The Obfuscations of Coloniality

Abstract

In decolonial theory, the foundational concept is ‘coloniality’. Introduced by the late Peruvian heterodox Marxist sociologist and dependency theorist Aníbal Quijano (1928-2018) in an article in a little known Peruvian academic journal in 1992, the concept has since been widely disseminated and applied to highly variegated historical and societal contexts. ‘Coloniality’ is regarded as having emerged from the encounter between European colonisers and indigenous populations in Latin America in 1492, as being anchored in European racial classifications (racism), and as having generated both modernity and capitalism. ‘Coloniality’ is cast as being omnipresent, and as being ‘controlled’ by ‘the West’. It is a master concept that seeks to replace the term colonialism in various disciplines, and it is both deterministic and reductionist. In this article, I will first introduce the concept and its uses in decolonial theory, before introducing some of the emergent critical literature on the concept. This body of work inter alia raises the question as to whether later decolonial theorists, in implying that colonialism was only ever ‘Western’ and ‘European’, have been true to Quijano’s original 1992 text, and to Quijano’s ‘heterodox Marxism’.