John Cabot University

Department of Political Science

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science

Minor in Philosophy

Shifting Paradigms: Walter Mignolo’s Decolonial Project through Michel

Foucault

Florencia Garcia de Onrubia

First Reader Second Reader

Tom Bailey Lars Rensmann

Spring 2013

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the tension between Walter Mignolo’s

decolonial theory and how it uses and/or rejects Michel Foucault’s studies on power, both

sovereign power and biopower. I will look at the differences between disciplinary power

and biopolitics and Mignolo’s approach to both concepts, and to what extent these can be

applied in Latin American resistance to hegemony. As a de-colonial author, Mignolo may

seem to reject Foucault initially because he comes from a hegemonic locus of

enunciation, but there is an evident influence of Foucault in Mignolo’s work that creates

a more complex discourse worthy of investigation. Furthermore, Mignolo’s concept of

border thinking provides a way to slip between the borders of academic knowledge,

creating a unique tension between being inside and outside of coloniality.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction...................................................................................................................... 3

2 Walter Mignolo................................................................................................................ 6

I. The Decolonial Approach............................................................................................ 6

II. Modernity and the Colonial Difference ..................................................................... 8

III. Democracy as an Imperial Project .......................................................................... 13

IV. Border Thinking ..................................................................................................... 16

V. Pluriversality as a Universal Project ........................................................................ 18

3 Michel Foucault ............................................................................................................. 21

I. Sovereignty, Disciplinary Power and Biopolitics ..................................................... 21

II. The De-colonial Rejection of Europe ...................................................................... 28

III. Subjugated Knowledge ........................................................................................... 31

4 Conclusions.................................................................................................................... 37

I. Resistance to Imperial Hegemony: Mujica, Chavez, and the Zapatistas .................. 38

II. Conclusion................................................................................................................ 43

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 44

Appendix 1 ....................................................................................................................... 46

3

1 Introduction

Dependency theory originated in Latin America as an anti-colonial response to

the position of Western economic hegemony. The literature on dependency theory had its

boom in the seventies, after the publication of various scholarly writings on the

relationship between the core, developed countries and the underdeveloped periphery.

Cardoso and Faletto, the pioneers of dependency theory in Latin America, introduced the

concept of colonial enclaves. “In enclave economies, foreign invested capital originates

in the exterior, is incorporated into local productive processes… and produce(s)

goods…sold in the external markets”1. This process is what, according to dependency

theorists, maintains a developed core and an exploited periphery. The term “enclave

economy” becomes fundamental to explain the condition of dependency of the periphery,

abundant in raw materials, on the wealthy industrialized core.

According to dependency theorists, the position of underdevelopment arises with

the spread of free market policies applied to a global economy that provides unequal

access to markets. Dependency theory originates as a response to this imperialist

mechanism and focuses on the binary relationships such as the aforementioned

core/periphery, first/third world, and the us/them relationship that in post-colonialism

results in an exclusion of the Other and the creation of subaltern knowledge and

identities.

1 Qtd. in Conning, Jonathan H. Robinson, James H. “Enclaves and Development: An

Empirical Assessment”. Pg. 361.

4

Post-colonialism, then, builds on dependency theory and improves it by

developing the binary, structural relationships and evolving them into a complex matrix

of coloniality and power mechanisms focusing on a cultural perspective. “Dependency

chooses a structuralist and socioeconomic perspective, seeing imperialism and

development as tied to the unfolding of capitalism, whereas postcolonial theory favours a

post-structuralist and cultural perspective, linking imperialism and agency to discourse

and the politics of representation”2. Whereas dependency theory focuses on the economic

aspects of dependency, thus limiting the relationship between the colonized and their

dominators to a mere economic domination, post-colonialism focuses on the cultural

aspects of such domination that takes control not only of the resources but manipulates

the subjects ontologically.

Argentine professor at Duke University, Walter Mignolo, writes about the modern

day implications of imperialism and coloniality. His theory is based on the idea that the

expansion of democracy on a global level is for the United States today, what the empire

was for the great powers (France, Germany and England) in the past. He believes that

capitalism in the form that is being spread today is not applicable to all countries and the

model of democracy should be able to develop in different forms. Mignolo argues that

the North American model of democracy and capitalism is not the only model that can

obtain equality and justice, in fact he does not believe the United States model achieves

these values3.

Mignolo proposes a path towards epistemological and ontological freedom from

the mechanisms of coloniality today. To understand Mignolo in depth it is necessary to

2 Kapoor, I. (2002). Capitalism, Culture, Agency: Dependency versus Postcolonial

Theory. Pg.1. 3 Mignolo, Walter. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia”. Page 55.

5

erase some prepositions that have been instilled throughout a lifetime of Western

education. When Mignolo says that Latin America needs “our” modernity, instead of

another modernity, he means just this. Instead of looking at the world from the standpoint

of the US or Europe, Mignolo’s reader must abstract himself from value judgments that

consider the first world the most developed and the example to follow.

The concept of well-being must also be revisited, as it is not used by Mignolo to

mean economic prosperity or technological progress. Well-being for Mignolo goes hand

in hand with the word dignity. Well being means providing the basic needs for a life lived

with dignity, fostering human happiness. Politics of well-being means focusing on

equitable distribution of wealth and resources instead of production and consumption at

the cost of excluding large sectors of the population who have less.

6

2 Walter Mignolo

I. The Decolonial Approach

The two main anti-colonial theories that emerged in Latin America, therefore, are

dependency and post-colonial theories. It is fundamental to note that Mignolo does not

consider himself belonging to either of the two categories since his aim is quite different

from post-colonialists. Understanding his distance from the school of post-colonialism

will also help in understanding his main concepts, and in general, the de-colonial

approach. Mignolo calls his proposal “de-colonization”, or rather, de-linking from the

colonial structures and their subsequent implications. Mignolo’s de-colonial approach

refers to the dissociation of the individual, non-European realities from the European

context, thus focusing on unique colonial histories.

For this reason he prefers to use the term de-colonial instead of postcolonial.

“De-colonial thinking and doing, emerged from the sixteenth century on, as responses to

the oppressive and imperial bent of modern European ideas projected to, and enacted in,

the non-European world”4. De-colonial thinking departs from the idea of coming simply

“after” colonialism. It separates itself, ontologically and epistemologically from the

structures of modernity and acknowledges the phenomenon of the colonial difference.

De-colonial thought attempts to break with the imposed position of difference and

attempts to liberate any remaining ties with Europe through the process of border

thinking. In order to decolonize being, says Mignolo, you must first decolonize

knowledge.

4 Mignolo, Walter. “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity”. Page 39.

7

Along with other Latin American scholars such as Anibal Quijano and Enrique

Dussel, Mignolo rejects the idea of being part of the school of post-colonial thinkers. In

fact, Dussel himself refers to post-modernity as a trans-modernity in the sense that he is

not interested in coming “after” modernity but instead in transcending it. In the same

way, Mignolo does not simply come after colonialism, instead, he proposes an entirely

different thought process that has different origins and is outside the sphere of European

thought. What Mignolo supports is an epistemic “delinking,” or as he calls it, a “de-

colonial epistemic shift5”. This epistemic shift calls for a rejection of the subaltern

position while transcending and going beyond that difference.

The term “de-linking” was originally coined by Quijano and is translated from the

Spanish word desprenderse, a reflexive verb that means “to detach oneself from”. The

use of the word de-linking implies an attempt to detach oneself from a constant tension

between the hegemony of Europe or the United States and a subordinated position. What

Mignolo hopes for is the possibility of an-other modernity respected equally in value, yet

pertaining to a different geo-political space, instead of an Other modernity, that is seen as

an inferior “Other” compared to the Western standards and judged by its value system as

an absolute. The idea behind the de-colonial approach lies in this precise distance from

the Western world and creates a new sphere for autochthonous ideas and identities.

