ANTHROPOLOGY /AMERICAN LITERATURE Local Histories/Global Designs ‘Local Histories/Global Designs , Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking mind Mar 3 E PARTE OSCIDENTAL PRINCETONEDITORS Sherry B. Ortner, Nicholas B. Dirks, Geotl Eley ALISt OF TITLES [IN THIS SERIES APPEARS PRINCETON STUDIES IN CULTURE / POWER / Hi LOCAL HISTORIES/GLOBAL DESIGNS COLONIALITY, SUBALTERN KNOWLEDGES, AND BORDER THINKING Walter D. Mignolo With a new preface by the author ~~ enemas [‘To Andrea and Alexander FOR ALL THE CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE, MANY OF THEM RELATED To THE TOPIC AIL RightsReserved 1 [BOOK WHEN IT WAS STILLIN PROGRESS ist printing, ist paperboc, Paperback reissue with anew prefice, 2012 To Anne ‘Library of Congress Contol Number 2012935558 FOR MAKING THOSE CONVERSATIONS POSSIBLE, AND FOR NER ISBN 978-0691-15609-5, papers ‘Pate inthe United States of America 13579108642Contents Preface to the 2012 Edition Preface and Acknowledgments Introdu On Gnosis and the Imaginary of the Modern/Colonial World System PART ONE: IN SEARCH OF AN OTHER LOGIC Chapter 1 Border Thinking and the Colonial Difference PART TWO: I AM WHERE I THINK: THE GEOPOLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIAL EPISTEMIC DIFFERENCES Chapter 2 Post-Occidental Reason: The Crisis of Occidentalism and the Emergene(y)e of Border Thinking Chapter 3 Human Understanding and Local Interests: Cccidentalism and the (Latin) American Angument PART THREE: SUBALTERNITY AND THE COLONIAL DIFFERENCE: LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND KNOWLEDGES Chapter 5 “An Other Tongue”: Linguisties Maps, Literary Geographies, Cultural Landscapes Chapter 6 Bilanguaging Love: Thinking in between Languages ‘Chapter 7 Globalization/Mundializacion: Ci Processes and the Relocation of Languages and Knowledges 8 9 1 a7 12 27 250 278.vil contents Afterword ‘An Other Tongue, An Other Thinking, An Other Logie Bibliography Index — 313 339 367 Preface to the 2012 Edition LOCAL HISTORIES/GLOBAL DESIGNS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY This book was published right at the edge of two centuries in the year 2000. In fact, Western civilization had constructed its own history, had assumed the history of the planet was its property too and that it was the point ig it onto universal history, which in ory of preexisting and, since the Re- naissance, coexisting civilizations. ‘These were some of the concerns that motivated and sustained the argu ment framed in Local Histories/Global Designs. The “/° that divides and thinking, for, from the there is no modemity without coloniality and that ‘of modemity. This is the basic Opsions(Ducha: Duke University Press, 2012), chapterx PREFACE TO THE 2012 EDITION ‘Lam aware that many readers would feel uncomfortable with a descrip- of Western civilization as a homogenous entity, particularly now that, or, to be more precise, with “globalism” tha are broken and trades fly over the borders and migrants manage to crack the ‘walls and move around police forces to enter developing countries and blur the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations, Chri Islam, Latin and Anglo America, and Africa and Europe. In janity and ‘managed and built the modern/colonial world in the name of the universal- ity of Western values. However, during the period 1500 to 2000, one local history, that of West- em civilization, built itself as the point of arrival and owner of human his- tory Ownership was expressed by building a system of knowledge as if it were the sum and guardian of all knowledges, past and present—G.WE, Hegels lessons in the philosophy of history remain the single and most tell- ing document of istemic victory. But this cycle is ending, and today there are strong planet-wide and diverse (not monolithic) tendencies in the “writing of local histories that go beyond one history anchored in Greece and Rome; a tendency toward delinking from the myth of universal history that hhas kept them prisoner and affirming that there are no histories other than local, Recent attempts to recast “universal history" evince the nostalgic ‘dream of imperial control of the past. Nevertheless, non-Western local his- Loris (and knowledges) cannot be constituted without entanglements with ‘Western local history. Border thinking becomes, then, the necessary episte- link and