D.A. Wood

En este artículo analizo y cartografío algunos de los varios problemas conceptuales y ilosóicos pertinentes a los discursos relacionados con la «descolonización epistémica». Estas discusiones ocurren en un amplio espectro de disciplinas y muchas veces implican ambigüedades o desacuerdos abiertos sobre puntos fundamentales. Este artículo ofrece una explicación de porqué la (des)colonización epistémica es un problema en primer lugar y pone en evidencia algunas de las diferencias claves entre varios enfoques distintos a la descolonización del conocimiento. La presente aclaración, airmo, es crucial para vincular proyectos de descolonización teórica a programas políticos concretos y para superar un enfoque prima facie para la descolonización del conocimiento.

En este artículo propongo que algunas historias biopolíticas contemporáneas heredan ilosofías de historia problemáticas, cuyas fronteras recapitulan maneras coloniales de pensar. En la primera parte, asevero que las ilosofías de historia que operan al fondo de la presentación agambeniana y foucaultiana no pueden ser mantenidas en su simplicidad occidental. Contra esto, sugiero una radicalización del método genealógico y una posición antirrealista con respecto a «Occidente». En la segunda sección, uso los métodos de Amílcar Cabral por descolonizar la historia y muestro las maneras como su socialismo revolucionario en Guinea-Bissau y Cabo Verde actualmente operan como un ejemplo de la biopolítica. Un análisis de la biopolítica socialista en Luso-África de Cabral y el PAIGC no solamente pone en duda las fronteras histórico-geográicas establecidas por Foucault y Agamben, sino que también cuestiona algunas de sus proposiciones fundamentales, especialmente las que tratan del racismo.

The present essay examines three apparent contradictions to arise in Fanon’s work regarding his operative critique of religion, ontology, and theory of truth. I review some of the prevailing evaluations of these apparent contradictions, and then argue that said interpretations of Fanon do not stand up to close textual and historical scrutiny. I then dissolve the aforementioned apparent contradictions and provide more adequate approaches to interpreting their theoretical significance in such a way as to highlight the internal coherence and force of Fanon’s philosophical vision.

European colonization played a major role in the acquisition, formation, and destruction of different ways of knowing. Recently, many scholars and activists have come to ask: Are there ways in which knowledge might be decolonized? Epistemic Decolonization examines a variety of such projects from a critical and philosophical perspective. The book introduces the unfamiliar reader to the wide variety of approaches to the topic at hand, providing concrete examples along the way. It argues that the predominant contemporary approach to epistemic decolonization leads one into various intractable theoretical and practical problems. The book then closely investigates the political and scientific work of Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, demonstrating how their philosophical commitments can help lead one out of the practical and theoretical issues faced by the current, predominant orientation, and concludes by forging links between their work and that of some contemporary feminist epistemologists.

In the present essay, I argue that portions of Frantz Fanon’s L’an V de la révolution algérienne significantly contribute to, develop, and advance the Marxian theory of commodity fetishism. First, I describe and chart Fanon’s theorization of the transformations of the veil, the radio, and medicine in revolutionary Algeria, and map the homologous moments of each of these studies. Next, I give a brief synopsis of Marx’s account of commodity fetishism and argue that this theory leaves open questions about the way in which use-value plays a role in commodity fetishization in colonial contexts, and, by extension, in actual anticolonial political revolutions. The foregoing then paves the way for a re-evaluation of the central insights of Fanon’s studies of the veil, the radio, and medicine.

How can a people overthrow 500 years of colonial oppression? What can be done to decolonize mentalities, economic structures, and political institutions? In this book, which includes the first translation of the text 'Analysis of a Few Types of Resistance' as well as 'The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence,' the African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral explores these and other questions. These texts demonstrate his frank and insightful directives to his comrades in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde's party for independence, as well as reflections on culture and combat written the year prior to his assassination by the Portuguese secret police. As one of the most important and profound African revolutionary leaders in the 20th century, and justly compared in importance to Frantz Fanon, Cabral's thoughts and instructions as articulated here help us to rethink important issues concerning nationalism, culture, vanguardism, revolution, liberation, colonialism, race, and history. The volume also includes two introductory essays: the first introduces Cabral's work within the context of Africana critical theory, and the second situates these texts in their historical-political context and analyzes their relevance for contemporary anti-imperialism.