Although this distance may seem like a negation of anything external, it is in fact

attempting to do something else, such as fostering a different way of doing things that

arises from local necessities instead of relying on “importing” other models.

5 Mignolo, Walter. “Delinking: the Rhetoric of Modernity”.

8

II. Modernity and the Colonial Difference

Mignolo associates modernity and coloniality as two sides of the same coin, of

which the darker side of modernity is coloniality. He says that the period of modernity,

which broadly includes the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, marks a decisive shift in

the structure of European society from feudalism to capitalism. He notes that this precise

moment when democracy resurges is when capitalism, depending on colonial expansion

for surplus goods, is at its peak6. For this reason, he proposes that colonialism is deeply

embedded in the structure of modernity. At the core of Mignolo’s thesis lies this idea that

modernity and colonialism are intertwined in a circular relationship.

Mignolo published a book in 2011 entitled The Dark Side of Modernity, in which

he goes into depth about the correlation between modernity and colonialism, specifically

how one is constitutive of the other and therefore modernity cannot exist without

colonialism. Modernity is presented as the period of European history that witnessed the

most significant cultural and scientific achievements, yet the face it hides is that this

enlightenment masks a rationality of superiority that was implied through the exclusion

explicit in the domination of colonies.

Mignolo views modernity as a major turning point in European history that

becomes the underlying source of coloniality and the tool for its persistence. First of all,

with modernity comes a shift from the feudal society of the Middle Ages to a capitalistic

one with the rise of modern man and his mastery of the seas, that allow him to go beyond

all known borders. In this period there is an increase in trade and reliance on colonies for

raw materials and goods. The power mechanisms at play here are direct and violent,

6 Ibid. Page 42

9

through the domination and acquisition of colonies in order to secure material goods that

were functional to the capitalist system. The riches that this new surplus of goods brings

to the European empire produces a situation of economic well being, allowing the ideas

of the Enlightenment and the resurgence of Greek ideals of democracy to arise in the

intellectual sphere.

Whereas the acquisition of colonies was a form of direct domination, the ideals of

democracy were a form of ideological domination that excluded those who did not give

democratic values the same recognition. The period of modernity saw the return of Greek

ideals in art, such as the standards of beauty of ancient Greece, and in theory, with the

appraisal of democratic values in philosophy. This ideological domination that assigned

value to ideas based on specific standards begins a certain kind of epistemic hegemony,

that excludes and rejects other forms of knowledge.

Mignolo stresses that democracy is a value that comes from ancient Greece, thus

from far away, and that there can be many other roads to obtain similar goals of equality

and justice. He claims that the indigenous people of Latin America are not descendents of

this thought or culture and therefore should not be expected to adopt any of their ideals,

nor be excluded or criticized for not adhering to these values. Furthermore, the

imposition of this model is a form of modern day coloniality.

Things only get worse, for Mignolo, with the Enlightenment and the obsession

with reason and rationality initiated by Descartes that create a new standard of thought.

The rejection of religion as the source of knowledge and the creation of the institution of

the university as a place of truth and reason, generated what is today a body of accepted

and thus valid knowledge, contrasted to a mystical or mythical, folk, indigenous,

10

traditional knowledge. All these adjectives demonstrate how the mere word “knowledge”

implies academic, whereas everything else is Other, accompanied by a connotation of

“less than” and the exclusion of the outside.

The strong claim in Mignolo’s work is that we still have this structure today. The

forms of direct colonialism have evolved into power mechanisms of coloniality that work

in a subtle manner through the rhetoric of modernity. This is the hidden face lying in

words like “development” and “progress”. Mignolo says these forces are comparable to

the oppressive logic of colonialism, such as the salvation of “barbaric” tribes and the

necessity of their conversion to Catholicism that occurred during the colonial period.

Today, we see a similar attempt of salvation through processes of development

guided by experts from Harvard, or international organizations led by the major

economic and military powers. They begin development projects to shape these

‘developing’ countries in their own image and with their technology. I am not saying that

no good has come out of such projects, but the idea that US experts “believe they can

really decide what is good and what is bad for ‘developing countries’” only irritates the

colonial wound further and emphasizes the colonial difference7.

It does so by adopting a position of superiority that implies that Western experts

know the way to modernity and will lead the developing world to it. To get there, though,

“developing” countries will be fully dependent on first world technology and expertise

and have to follow directives from abroad in home affairs. There is an inherent

inequality that is veiled by apparently attractive development projects. They hide the

perverse logic behind such offers, and for this reason MIgnolo claims that we must

“change the terms of the conversation” . In order to do so, we must first recognize the

7 Mignolo, Walter. “Epistemic Disobedience”. Pg. 15.

11

diagnosis, a condition of “sickness” that we must begin to combat if we want to transcend

the colonial matrix of power.

The condition afflicting Latin America is that of the colonial difference.

According to Mignolo, “the colonial difference operates by converting differences into

values and establishing a hierarchy of human beings ontologically and epistemologically.

Ontologically, it is assumed that there are inferior human beings. Epistemologically, it is

assumed that inferior human beings are rational[ly] and aesthetically deficient”8. The

colonial difference is established by a Western-imposed standard that judges what is to be

accepted and what is to be excluded. This difference creates perspectives that “emerge

out of the conditions of the ‘colonial wound,’ the feeling of inferiority imposed on human

beings who do not fit the predetermined model in Euro-American narratives”9. It creates

the position of the Other as subordinate, and allows for indigenous knowledge to become

subaltern. These aspects will be further developed in the following chapters on

knowledge and power.

In any case, the colonial difference is established through a complex web of

“coloniality”, a term that is to be distinguished from “colonialism”. Mignolo stresses this

distinction on the basis that colonialism was the direct domination of the colonies by one

imperial power for the extraction of resources, whereas coloniality is backed by a pursuit

of ontological domination, based on the inferiority of the other10

. Whereas colonialism

can be understood as a historical, visible relationship, coloniality implies a more subtle

form of hegemonic control over a population.

8 Mignolo, Walter. “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity”. Page 39. Originally

“epistemically” (sic). 9 Mignolo, Walter. The Idea of Latin America. Preface xxi

10 Ibid. Pg 7.

12

The operation of the colonial matrix is invisible to distracted eyes, and

even when it surfaces it is explained through the rhetoric of modernity

that the situation can be ‘corrected’ with ‘development,’ ‘democracy,’ a

‘strong economy,’ etc. What some will see as ‘lies’ from the US

presidential administration are not so much lies as part of a very well-

codified ‘rhetoric of modernity,’ promising salvation for everybody in

order to divert attention from the increasingly oppressive consequences

of the logic of coloniality11

.

Such logic of coloniality gives rise to the colonial difference, the subaltern

position of developing countries that are considered the same yet different

contemporarily. Recognizing the existence of the colonial difference is a way to expose

the logic of coloniality through which the Europeans have represented others. “Non-

Europeans are seen as existing on the same historical trajectory, but further behind; their

goals are the same, but not achieved to the same degree; their knowledge is subject to the

same justificatory procedures, but it is less well-developed,” comments Linda Alcoff12

.

This is the logic that Mignolo tries to detach from, where detachment does not

mean negation of the past or colonialism itself, but an attempt to transcend and heal the

colonial wound. It means no tolerance for the logic that created subjugated or alternate

knowledge and caused them to be evaluated as less-than scientific knowledge or simply

non-academic. Modern society has valued rationality and has discarded the spiritual,

mythical and indigenous knowledge from educational institutions based on the

perspective of a modern value judgment that classifies them as different. Alcoff claims

11

Ibid. Pg 7. 12

Alcoff, Linda Martín. “Mignolo’s Epistemology of Coloniality”. Project MUSE. Page

87.

