The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (On Decoloniality) by Mignolo Walter D

Author:Mignolo, Walter D. [Mignolo, Walter D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2021-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

III    Maps Don’t Equal the Territory

Geopolitical naming and mapping are fictions insofar as they suggest that this naming and marking of territories and boundaries is unproblematic and uncontested. To be clear: the decolonial option (as much as the scientific and the historical options) is constituted also by fictions, fictions built on the assumptions of a pattern of management and control construed as the CMP as much as quantum theory (quantum physics and quantum mechanics) is put together on the assumptions that the behavior of matter and energy can be explained at the atomic and subatomic levels.

Any rational theory, whether we go with Nelson Goodman (ways of world-making) or Humberto Maturana (everything said is said by an observer) or Max Planck (quantum mechanics), is founded and sustained on nonrational assumptions, on intuitions and emotional beliefs. Disciplinary theories, in sciences and the humanities as well in our daily expressions or defenses of our ideas, even if our arguments are strongly rational, are based on our nonrational beliefs. No one is convinced by arguments if the arguments do not touch the emotional chords of the person being persuaded. This also means that the human species has built (and continues to build) cosmologies based on assumptions that do not correspond with anything “real”; on the contrary, whatever may be considered real is an imaginary entity built on the basis of nonrational assumptions. But once “real” and “objective” became keywords sustaining the coloniality of knowledge, they shored up the arguments to convince and became synonymous with “true” and with “history.” Once those beliefs are brought to light, it becomes evident that we humans live among “options,” among narratives (including theological and scientific narratives), which, when seen from the assumptions of someone (be they an actor or an institution) claiming to be objectively real, are fictions. Therefore, the perspective of the decolonial option argues that any claims of reality, objectivity, truth, or history are as much options as the decolonial option, in the sense that they are narratives, storytelling framing and arguing a given option (e.g., science, religion, literature, philosophy, art, etc.), each option claiming its own truth. Decolonially speaking, none have the right to claim the Truth. Or, to put it other way, each option can claim its own truth, but the pretense of being the Truth is by now totally out of place. The decolonial is as much an option as quantum theory and the Bible. The particular power of the decolonial option is that by claiming to be an option it makes of everything else an option. These are all frameworks that sustain our faith in the accuracy of what we see and believe. These frameworks are what I am calling “options.” Decoloniality is an option among other options. The domain of knowing and knowledge holds the CMP together through its avatars, transformations, and disputes.

Maps are signs, and signs have creators. Signs are never isolated; they belong to a frame, a grammar, a context, or a set of beliefs that make their meaning understandable. Names are signs.

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