decolonize knowledge and, in the process, to build local histories, restoring the dignity that the Western idea of uni- versal history took away from millions of people. Taking away people's dig- nity means that the entire sphere of life was attempted to be modeled around ‘one supreme idea of life and the ‘mono culture of the mind," to use an ex- pression of Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva shall mention once more that my discomfort with modernity and West- em civilization (two faces of the same phenomenon) is not ‘modernity’ contribution to global history, but rather lief shat the rest ofthe world shall subm at the unfolding of world history has been of o - cof necessity, lead to a present that corresponds to the Western knowledge. Or, worded differently, knowledge explains its success cscs PREFACE To Tus 2012 EDITION xi comfort with capitalist economy, an economy that puts growth before life Se — id Germany. From one to the next the 5 oo , in chapter 2 of seetion 2 (*The Greek fiction—the totalizing force appropriating al, knowledges under “absolute knowledge.” 438. Reason becomes: as being all reality In the Hegel taught by writing a paragraph of text on the Board and developing ls meaning and pleat lecture, The mummbered paragraphs present basi formulations of Heyes sysce.xii PREFACE TO THE 2012 EDITION an existent object. From this it rose to a stage in whic pissively perceived itself in an object, but imposed itself more ‘world, a stage as one-sided as the previous one. 440, Spirit isthe absolutly real being of which all previous forms of con- sciousness have represented falsely iso evelopment bas shown them to be. In the previous stages of observational and active Reason, Spirit has rather had reason than been Reason: It as i posed i tegory on material not intrisically categorized. When S + stes itself and its world as being Reason it becomes ethical substance act ind (Phenomenology of the Spirit) Spirits goals and trajectory thus imagined and the srojection of his own in Europe. He took his and for the European reader who identifies him- ‘was indeed a wonder- ful consequence of a local of Hegel, in China, in ‘Aymaras and Nahuatls not remain stuck in the beginning of the sixteenth century), sould have been a very strange fellow. described according to Hegels own concerns: the einain a prisoner of the forces that the European Enlightenment fought hard to overcome. This was precisely what “enlightenment* meant—man’ (and the spirits) freedom from immaturity ing Freedom. lites of inquiring whether Spirit was part 3 of the book. Hegel identifies the first then India, Persia, and Egypt, until the decisive reaches Greece, several centuries after its beginning in to Germany there is only one step. The first sentence of put 2 is the following: “Among the Greeks] we feel ourselves immedi ately at home, for we are in the region of the Spirit” (223). Notice that “ourselves” doesn't include Chinese, Muslims, Indians (of India), Africans, ‘Ayntaras, and so forth, The “ourselves” refers to Christian Europeans in sec- ular Europe, fon: Oxford Univesty PREFACE TO Ty 2012 EDITION it want to underscore by recalling Hegel’ lessons in the philoso- cory is the Enlightenment version of the colonization of time and space. The first version took place in the Renaissance: the invention of the Middle Ages and antiquity became the bhieprint for the European idea of a universal historical chronology. The conquest and colonization of the New “New World zation of space. The space and to Germany was the space of the before, and the space where now the ts civilizing missions. In the new stage of modernity and 1g mission” led by En- is also the south of Europe, when its phenomenolo; phy, is a spectacular case ofa global ory: the ial and ideological presuppositions underlying the knowledge” are ob \bsolute knowledge” is a rounding, Hegel himself did i ‘what he said about the spirit. By open- 's of knowledge” and of the enunciation, , Persians, and Egyptians saw themselves in the past, during the time of Hegel, enunciations in the local histories Hegel’ spiri ‘march toward the West? None of the side of Europe ended after the spi the tions never stop thinking, but not thinking about the spirit, because the “Note that “New Worl here does ot mean “Ameri,” but ather Europe fromthe Ref cormation to Hegels time,