13

that Mignolo “seeks both to reveal the way in which power has been at work in creating

that difference…as well as the way in which colonial power represents and evaluates

difference. The coloniality of power, in other words, produces, evaluates, and manages

the colonial difference13

”.

III. Democracy as an Imperial Project

“History tells that Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of civilization.

Gandhi answered and said ‘civilization was a good idea’. The same can be said of

democracy,” says Walter Mignolo14

. Today, the Western ideal of development is

embraced by the fatherly-like figure of the United States that sets out to develop what it

considers undeveloped countries, in most cases to further their own economic advantage.

Free market liberal policies are implemented whenever possible in a one-size-fits-all

model to open up more possibilities for outsourcing of US companies or simply

beneficial trade agreements.

The appraisal of democratic values coming from Europe and the United States led

to what would be known as the Western model of democracy. Although a major

component of modern values, Mignolo analyzes how the concept of democracy was

appropriated in an authoritative manner, where the Western model of democracy would

become the only acceptable form.

Today, democracy is considered one of the core values of the United Nations, and

the spread of democracy is supported by its 193 member states. The problem Mignolo

sees in this apparently positive goal is that in this expansion of democracy there is only

13

Ibid. Page 87. 14

Mignolo, Walter. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia”. Pg. 41. Qt. appears in English.

14

one possible form of interpreting democracy. The imposition of this model is

accompanied by a “with us or without us” rhetoric that does not allow for a plurality of

models of democracy adapted to individual local necessities. The points brought up in

Mignolo’s thesis underline the subordinate position of the global south in importing

political structures established by the global North that are irrespective of local cultures,

histories, languages and political culture.

In Latin America, specifically, countries that have had long histories of

colonialism and thus are tainted with a colonial wound, still remain in the position of

inadequacy vis-à-vis the north if they do not apply the western model of democracy

systematically. “Expressions such as alternative modernities, subaltern modernities and

peripheral modernities were introduced to account for modernity or, if you wish, assume

one ‘modernity of reference’ and put themselves in subordinate positions”15

. The

subordinate role of Latin American “underdeveloped” countries provides a support for

complex mechanisms such as the of coloniality of power, as it deepens the colonial

wound in countries with intense histories of oppression.

The concept of democracy as an ideal of justice and equality is understood by

Mignolo as a horizon, something we aim for yet still remains at a distance. The paths to

such a horizon must be diverse given the various cultures, languages and histories that

have adopted the democratic model of government. When democracy is “exported” to

other countries under the wing of the United States through international organizations

such as the United Nations, democratic values are being projected on countries that do

not necessarily have the same democratic tradition. Furthermore, Mignolo advances that

such an expansion of democracy on a global scale is comparable to the colonial

15

Mignolo, Walter. “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity”. Pg. 42.

15

expansion of the Empires. It is therefore aimed at furthering the self-interest of the

imperial country through the rhetoric of human rights and democracy.

Mignolo quotes Harvard professor Noah Feldman’s article in the New York

Times Magazine, entitled “Democratosis”. He presents this professor as one who has

realized the absurd aspects of the democratizing global mission of the United States.

Feldman writes, “It seems strange to the rest of the world…but we Americans can’t seem

to stop talking about how other countries should be democratic like we are…The

expansion of democracy is for us what empire was for the great world powers before us:

a rallying cry that makes us proud and keeps us unified – while also serving our

interests”16

. He quotes this professor due to the apparent resemblance to his own thesis on

the imperial aspects of democracy.

However, Feldman’s article reveals that he is nothing other than a zealous

supporter of the “freedom” of a self-governing democratic system that overthrows

“oppressive” dictatorships. Feldman only reinforces the widespread idea that the United

States has a duty to develop the rest of the world according to their own model. The

mention of this article is useful for a different reason than Mignolo suggests. Feldman

does not condone imperial expansion through democracy, he simply believes the US

should not be selective, and therefore commit itself further to intervention in the name of

democracy.

The imposition of this one and only model of democracy is proposed as a vestige

of imperial expansion and, at an abstract level, comparable to the Stalinist single model

of communism. According to Mignolo, there is an arrogant presumption that democracy

16

Qtd. in Mignolo, Walter. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia”. Pg. 55. (Feldman, Noah.

NYT Magazine. Oct. 7, 2007)

16

is something that belongs to the United States (along with some European nations), and

that therefore they believe it necessary and just to imperially democratize the world17

.

Because this model of democracy today derives mainly from the United States, the

countries that attempt to build a local form of democracy that functions within the nature

of their local reality will constantly be struggling against the imperial aspects of

democracy. They will constantly be subjected to a salvationist rhetoric by which the

modern hegemonic powers attempt to maintain control of their authority and control of

the economy.

Mignolo claims that the Western rediscovery of democratic values in the age of

modernity does not necessarily mean that the rest of the world has to interpret the concept

of democracy in the same way, nor accept this model. He argues that when democracy

becomes a justification for imperial expansion or the furthering of individual benefit it

ceases to be democratic18

. On plenty of occasions the West has advocated and supported

free elections as an essential tool of democracy. However, Mignolo points out that when

free, democratic elections bring to power figures like Hugo Chavez, the United States

delegitimizes the validity of the democratic process. Several annual reports blame

Venezuela for not adhering correctly to democracy, and regard Chavez as a dictatorial

figure comparable to another American enemy, Fidel Castro.

IV. Border Thinking

As previously stated, the ailment afflicting Latin America is that of the colonial

difference. Mignolo proposes a cure to initiate the healing process and gain liberation

17

Mignolo, Walter. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia”. Page 55. 18

Ibid. Page 43.

17

from this condition. The cure is called “border thinking”. It is one that will allow for

Mignolo’s final solution, pluriversality as a universal project. Border thinking accounts

for the knowledge that comes from the colonial wound and does not belong to either the

pure indigenous or European culture. It emerges at the border, therefore, it does not

belong to any one side. This unique aspect allows for border thinking to reside in a

double consciousness.

“Border thinking is the consequence of the power differential under

modern/colonial conditions, a power differential that constitutes the colonial

difference”19

. In other words, border thinking emerges from the colonial difference to try

and modify this disparity and step away from this imposed difference, which as stated

previously, is a consequence of the colonial matrix of power.

In Mignolo’s words, “border thinking structures itself on a double consciousness,

a double critique operating on the imaginary of the modern/colonial world system…it

marks the irreducible difference of border thinking as a critique from the colonial

difference… all theoretical articulations of border thinking [are] breaking away from

‘eurocentrism as an epistemological perspective’20

”. The double critique of modernity is

possible only through the perspective of coloniality, from the experience of the colonial

wound. This point will be essential to analyze Mignolo’s discourse with Foucault, given

that he comes from the same European center of knowledge that Mignolo attempts to

distance himself from. I will attempt to prove that despite this, Mignolo actively engages

with his theories.

19

Mignolo, W. The Idea of Latin America. Page 10. 20

Mignolo, W. Local Histories/Global Designs. Page 87

18

The concept of border thinking does not necessarily imply a rejection of European

ideals on the basis of inferiority. Rather, border thinking is based on distance and

detachment from Europe as a hegemonic center of culture, knowledge, and truth. It

allows for the creation of local knowledge, autonomous and even indigenous knowledge

that originates from a local source with the colonial wound at its basis. The knowledge

that comes from the colonial difference is unique in its precise position from the point of

view of the excluded, and not from a European or American hegemonic center. It is from

the perspective of the colonized.

