The Politics of Decolonial Investigations

Walter D. Mignolo's book "The Politics of Decolonial Investigations" explores how coloniality has shaped the world from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century,eradicating non-European languages and practices. He traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and gendered classifications,modernity,globalization,and cosmopolitanism and emphasizes the urgent task of epistemic reconstitution to overcome the hegemony of the West.

Format: Hardback
Length: 736 pages
Publication date: 27 August 2021
Publisher: Duke University Press

Walter D. Mignolo's groundbreaking work, "The Politics of Decolonial Investigations," delves into the intricate workings of coloniality across centuries, examining its diverse manifestations from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Through the lens of decolonial border thinking, Mignolo unveils how Western civilization's self-serving narratives and Eurocentric hegemony have erased non-European languages, living practices, and ways of being. He also traces the geopolitical roots of racialized and gendered classifications, modernity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, placing them within the framework of coloniality. By drawing on the insights of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the Global South and the Global East, Mignolo demonstrates how coloniality has sparked the emergence of decolonial politics, which involves disengaging from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. He emphasizes the urgent task of epistemic reconstitution, reclaiming categories of thought and praxes that have been marginalized in the process of building Western civilization and modernity. Mignolo underscores that the dismantling of the West's long-standing hegemony and its distorted legacies is underway in various aspects of human existence. He highlights the relevance of decolonial investigations, both within and outside academia, in liberating individuals from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing, and practices of living.

Weight: 1134g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478001140