Coloniality of power

The coloniality of power is a concept interrelating the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies, decoloniality, and Latin American subaltern studies, most prominently by Anibal Quijano. It identifies and describes the living legacy of colonialism in contemporary societies in the form of social discrimination that outlived formal colonialism and became integrated in succeeding social orders. The concept identifies the racial, political and social hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism in Latin America that prescribed value to certain peoples/societies while disenfranchising others. The coloniality of power is a concept interrelating the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies, decoloniality, and Latin American subaltern studies, most prominently by Anibal Quijano. It identifies and describes the living legacy of colonialism in contemporary societies in the form of social discrimination that outlived formal colonialism and became integrated in succeeding social orders. The concept identifies the racial, political and social hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism in Latin America that prescribed value to certain peoples/societies while disenfranchising others. Quijano argues that the colonial structure of power resulted in a caste system, where Spaniards were ranked at the top and those that they conquered at the bottom due to their different phenotypic traits and a culture presumed to be inferior. This categorization resulted in a persistent categorical and discriminatory discourse that was reflected in the social and economic structure of the colony, and that continues to be reflected in the structure of modern postcolonial societies. Maria Lugones expands the definition of coloniality of power by noting that it imposes values and expectations on gender as well, in particular related to the European ranking of women as inferior to men. The concept was also expanded upon by Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter Mignolo, Sylvia Wynter, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Santiago Castro-Gómez, Catherine Walsh, and Roberto Hernández. Quijano's work on the subject 'had wide repercussions among Latin American decolonial scholars in the North American academy.' The modernity/coloniality group is an active network of intellectuals spanning generations and disciplines that are expanding on this work. Coloniality of power takes three forms: systems of hierarchies, systems of knowledge, and cultural systems. The important distinction in the concept of coloniality of power is the ways that this heterogeneous structural process shaped the modern world. While modernity is certainly a European phenomenon, it was forged through and is constitutive of what Enrique Dussel has called 'the invention of the Americas,' or the colonization of the Americas beginning in 1492. Coloniality of power reveals the hidden side of modernity and the modern/colonial/capitalist-world system which is entangled with and constitutive of an international division of labor between Europeans and non-Europeans. The systems of hierarchies posited by Quijano are systems based on racial classification and difference. Quijano writes that the creation of race was a calculated creation by European and American colonialists. In this racial structure inferiority and superiority was ascribed based on phenotypes and skin colors, what colonialists claimed to be innate biological traits. This system was the outcome of a Eurocentric view that reinforced the justification for the domination of Europeans, overriding the previously used gender-based domination systems. As Lugones points out, however, the gender-based domination system did not disappear, but was integrated into the race-based hierarchical domination system. The importance of the systems of hierarchies was not merely symbolic, but was instead economic. A racial division of labor was built around the hierarchies created, resulting in a system of serfdom for the majority of native people. Existing differences were exploited in the formation of these hierarchies. Quijano (p. 536) notes that: 'In some cases, the Indian nobility, a reduced minority, was exempted from serfdom and received special treatment owing to their roles as intermediaries with the dominant race... However, blacks were reduced to slavery.' Coloniality of power is based on a Eurocentric system of knowledge, in which race is seen as 'naturalization of colonial relations between Europeans and non-Europeans. The Eurocentric system of knowledge assigned production of knowledge to Europeans and prioritized the use of European ways of knowledge production. Quijano writes, 'Europe’s hegemony over the new model of global power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity, culture,and especially knowledge and the production of knowledge under its hegemony.' This resulted in a simultaneous denial of knowledge production to the conquered peoples and repression of traditional modes of knowledge production, on the basis of the superiority/inferiority relationship enforced by the hierarchical structure. The third element of coloniality of power is the creation of cultural systems that revolve around a Eurocentric hierarchy and that enforce Eurocentric economic and knowledge production systems. The concept of coloniality of power as illustrated by Quijano, Grosfuguel and others describes the existing global neoliberal system of capital and labor and locates its roots in the racist, patriarchal logic of the colonial system. The cultural systems created under coloniality of power presume that European cultures are the only truly modern cultures, based on characteristics of modernity like capitalist economic systems, rationality, neoliberalism, and science. These cultural systems enforce Eurocentric norms through the use of the state and the economic system. One example of this type of repression is the Chilean Mapuche culture, in which genders are interchangeable and combinable, not static and prescribed like in Chilean mainstream culture (reflective of Eurocentric norms) The enforcement of the gender binary by the state, which correlates the masculine with the political sphere and the feminine with the private sphere, has had the effect of repressing the Machi gender expression. Many Mapuche men now refuse to identify themselves using their native gender identity as a way to adapt to a heterosexual binary. Thus, a cultural system has been created by forced imposition of Eurocentric values that is in opposition to the existing values.