V. Pluriversality as a Universal Project

The resistance to the hierarchy of values imposed by the expansion of democracy

on a global scale presents the beginning of de-colonial options for the future. “We are

observing many non-official (rather than non-governmental) transnational organisations

not only manifesting themselves ‘against’ capitalism, globalization and questioning

modernity, but also opening up global but non-capitalist horizons and de-linking from the

idea that there is a single and main modernity surrounded by peripheral or alternative

ones”21

. Naturally, different paths are met with resistance from the established

mechanisms that support capitalism.

Mignolo’s solution is based on the acceptance of a pluri-form version of the

economy, where the sole purpose is not the relentless accumulation of capital but rather

wellbeing. The economy of growth, says Mignolo, is the economic system that tries to

reproduce more at ever decreasing costs of production at the risk of the population, while

at the same time giving the illusion that democracy is measured merely on the right to

21

Mignolo, W. “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity”. Page 39

19

vote22

. Once citizens vote for a representative, the rest seems to be out of their hands.

There is no participatory or direct democracy, rather the right to vote that seems to act as

a veil that legitimizes the whole process.

On the other hand, economics of wellbeing would be based on managing scarcity

rather than producing more, in which political decisions are made from the bottom up,

they do not go from the state to the people but rather from political society to the state23

.

“Global futures need to be imagined and constructed through de-colonial options; that is,

working globally and collectively to de-colonise the colonial matrix of power; to stop the

sand castles built by modernity and its derivatives24

.”

The Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZNL) in Mexico is an example

of a new modernity that is not following the current accepted form of democracy. This

group speaks of justice, equality and reciprocity without adopting a democratic system,

but rather an individual and local form of progress that tries to further the fundamental

rights of man. Mignolo thinks that democracy does not carry with it the right to silence

those who do not adapt the concept in the same manner, or who chose another road to

values such as equality and justice25

. The EZLN have been repressed in various occasions

while protesting the government for matters such as indigenous rights and more equitable

allocation of public housing.

Mignolo denounces the effects of modern day capitalism that allow for the

enrichment of a few at the cost of others. The general opinion of supporters of capitalism

leaves families without housing or healthcare, while maintaining a middle class that

22

Mignolo, W. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia”. Page 56. 23

Ibid. Page 54. 24

Mignolo, W. “Coloniality: The Darker Side of Modernity”. Page 49. 25

Mignolo, W. “Hermenéutica de la Democracia. Page 46. Translated.

20

serves as the consumers necessary to maintain those at the top where they are. Mignolo’s

pluri-versality allows for individual systems with various aims. The one he particularly

proposes, is the proper allocation of scarce resources that grants the basic freedoms to all

without leaving large factions of the population behind.

21

3 Michel Foucault

I. Sovereignty, Disciplinary Power and Biopolitics

In order to understand Foucault’s studies on power it is pertinent to clarify his

major distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ power. The shift from the old to the new marks

a clear difference in modes of understanding government, sovereignty, the state, and

moreover, the relationship between the sovereign and the population. The ‘old’ is located

in the historical period preceding the Enlightenment, in the feudal system of the Middle

Ages where the sovereign is the king who rules over his subjects and claims his

sovereignty based on inheritance or acquisition of territory, through war or other means.

An example of this kind of sovereignty could be the many principalities in Italy in the

sixteenth century, under the domination of noble families.

The aim of the sovereign at this time was drastically different from what it is

today, where mechanisms of power are applied to “bodies and what they do, instead of

the land and what it produces”26

. The relationship between the sovereign and the people

was one of direct domination, the king was not interested in what people did inside their

homes, but rather, that they pay their dues and obey the law. The sovereign in the

principality was only concerned with wealth and the land. This form of power then

transformed to one concerning the individual body, thus disciplinary power, and what it

had to do to remain in the norm, and finally the preservation of bodies and life, or

biopolitics, that took the State as the predominant means for such maintenance of life,

thus legitimizing its access to the body.

26

Foucault, M. Society Must Be Defended. Pg. 35-36. 1976

22

In other words, the kind of power of the Middle Ages, which Foucault calls

sovereign power, undergoes two different shifts. The first is disciplinary power exerted

upon single bodies through mechanisms of surveillance and normalization, and the

second is a biological control of life in general through the state’s role in protecting life,

known as “biopolitics”. These two forms of power, disciplinary and biopolitics, together

make up the new form of governmentality which is “biopower”. Disciplinary power,

which departs from sovereign power, applied to a mass scale of population and life in

general (bodies in the plural) creates biopolitics, which may have aspects of disciplinary

power yet functions through other mechanisms. Biopolitics overlaps with disciplinary

power in certain areas such as sexuality and madness, where normalization and discipline

occur at both an individual level (disciplinary power) and at a mass societal level

(biopolitics) where power is concerned with data collection of the practices of its

subjects.

This [biopolitical] technology of power does not exclude the former, does

not exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate

it, modify it to some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it,

embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques. This new technique

does not simply do away with the disciplinary technique, because it exists

at a different level, on a different scale, and because it has a different

bearing area, and makes use of very different instruments27

.

This different form of power is biopolitcs. Foucault presents the two faces of

biopower, in which one (BP) is derived from the other (DP) but functions under different

rules and has other aims. The first is the use of the body as a machine, the discipline of

27

Foucault, M. Society Must be Defended. 1976. Pg. 242.

23

the body in terms of usefulness and docility, also known as the anatomo-politics of the

body, or disciplinary power. The other is the control of the body on biological grounds,

including the control of births and mortality rates, health and life expectancy, or

biopolitics. In Foucault’s words, “after a first seizure of power over the body in an

individualizing mode, we have a second seizure of power that is not individualizing but,

if you like, massifying, that is directed not at man-as-body but man-as-species28

”. These

two aspects make up the concept of biopower, a new kind of governmentality that is

different from sovereignty, subjugates bodies and controls the population29

.

In a lecture from the Collège de France on sovereignty entitled “Security,

Territory, Population,” Foucault shares his findings on the study of the art of government,

or what is its specific end and how power has evolved from the Middle ages from matters

concerning the body (torture) to matters concerning the soul (prison and rehabilitation).

The art of government, or what Foucault calls “gouvernamentalite”, is understood

through an analysis of its semantic construction that unites gouverner (to govern) and

mentalité (modes of thought), thus connecting the art of government to the rationality

behind government in controlling the subjects it governs30

. Foucault notices a shift in this

rationality of government and finds the change in a phrase by Guillaume La Perrière,

dating back to 1555, that states that “government is the right disposition of things that one

arranges so as to lead them to a suitable end”31

.

This definition breaks with the idea proposed by Machiavelli that power is

fundamental in how a prince must act in order to “maintain, strengthen and protect his

28

Foucault, M. Society Must be Defended. Pg. 243. 29

Foucault, M. History of Sexuality: Volume 1. Pg. 140 30

Lemke, T. “The Birth of Biopolitics”. Pg. 191. 31

Foucault, M. “Security, Territory, Population”. Pg. 90-91.

24

principality,” or rather, the ‘old’ sovereign form of power32

. Foucault maintains that the

end of government in the Middle Ages was to strengthen its own power. He also calls this

notion one of national interest, or raison d’état. If the growth of power of the state

becomes its ultimate goal, the end of power becomes circular, and thus an end in itself. If

the original end of sovereignty was to obtain the common (public) good, and in order for

the common good to exist all subjects must obey the law without fail, then the end of

sovereignty is thus the ultimate submission and obedience to the law. The good proposed

by sovereignty is therefore, that people obey it. What is unique in La Perrière’s definition

is that it provides a variety of suitable ends and uses tactics of arrangement of things

rather than the imposition of laws.

Therefore the old form of power was based on the theory of sovereignty that

required the physical presence and domination of the sovereign, not on individual bodies,

but on the accumulation of goods and wealth as products of the land that belonged to the

sovereign. This type of power was interested in commodities, not on people as a source

of labor. The shift to disciplinary power surfaces with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the

capitalist system that introduces mechanisms of discipline and surveillance to control the

workers in regards to efficiency and accumulation of wealth for the dominating class.

