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Walter MignoloThoughts on modernity/coloniality, geopolitics of knowledge, border thinking, pluriversality,

and the decolonial option.

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On Pluriversality

The piece below was written in rsponse to a question formulated by Arturo Escobar, Marisol de

la Cadena and Mario Blaser. Marisol, Mario and Arturo are starting a project investigating the

various uses of the concept of pluriverse. They asked me how I stumbled into the concept and
http://waltermignolo.com/http://waltermignolo.com/http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=49http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=49http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=54http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=54http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=9http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=9http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=6http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=6http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=10http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=10http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=10http://waltermignolo.com/?page_id=6http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=9http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=54http://waltermignolo.com/?cat=49http://waltermignolo.com/


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how I used and use it. In responding to them i ended up writing a sort of auto-biographic op-ed

on pluriversality.

Here it is:

The first time I used the concept of pluriverse was in a series of conferences between 1996

and 1998 , which was finally published in 2000 in Binghamton REVIEW, the journal of the

Fernand Braudel Center , in the title ofThe Zapatistas Theoretical Revolution. Its

consequences historical, political and epistemological.It appeared as a chapter slightly revised,

inThe Darker Side of Western Modenrnity, 2011. Which means that during the 14/5 years

span the concept of pluriversality was used in many instances of my work. I heard about it

during the early years of the Zapatistas uprising. Franz Hinkelammert and Enrique Dussel were

using the term and it fitted perfectly well perfectly well with the idea of pluritopic

hermeneuticsI borrowed from Raymundo Pannikar and became a crucial concept in The

Darker Side of the Renaissance.(1995 ).

Hermeneutics, in Western genealogy of thoughts, names a type of reflection on meaning and

interpretation within one cosmology, Western cosmology. When you have to deal with two or

more cosmologies, as i did in The Darker Side of the Renaissance, you need a pluritopic

hermeneutics. Why? Because you are dealing with a pluriverse of meaning and not onli with a

universe of meaning. Pluriversality became my key arguments to call into question the concept

of universality, so dear to Western cosmology.How so? Western epistemology and

hermeneutics (meaning Greek and Latin languages translated into the six modern European and

imperial languages) managed universalize its own concept of universality dismissing the fact

that all known civilizations are founded on the universality of his own cosmology.

There is no reason to believe that theBibleis universal and thePopol Vuh is not. The

universalization of universality in the West was part of its imperial project .So then a key ideain Local Histories / Global Designs(2000/2012) was pluriversality as a universal

project. That is the universal can only be pluriversal, which also matched the Zapatistas idea

of a world in which many world would coexist. We, in the planet, had arrived at the end of the

era of abstract universals, that is of one universal universality.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://antropologias.descentro.org/files/downloads/2012/06/Walter-Mignolo-The-Darker-Side-Of-Western-Modernity.pdfhttp://antropologias.descentro.org/files/downloads/2012/06/Walter-Mignolo-The-Darker-Side-Of-Western-Modernity.pdfhttp://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttq94t0http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttq94t0http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttq94t0http://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://www.academia.edu/4010366/On_Pluritopic_Hermeneutics_Transmodern_THinking_and_Decolonial_Philosophyhttp://antropologias.descentro.org/files/downloads/2012/06/Walter-Mignolo-The-Darker-Side-Of-Western-Modernity.pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40241550?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102791249913


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Pluriversality is not cultural relativism, but entanglement of several cosmologies connected

today in a power differential. That power differential is the logic of coloniality covered up by the

rhetorical narrative of modernity. Modernity is a fiction that carries in it the seed of Western

pretense to universality.Expanding on that line of reasoning, it was necessary to introduce aconcept that capture the / of modernity/coloniality, that is, the / of the entanglement and

power differential. And that concept was rendered as border thinking, border epistemology,

border gnosis.

If a pluriverse is not a world of independent units (cultural relativism) but a world entangled

through and by the colonial matrix of power, then, it a way of thinking and understanding that

dwells in the entanglement, in the borders, is needed. So the point is not to study the borders,

very fashionable today, while at the same time dwelling in a territorial epistemology, would

imply that you accept a pluriverse some place out there that you observe from some place else

outside the pluriverse.

To do so it is necessary to maintain the territoriality of the disciplines grounded on the

imperial epistemology of modernity. Thinking pluritopically means, instead, to dwell in the

border. Dwelling in the border is not border-crossing, even less looking and studying the borders

from the territorial gaze of the disciplines. Today border study became fashionable, even in

Europe. Scholars studying borders are in general not dwelling in them. Who dwell in the borderare the migrants from Africa, West Asia and Latin America, mainly. Thats what I learned from

Anzalda. Chicanos and Chiacanas are migrants and queers, migrants or not, are always dwelling

in the border.

