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9781478000167 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Civilization, Western. | Civilization, Modern. | Decolonization. | Postcolonialism. | Imperialism. | Knowledge, Theory of. | Science— Philosophy. | Social sciences— Philosophy. Classification: lcc cb245 (ebook) | lcc cb245 .c66 2018 (print) | ddc 909/.09821— dc23 lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017060938 Cover art: Soft Geometry, Marta Minujín. Courtesy of Marta Minujín Archives. Contents Foreword · On Pluriversality and Multipolarity · ix walter d. mignolo Introduction · 1 bernd reiter Part I. Toward the Pluriverse 1 · Meeting at the Edge of Fear: Theory on a World Scale · 19 raewyn connell 2 · One Planet, Many Sciences · 39 sandra harding 3 · Transition Discourses and the Politics of Relationality: Toward Designs for the Pluriverse · 6 3 arturo escobar 4 · On Pluriversality and Multipolar World Order: Decoloniality after Decolonization; Dewesternization after the Cold War · 90 walter d. mignolo 5 · Internationalism and Speaking for Others: What Struggling against Neoliberal Globalization Taught Me about Epistemology · 1 17 aram ziai Part II. Other Ontologies 6 · Local Aquatic Epistemologies among Black Communities on Colombia’s Pacific Coast and the Pluriverse · 137 ulrich oslender 7 · The Griots of West Africa: Oral Tradition and Ancestral Knowledge · 151 issiaka ouattara 8 · Experimenting with Freedom: Gandhi’s Po liti cal Epistemology · 168 manu samnotra 9 · Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)Colonial Entanglements · 184 catherine walsh Part III. Other Sciences and Epistemologies 10 · Ca rib bean Eu rope: Out of Sight, out of Mind? · 197 manuela boatcă 11 · How Spinoza and Elias Help to Decenter Our Understanding of Development: A Methodical Research Proposal on the Pluriverse · 219 hans- jürgen burchardt 12 · In Quest of Indigenous Epistemology: Some Notes on a Fourteenth- Century Muslim Scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) · 240 zaid ahmad 13 · Anekāntavāda: The Jaina Epistemology · 2 59 venu mehta Part IV. Rethinking Politics, Democracy, and Markets 14 · First People of the Amer i cas: Lessons on Democracy, Citizenship, and Politics · 279 bernd reiter 15 · Iran’s Path toward Islamic Reformism: A Study of Religious Intellectual Discourse · 298 ehsan kashfi Conclusion · 313 bernd reiter Contributors · 3 19 Index · 325 This page intentionally left blank walter d. mignolo Foreword. On Pluriversality and Multipolarity Over a fourteen- to fifteen- year span starting in 1995, I used the concept of pluriversality in many instances in my work.1 I first heard of the concept dur- ing the early years of the Zapatista uprising. Franz Hinkelammert introduced the concept, as far as I know, and Enrique Dussel was using it during that pe- riod, and it fit perfectly well with the idea of pluritopic hermeneutics that I had borrowed from Raymundo Pannikar—an idea that became central to my argument in The Darker Side of the Re nais sance (Mignolo 1995). But it was the Zapatistas’ own decolonial po liti cal vision of a world in which many worlds would coexist that announced the pluriverse. The ontology of the pluriverse could not be obtained without the epistemology of pluriversity. Epistemology and hermeneutics, in the Western genealogy of thought, in- vestigate and regulate the princi ples of knowledge, on the one hand, and the princi ples of interpretation, on the other. Both strains are embedded in the self- proclaimed universality of Western cosmology and act as its gatekeepers. Together, epistemology and hermeneutics prevent the possibility of pluriver- sality, with all its internal diversity, and close off ways of thinking and doing that are not grounded in Western cosmology. The way out is the decolonial restoration of gnoseology fueling the march toward pluriversality. When you— scholar, intellectual, journalist, or some such, trained in West- ern epistemology— have to navigate two or more cosmologies, as I had to while writing The Darker Side of the Re nais sance, you need a point of reference that is contained in neither epistemology nor hermeneutics. I had recourse to the concept of pluritopic hermeneutics, which I adapted from Raimon Panikkar’s (2017) diatopical hermeneutics. Although hermeneutics is retained, it is also reduced to size and to its restricted domain: namely, the provincial, universal assumptions sustaining Western cosmology. Gnoseology came to the rescue and I introduced it l ater on in Local Histories/Global Designs (Mignolo 2012c). Why did Panikkar need diatopical hemeneutics, and why did I need pluritopic hermeneutics? Because I was dealing with a pluriverse of meaning. Pluriversality became my key argument for calling into question the concept of universality, so dear to Western cosmology. How so? Western epistemology and hermeneutics (meaning the Greek and Latin languages, translated into the
The list of books you might like