This shift witnesses the disappearance of the sovereign as a centralized source of power

and law, that gives rise to a dispersed form of power whose aim is the organization of a

population.

Disciplinary power is not applicable to sovereign power, it arises after the shift of

the way of governing that changes sovereignty into governmentality. Disciplinary power

is enacted through a multiplicity of institutions and cannot be justified in terms of

32

Ibid. Pg. 90-91

25

sovereignty. The presence of the sovereign becomes irrelevant and sovereignty becomes

an idea in the theory of right and the judicial system to mask the apparatus of discipline,

giving the illusion that the state can “guarantee that everyone could exercise his or her

own sovereign rights thanks to the sovereignty of the State”33

.

The transformation is seen, returning to classical sovereign power, in the

sovereign’s right to kill. As the highest form of authority, the sovereign could decide to

take life or let live, and so the subjects were paradoxically, neither dead nor alive, but

“the lives and deaths of subjects become rights only as a result of the will of the

sovereign34

”. The sovereign has the ultimate decision in taking life or letting live. The

new right, the biological control of the population implies quite the opposite, to make live

and let die. This new form of technical power that makes live and lets die is biopolitics,

but it is again a sphere that touches upon disciplinary power as well. The actions a

government takes to make live, to prolong the life of man as species, is an abstract form

of normalization and control at the individual level. For example,

Due to the fact that the transition to a new mode of governmentality occurs at the

turning point of modernity (and capitalism), Foucault refers to the modern state that

Mignolo feels is a colonial concept in itself. He does not consider that Latin America has

passed through the same transformation to modernity, and as such the modern state

Foucault speaks of is strictly European. The transition to modernity introduces more

complex power mechanisms and, after the eighteenth century, there is a rise of this “new

governmental practice”. He explains this change through an analysis of the market and a

historical analysis of German neo-liberalism after World War II.

33

Foucault, M. Society Must be Defended. 1976. Pg. 37. 34

Ibid. Pg. 240.

26

This shift in government has been, according to Foucault, a neo-liberal one. The

marketplace was previously understood as a site of justice, because price was set in

relationship to the value of the work performed and the state regulated the price of the

market to protect the consumer. With the rise of capitalism and laissez-faire policies,

there was widespread belief that the market should be left alone and, if untouched, would

produce “natural” or true prices based on laws of supply and demand. According to

Foucault, the market is transformed from a site of justice into a site of veridiction. The

birth of the free market economy creates e new relationship between the citizens and the

state where the unregulated market is regarded as a place of truth, “the market must tell

the truth (dire il vrai); it must tell the truth in relation to governmental practice,” says

Foucault35

.

It is helpful to first explore the rise of neo-liberalism in order to then understand

biopolitics, since they evolved through consequent mechanisms in which one influenced

the shift of the other. Once liberal policies of free markets were established, the reason of

the state was no longer based on strengthening its own power (raison d’état), but rather

the opposite. The new governmental practice is a frugal form of government that

functions under entirely new mechanisms, considering the art of government as the art of

the least possible government – of the limits to governmental intervention in the sphere

of the economy36

.

By using the concept of biopower, Foucault attempts to describe how the

government apparatus groups together and controls a population. He maintains that there

is a triangle composed of “sovereignty, discipline, and governmental management, which

35

Foucault, M. The Birth of Biopolitics. Pg. 32. 36

Ibid. Pg. 28.

27

has population as its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential

mechanism”37

. Foucault focuses on domination and the exercise of biopower within a

state and against its people, and this is a phenomenon that can also occur on a global

scale. Modern day imperialism is embedded in a similar kind of unbalanced power

relationship with regards to central hegemonic powers and those inferior to such power.

Whereas Foucault talks about the exercise of power by the state on its subjects,

the same can be abstracted to the level of relationship between the first world and the

third. Needless to say, Mignolo objects. “The differences between bio-politics in Europe

and bio-politics in the colonies lie in the racial distinction between the European

population and the population of the colonies: less human, sub-humans”38

. The state-

subject relationship does not entail the racial element that is present in the first-third

world, or imperial/subjugated relationship. However, they do share common ground in

matters of control and discipline. In the European sphere of power, the state adopts a

father-like figure through the re-education and rehabilitation of the body by means of

surveillance, prison and mental institutions.

In the international sphere, the imperial countries lead the way to development

and well-being that the so called underdeveloped countries are unable to succeed in

without guidance. Mignolo maintains that the response cannot come from the

US/Europe, however, the source of the colonial difference is the US and Europe,

especially the United States in the second half of the twentieth century and today. The

possible solution proposed by Foucault to transgress this power through subjugated

knowledge works well with Mignolo’s project of de-linking as a universal project.

37

Foucault, M. “Security, Territory, Population”. Pg. 107-108. 38

Mignolo, W. “Epistemic Disobedience”. Pg. 16

28

II. The De-colonial Rejection of Europe

It would seem that adhering to decolonial theory and border thinking requires an

absolute distance from European sources of knowledge, in order to cultivate and let thrive

local ideas emerging from the colonial difference. The perspective of the colonized,

therefore, should not rely on imperial or first world sources of knowledge in the practice

of border thinking, in order to remain true to its fundamental ideals. One could say, given

that border thinking recognizes the subaltern position created by the colonial difference,

any point of view that comes from the perspective of the colonized will reject ideas that

come from a hegemonic locus of enunciation, the geographic area from which the

enunciator speaks.

However, this would be a superficial analysis of the purpose of border thinking.

De-linking does not call for an automatic and immediate rejection of any idea that does

not come from a geographic area that has experienced oppression and the colonial

wound. Instead, it recognizes that certain ideas have to be put in their geo-political

context with the consciousness that they emerge from a specific (regional) experience and

cannot always be applied on a global scale. Mignolo exposes the tension implicit in his

own use of certain European authors. De-colonial authors do, in fact, maintain a dialogue

with philosophy that emerged within Europe, but recognize that such authors lack the

experience of the colonial wound and many times fail to represent the perspective of the

colonized.

For this reason, Mignolo criticizes Foucault directly and sometimes severely.

Mignolo mentions that the only tie between Europe and Latin America is the colonial

experience, and any further interference from Europe will only aggravate the colonial

29

wound. He discards Foucault’s concept of biopower on the basis that it is a European

solution. However, post-colonial scholars (or de-colonial) are often guilty of the same

sin they claim to be victims of by excluding any source of knowledge that comes from a

hegemonic center, while at the same time this exclusion is an attitude they criticize

extensively. For some, this negation of any discourse that comes from a hegemonic

center, as if it came from those who actively participated in colonialism, is a superficial

and indiscriminate closure to other points of view and an unjustified idealization of the

excluded. Many like Foucault were, in fact, a voice of dissent in regards to modern day

mechanism of oppression. In reference to the colonial experience, Mignolo writes,

After all of that ‘importation’ you do not want again to ‘import’

biopolitics and biopower to deal with the problems that Europe created…

[they] are important regional critical concepts that cannot be converted

into a single story as if Europe has the God will [sic] to create the

problems and the solutions while the rest of the world will watch the

unfolding, like watching a tennis match where you do not participate39

.

Mignolo insists that biopower and biopolitics are regional, not universal concepts

that can account for only a portion of the mechanisms of the colonial matrix of power.

However it is a rash judgment to disqualify Foucault on the sole basis that he is working

with European concepts of authority and structures of power. At times, Mignolo seems to

be confusing Foucault, and any European thinker, with the Spanish/Portuguese/ British

colonizer. Regardless of the fact that Foucault has elaborated his theory from within

Europe, his ideas are still worth exploring. Mignolo, of course, recognizes this but is

hesitant in allowing biopower to become a relevant concept in Latin America. At first

39

Mignolo, W. “The Prospect of Harmony and the Decolonial View of the World”. Pg 3.