I think the impact that Local Histories / Global Designswas writing in inhabiting the border

not just observing and describing it. I revealed in the preface to the second edition (2012) that the

argument was a rewriting of Hegels philosophy of history inhabiting the border.So that border

epistemology became the way, as in Buddhism, or the method, as in Western sciences, social ornot, of decolonial thinking and doing. A key point to move away from the trap that distinguishes

theory from praxis. Reflexive praxis is, instead, the motu at Amawtay Wasi. Why, because the

very education project is built on border epistemology. The overall world-sense is Indigenous

and Andean cosmology, not rejecting Indigenous European cosmology but em-bodied it in


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Andean cosmology.

Border thinking is why take the effort to combine the body with writing, writing with the

body and not just in the body, combine the heart with the mind, senti-pensar (feeling-thinking) asthey say in Ecuador .In theIn the Darker Side of Western Modernity i returned to the idea of

pluriversality connecting it with the idea of multiverse in Humberto Maturanas epistemology.

The multiverse is for Maturana a world of truth in parenthesis while the universeis a world built

on truth without parenthesis. Uni-verality is always imperial and war-driven. Pluri and multi

verses and convivial, dialogical or plurilogical. Now pluri- and multi-verses exists independent

of the state and the corporations and it is the work of the emerging global political society, e.g.,

the sector of society organizing themselves around specific projects once they/we realize thatneither the state nor the corporations have room for multi- or pluriverses.

While multi and pluriverses characterizes the making of the global political society, in the

realm of the state and the corporations the vocabulary is that of multipolar world.The multi-

polar world of today has been opened up by the economic growth and political confidence of

Chinas inter-state politics, together with the BRICS and the growing economies and politics of

Indonesia and Turkey, the Latin American states in Mercosur following the leadership of Brazil,

member of BRICS countries. When Vladimir Putin stole Barack Obama menace of invadingSyria, it was evident that the unipolar world that made possible the invasion of Iraq is not longer

in place. And it seems obvious also that Putins chess move was possible because of the support

of BRICS alliance of which he is the current chair. Thus, I would like to use pluriverse in the

sphere ofdecolonialprojects coming from the global political society

(desracializinganddepatriarchalizingprojects, food sovereignity,economic organization of

reciprocity and definancializaiton of money,decolonization of knowledge and of

being,decolonization of religion to liberate spirituality,decolonization of aesthetics to liberateaesthesis,etc., etc., etc.) and multi-polarity in the sphere of politico-

economicdewesternization, lead states projects.
http://waltermignolo.com/occidente-surveying-the-present-re-reading-the-past-building-pluriversal-futures/http://waltermignolo.com/occidente-surveying-the-present-re-reading-the-past-building-pluriversal-futures/http://waltermignolo.com/occidente-surveying-the-present-re-reading-the-past-building-pluriversal-futures/http://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/desracializinghttp://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/desracializinghttp://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/desracializinghttp://gradworks.umi.com/35/22/3522480.htmlhttp://gradworks.umi.com/35/22/3522480.htmlhttp://www.foodsovereignty.org/http://www.foodsovereignty.org/http://www.foodsovereignty.org/http://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Kwasi_Wiredu_Toward_Decolonizing_African_Philosophy_And_Religionhttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Kwasi_Wiredu_Toward_Decolonizing_African_Philosophy_And_Religionhttp://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://waltermignolo.com/dheli-2012-la-desoccidentalizacion-los-brics-y-la-distribucion-racial-del-capital/http://waltermignolo.com/dheli-2012-la-desoccidentalizacion-los-brics-y-la-distribucion-racial-del-capital/http://waltermignolo.com/dheli-2012-la-desoccidentalizacion-los-brics-y-la-distribucion-racial-del-capital/http://waltermignolo.com/dheli-2012-la-desoccidentalizacion-los-brics-y-la-distribucion-racial-del-capital/http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Kwasi_Wiredu_Toward_Decolonizing_African_Philosophy_And_Religionhttp://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://www.rtve.es/television/20131009/documentos-tv-monedas-cambio/760907.shtmlhttp://www.foodsovereignty.org/http://gradworks.umi.com/35/22/3522480.htmlhttp://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/desracializinghttp://waltermignolo.com/occidente-surveying-the-present-re-reading-the-past-building-pluriversal-futures/


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Posted On

October 20, 2013

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Decolonial ThoughtsOp-edsUncategorized

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Walter D. Mignolo is an Argentine semiotician (cole des Hautes tudes) and professor at DukeUniversity, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and worked ondifferent aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality,the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity, border thinking, and pluriversality

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