30

glance it seems that MIgnolo is directly rejecting Foucault, but what is the actual

justification for this distance?

There are two ways of interpreting Mignolo’s explicit rejection of biopower. First,

one could argue that Mignolo is right in rejecting the idea of biopower because the

enunciation of the solution comes from a hegemonic source. Foucault has not

experienced the colonial wound and thus cannot possibly understand the complex power

mechanisms at stake in the post-colonial world. Second, one could be more flexible and

view Mignolo’s stubbornness in his own example. In the aforementioned “tennis game”,

it is as if Mignolo takes the position of a child excluded from the game and therefore

refuses to play ever again, even if he is invited by different players that have no

relationship with the previous “bullies”. However, Mignolo’s initial refusal is not entirely

groundless.

Mignolo maintains a firm position based on the idea that, since Europe created all

the problems of colonialism and the colonial wound, we (Latin America) cannot permit

Europe to propose the solution (biopower). In this he may be right, and thus rejecting

Foucault directly will remain coherent with his theory and appeal to a Latin American

sentiment of autonomy, pride and independence. Nevertheless, European structures of

power have already been imposed during the colonial period and many of these

mechanism are still present today, especially considering that the model of democracy

that has been adopted by Latin American countries comes from Europe and the United

States. If this is the case, it would make sense to use certain mechanisms to subvert an

imperial structure that comes from within that structure itself, to then allow for the

growth of local solutions.

31

In order to establish the validity of the distance Mignolo takes from Foucault and

his theories, we must first evaluate Foucault’s claims to then see how they may be

applicable in a Latin American context. Also, whether Mignolo is correct in claiming that

Foucault’s theories are mainly regional and, at most, can only account for a limited slice

of the complex matrix of coloniality. Although Mignolo explicitly rejects “importing”

biopower as a solution, he seems to be influenced by other concepts that Foucault himself

proposed, such as the subjugation of knowledge.

III. Subjugated Knowledge

The subject of knowledge is one in which Mignolo converges with Foucault to a

much greater extent. The similarities are initially evident in the labeling of the terms

used. Foucault speaks of subjugated knowledge whereas Mignolo calls it subaltern

knowledge. It is important to make note of this difference. The verb “to subjugate” means

to “bring under domination or control, especially by conquest” while “subaltern” is

associated to an exclusion, being of lower status. It derives from the Latin word

subalternus, meaning “below every other”40

. Although both are used to explain the same

role of epistemic hegemony, the difference in word choice implies a different source of

origin. One is referring to a domination based on power mechanisms, while the other is

intent on demonstrating the imposition of a hierarchy of value where exclusion and

inclusion determine what is knowledge.

Foucault’s definition of subjugated knowledge, however, is entirely coherent with

Mignolo’s discourse. By subjugated knowledge, Foucault means “a whole set of

knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently

40

Dictionary. Apple Inc. 2007.

32

elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required

level of cognition or scientificity”41

. The hierarchy of knowledge is formed by widely

accepted set of standards in the West that establish what the required characteristics for

knowledge are.

Mignolo quotes this exact definition of subjugated knowledge to support his own

argument and engages in a friendlier dialogue with Foucault. “My intention…is to move

subjugated knowledge to the limits of the colonial difference where subjugated become

subaltern knowledges in the structure of coloniality of power”42

. Here, Mignolo is

directly referring to the Foucauldian term of subjugation, wanting to translate it to

subaltern and locating it at the core of the power mechanisms of coloniality. This

indicates Mignolo’s unofficial use of Foucault’s legacy against his official rejection

based on the geographical location of the source. It also clarifies what seemed to be a

contradiction in his claim that biopower cannot be the solution because it is a regional

concept, while at the same time, subjugated (subaltern) knowledge is the fulcrum of the

colonial matrix of power. Mignolo seems to officially disagree with adopting the concept

of biopower, yet secretly accept disciplinary power regarding the hierarchical

classification and normalization of knowledge.

Furthermore, biopower is not proposed by Foucault as a solution. Biopower is a

tool of the new form of governmentality that has the population as both an integral part

and receiver of the effects of power mechanisms; it is the control and regulation of life

and population. In fact, as we have seen in the case of the market as a sight of truth, the

modern form of power is a triangle between power, right and truth; between sovereignty,

41

Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Pg. 82. 42

Mignolo, W. Local Histories/Global Designs. Pg. 20.

33

discipline and management. Power has often achieved its right through the legitimacy of

sovereignty. Today, that position of power is correlated to the production of discourses of

truth, or in other words, through the control and creation of knowledge in the singular

disregarding the plural of knowledges as contemporarily viable sources of truth.

According to Foucault, the word “science” in the singular did not exist until the

eighteenth century43

. The regularization of knowledge in the “singular form” occurs

through four specific steps, the first being the elimination and disqualification of small

knowledges that entails a selection of what is valid and what is not. This is possible

through the monopoly over knowledge for example on behalf of the university that

creates an elite of knowledge holders. The second step is the normalization of dispersed

knowledge, or rather the communication of set standards that allow for the sharing of

technical knowledge. The third, and probably the most pertinent for Mignolo, is the

hierarchical classification of knowledge.

The only transgression possible from this triangle of power is to create a non-

disciplinary form of power, “one must turn towards the possibility of a new form of right,

one which must indeed be anti-disciplinarian, but at the same time liberated from the

principle of sovereignty”44

. Foucault is not interested in the why or how of power, but

rather, on its visible effects on society and how it is possible to overcome that

subjugation. It is here that subjugated knowledge becomes a fundamental tool for

critique. Only through the re-emergence of the disqualified forms of knowledges can we

begin to resist power. Only through “a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity and

which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything

43

Foucault, M. Society Must be Defended. Pg. 182. 44

Foucault, M. “Power, Right, Truth”. Pg. 550.

34

surrounding it – that it is through the reappearance of these knowledge, of these local

popular knowledges, these disqualified knowledges, that criticism performs its work”45

.

The idea that it is through these kinds of subjugated knowledges that we can resist

and begin to criticize biopower has a striking resemblance to Mignolo’s concept of

border thinking. As previously stated, border thinking emerges from the colonial

difference imposed by the West through coloniality, and whoever takes part in border

thinking does so from the perspective of the colonized, from the feelings of the colonial

wound. In fact, Foucault recognizes that such knowledge comes out of the colonial

wound by saying that these knowledges were concerned with “historical knowledge of

struggles” and in them lay the “memory of hostile encounters which even up to this day

have been confined to the margins of knowledge”46

. Therefore, there is concrete evidence

to support the influence of Foucault’s work in terms such as border thinking and

Mignolo’s solution of pluri-versality.

The relationship between knowledge and power lies in the fact that the validity of

knowledge as a discourse of truth is power. Foucault maintains that power cannot exist

without a discourse. Power is no longer based on the right to sovereignty as in the Middle

Ages. Once knowledge is established as power, it can disqualify or include on the basis

of a determinate set of standards. Relations of power cannot exist without the production

of a discourse of truth, and so it is an inherent characteristic of power that delimits what

is necessary to take part in the avant-garde and elite groups who form the discourse of

what is knowledge.

45

Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Pg. 82. 46

Ibid. Pg. 83.

35

The best example of this is in the sciences. Foucault refers to the question of

including Psychoanalysis or Marxism in the list of sciences, but we can easily expand this

to indigenous medicine or other doctrines of thought. Wherever there are standards that

classify knowledge there is power. If one attempts to establish if Marxism can be

considered a science, Foucault says that in doing this, you are “investing Marxists

discourses and those who uphold them with the effects of power which the West since

Medieval times has attributed to science and has reserved for those engaged in scientific

discourse”. Giving a discourse the label of “science,” you immediately bestow upon it the

power of knowledge, enclosing it in specific limits associated to the effects of such

power.

In order to understand power we must first acknowledge that its essential

mechanism is repression. Not in the sense of physical repression that we associate to

power today but in the sense of the control of bodies; it is the “mere effect and

continuation of a relation of domination”47

. Going back to border thinking, we

established it as the cure for both the colonial difference that arises from relations of

domination and the repression of power mechanisms. Therefore, subjugated knowledge

(or border thinking) “should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historical

knowledges form that subjection, to render them capable of opposition and of struggle

against the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientific discourse”48

.

Mignolo would object to Foucault’s use of the word emancipation because

emancipation implies remaining within the system, whereas liberation is more often used

to entail an absolute freedom from the root of oppression itself. The irony Foucault

47

Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Pg. 92. 48

Ibid. Pg. 85.

36

notices in the expansion of such knowledges is the risk of them being institutionalized

and, once put into circulation, become an integral part of the dominating sciences. He

asks, “can they be isolated by these means from every subjugating relationship?49

” He

notices that in the act of protecting these knowledges they may be accredited by the

“enemy” and colonized as such to form part of the discourse of truth. The tension lies in

maintaining the exclusion while at the same time giving a voice to the struggle against

the institutionalization of knowledge and the effects of the power in the knowledge of a

scientific discourse.

49

Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Pg. 86.

37

4 Conclusions

There are several examples that demonstrate how Mignolo and Foucault’s

theories could be applied contemporarily to current affairs in Latin America. Whereas

Foucault’s concept of biopower reflects the relationship of power between a hegemonic

country and a “developing” one, Mignolo’s concept of border thinking and de-linking

provides the cure for Latin American liberation and resistance to such forms of power.

The control of the population through mechanisms of biopower can be expanded to the

relationship between the first world and the third, instead of from the state to its citizens.

Of course, these aspects may also be seen at the local level, when such mechanisms of

power exist between the state and the people within a developing country, but my focus is

rather the relationship that exists between the privileged and the subaltern.

Mignolo mentions the necessity of a Latin American “awakening” to the aspects

of coloniality today coming from hegemonic sources of power, and how this should no

longer be tolerated. Healing the colonial wound means resisting an imposed position of

inferiority through the rhetoric of coloniality. The following examples echo Mignolo’s

claim to epistemological and ontological equality that can be obtained through the

development of our modernity and not another, lesser modernity. The ways to reach that

modernity must come from Latin America, and should not be a pathway designed by

those who “cause” the position of sub-alternity.

38

I. Resistance to Imperial Hegemony: Mujica, Chavez, and the Zapatistas

The speech delivered by the current President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, took

place in the G20 meeting in Rio on sustainable development in 2012 (see appendix for

full text). This kind of intervention in a formal diplomatic meeting demonstrates a

stunning act of courage and is worthy of reflection. Mujica’s words, following many

discussions about what ought to be done to eradicate poverty, shed light on a

discomforting reality that is inherent in adopting a way of life based on the western

model of consumption and production, or the liberal economy in general. Although

Mujica’s speech appeals to emotion and may sound impracticable in the short term, it

should not be disregarded for this reason. The points brought up in his speech adds to a

growing desire for a different modernity that has well-being and human happiness at its

center, instead of individual advantage and success at the cost of others.

Mujica makes the claim that the capitalistic model of society based on the market

economy is ruining essential aspects of life where people are at the mercy of the market

and subject to forces that they can no longer control. Here, he echoes Foucault’s claim

that biopolitics functions alongside a lean state, where the sphere of the economy must be

left free from government intervention. Modern society, in an age of globalization,

depends desperately on hyper-consumption. Consequently, the idea of happiness and

fulfillment has been adapted to fit the needs of society. The collective image of a

successful man or woman has become associated to economic affluence and the level

obtained in the hierarchy of the labor market. What we fail to realize is that this is only

one part of life, not life itself.

39

The unpredictability of the market and our dependence on it for survival and

consumption is a culture imported, so to say, from the US and neoliberal policies applied

through the IMF in Latin America. With regards to the market, Mujica says, “Today, man

does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man;

and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop… We come into this

planet to be happy, because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material

belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental”. Mujica’s message rings in

the ears of the many over-worked that take multiple jobs just to purchase superfluous

consumer goods. His warning: if you spend an entire life obsessed with work you will

arrive at his old age and see that your life has flown by before your eyes. However, he is

not advocating anarchy nor the abolition of the market, certainly.

I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a

‘monument to backwardness’. But we cannot continue like this,

indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule

over the market*. This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that

the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers, Epicurus, Seneca

and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who

has little but one who needs infinitely more…The cause is the model of

civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is

our way of life.

Mujica acknowledges that the problem is cultural, and that another option must be

possible. In a similar way, Mignolo calls for an economy based on the management of

* For Foucault, being ruled by the market is characteristic of biopower, whereas ruling the

market belongs to sovereign medieval rule.

40

scarce resources with a security for all of basic needs. Mignolo’s idea of the future is

based on this exact concept of well-being and a local form of participatory democracy.

Despite the fact that human happiness is an ambiguous concept and can be widely

interpreted to mean different things, it remains a fundamental aspect to be dealt with in

each society and should be left open to individual interpretation. Of course, this claim

brings to the surface many counter-arguments such as “is there a consensus on what is

happiness even within any one culture?” or matters of conflicting interests within

societies, regarding different ways to obtain that happiness. However, it is not my aim to

investigate the philosophical understanding of happiness, or the various interpretations of

its meaning and societal consequences.

For the sake of this argument, happiness as intended by Mignolo and Mujica

means having the basic necessities fulfilled to live a life with dignity. Mujica adds to this

by saying it is also having time at your disposal to enjoy of life and human relationships.

At the political level, it means making policy that is aimed towards the improvement of

standard of living for all, not hyper-consumerism at the cost of excluding those at the

bottom of the social strata.

This speech is one of many voices of dissent towards the status quo of an

economic and social model that belongs to the west. The idea of development itself is one

that must be revisited as it is unclear whom such development benefits. The relevancy of

Mignolo’s argument is evident in the current practices and attitudes emerging from Latin

America, both at the official and local level.

In his Twenty Theses on Politics, Enrique Dussel mentions, like Mignolo, the

EZLN of Chiapas, Mexico. This liberation movement aims at a form of governing that

41

holds the citizens at the center. In fact, they go by the phrase “command obeying”, which

means that the people command and the government obeys. The actions of those who

govern within this group are held accountable by the citizens, where those in a position of

power must fight “in favor of the empirically possible happiness of the political

community, of the pueblo”50

. The role of the government must be one that is truly

representative, considering the well-being of the people the utmost goal. The governor

must be in service of the people, given that they serve a public function, and only then

will they gain the respect of the people.

The EZLN, however, are perceived by the Mexican government and the majority

of international institutions as a rebel group that is hostile to the state even though they

are fighting for indigenous rights. The growth of this resistance movement against

policies that are not directed towards well-being indicate that there is a growing need for

a shift in the political paradigm. This need for change has, by now, taken root. It exists at

the local level against the established government as in the EZLN example, and at the

national level against imperial forms of coloniality as is the case with the Uruguayan

President.

Besides these single examples, there is a general strengthening of Latin American

resistance to different kinds of imperial hegemony and foreign interference in local

affairs. Several states are uniting to form, not necessarily an anti-American force, but a

political intolerance of imposed directives from abroad or anything that can be perceived

as modern-day coloniality. The death of Hugo Chavez, for example, provided an

opportunity for Latin American presidents to express their position in regards to a man

who was characteristically against US imperialism. For many presidents and Latin

50

Dussel, E. “20 Tesis de Politica”. Translated.

42

American citizens, Chavez represented a hero-like figure of resistance and autonomy. In

fact, the presidents from Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay and many others were present at his

funeral to pay respects to a man that changed Venezuela. For better or worse, this will not

be argued, but undoubtedly one who redistributed the wealth from oil profits to the poor

through social programs that would otherwise have gone in private hands as profit.

I will not argue whether the policies applied in Venezuela were in fact positive,

nor is my claim intent on praising nor condoning the two terms served by President

Chavez, but rather, to what extent do first world countries continue to manipulate affairs

in the “developing” world and to who’s advantage. Recently, the elections in Venezuela

were subject to scrutiny in the international arena because of the small margin of the

electoral victory for Chavez’ successor Nicolás Maduro. In the United States, the

constitution calls for the Vice President to automatically take office for the remainder of

the term in the absence of the incumbent President, without further elections. In

Venezuela, the constitution entitles the citizens to vote within 30 days of the death of the

President in favor or against the continuation of the Vice President.

When elections take place in Venezuela and the margin is small, as was the case

in the United States elections of 2000, and the winner turns out to be Madero, then the

opposition (with the support of the United States) declares they do not recognize the

results and claimed a recount of every single ballot. However, the opposition did not

make any official claim and has no evidence of voting irregularities other than rumors

and speculations. Given that elections took place in Venezuela, as stated in the

constitution, the validity of democracy is questioned. One could argue that the process in

Venezuela is more democratic than it would be in the US, where the Vice President

43

simply takes over the Presidential position. The claim made by US officials that the

elections were dubious and should be recounted is a severe intrusion into a country’s

affairs that endangers democratic and political stability. A presidential election based on

majority vote declares the winner even if obtained by just one vote.

The fact that a close vote divides a population in half, in which the losing half

feels unrepresented is a problem that is inherent to any kind of democratic presidential

election and is not a problem that solely pertains to Venezuela, as has been the case in the

elections that brought George W. Bush to presidency in the United States. The problem

arises when a super-power claims, without proof of the mishandling of electoral votes,

that the elections results should be reconsidered and the votes recounted. These claims by

the US administration demonstrate an arrogant and imperial intrusion to delegitimize the

democratic process in a Latin American country.

II. Conclusion

Mignolo states in an interview that coloniality and biopolitics are two major

concepts of contemporary intellectual debates. Again, he hesitates in saying they are the

same thing. Although they can be comparable, coloniality functions through racism and

exclusion whereas biopolitics was used as a tool of emerging nation/states. In fact,

biopolitics “imported” to Latin America becomes coloniality, where coloniality could be

interpreted as the Latin American counterpart of biopolitics. Although both are power

relationships, they do not work the exact same way, “coloniality/racism is a decolonial

concept while biopolitics/biopower is a posmodern concept”51

.

51

Mignolo, W. “The Prospect of Harmony”. Pg. 2

44

The resistance of Latin America as seen in the previous examples are directed

towards liberation from coloniality. Today, it is difficult for scholars and people in

general to recognize coloniality and imperial bias that deepens the colonial wound. It is

difficult for someone external to the experience of coloniality to understand it in depth.

“No one in Europe was thinking ‘coloniality’, they did not see it, they did not feel it.

They can understand ‘colonialism’ but ‘coloniality’ is another matter. It is more difficult

to see, they only see modernity and invent concepts like alternative, peripheral, subaltern

etc. modernities”52

. As with biopolitics, coloniality is not something obvious to the

distracted eyes. It is a subtle mechanisms that, however, has deep effects on society.

For this reason, this thesis is an attempt to add to the literature on decolonization

and detachment from mechanisms of coloniality, ideas that are already spreading

throughout Latin America and uniting in resistance to hegemonic domination of being,

culture, language, knowledge, the economy, and way of life. At the beginning of my

research, my original hypothesis predicted that Mignolo would agree with Foucault in all

aspects. I then realized it was not as simple as I imagined, and the way Mignolo uses and

rejects Foucault contemporarily reflects the complex tension that exists today between

the developing world and the first world. Just as Jaques Derrida’s work can be interpreted

to be a “method of reading,” or a philosophy in itself, Mignolo also teaches the reader

how to read, and think, from a different perspective. After reading Mignolo, the aspects

of coloniality become much more evident and easier to point out.

This has altered the original intention of my thesis, and has made it all the more

so, interesting and complex. Due to the lack of time, I was not able to properly engage

with Derrida’s concept of deconstruction that would have given Mignolo’s argument

52

Ibid. Pg. 3.

45

much more strength, since border thinking relies on a double consciousness that could

have been interpreted through what Derrida would call presence and absence. Also, I

innocently approached the topic of this thesis choosing two European authors, Foucault

and Derrida, unaware that de-colonial authors maintained a distance from European

thought. Once confronted with this obstacle that initially seemed contradictory, I took the

opportunity to explore this tension. Finally, to proceed with a more in depth analysis of

de-colonial scholarship, one could further investigate Mignolo’s work in light of similar

work published by Quijano, Dussel, Marategui and other inspiring authors from Latin

America.

46

Bibliography

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Dussel, Enrique. “20 Tesis de Politica”. 2006.

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48

Appendix 1 “All afternoon we’ve been talking about sustainable development, and we’ve

been talking about bringing huge numbers of people, huge amounts of people out of poverty. So

what are we thinking about in all of this? The patterns of production and consumption that we

have at the moment are those of affluent societies. Now, what would happen to the planet, I ask

myself, if the people of India had the same number of cars per family as the Germans? How much

oxygen would there be left for us to breathe? More clearly, does the world today have the material

resources to enable 7 or 8 billion people to enjoy the same level of consumption and squandering

as the most affluent Western societies? Will that ever be possible? Or will we have to start a

different type of discussion one day? Because we have created this civilization in which we live:

the progeny of the market, of competition, which has begotten prodigious and explosive material

progress. But the market economy has created market societies, and it has given us this

globalization, which means being aware of the whole planet. Are we ruling over globalization or is

globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an

economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go? I am not saying any of

this to undermine the importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of

colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one. Today,

man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man, and

life. Because we do not come into this planet to simply develop, just like that, indiscriminately.

We come into this planet to be happy, because life is short and it slips away from us. No material

belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental. But if life is going to slip through my

fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society

is the engine because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop

the economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us. It is this hyper-consumption that

is harming the planet, and this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things have a

short, useful life, in order to sell more. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 100 hours,

although there are light bulbs that can last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured

because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization

49

of “use and discard” and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of political

nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture. I’m not talking

about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a ‘monument to backwardness’, but we

cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market. On the contrary, we have to rule

over the market. This is why I say, in my humble opinion, that the problem we are facing is

political. The old thinkers, Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way: a poor person is

not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more and more”. This is a cultural issue.

So I salute the efforts and agreements being made, and I will adhere to them as governor. I know

some things I’m, saying are hard to digest, but we must realize that the water crisis and the

aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization that we have

created, and the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life. I belong to a small country well

endowed with natural resources for life. In my country, there are a bit more than 3 million people,

but there are about 13 million cows, some of the best in the world, and about 8 or 10 million

excellent sheep. My country is an exporter of food, dairy, meat. It is a low relief plain and almost

90% of the land is arable. My fellow workers fought hard for the 8 hour word day, and now they

are making it 6 hours. But the person who works 6 hours gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer

than before. But why? Because he needs to make monthly payments for the motorcycle, the car,

more and more payments, and when he’s done with that, he realizes he is an old man like me, and

his life is already over. And one asks this question: is this the fate of human life? These things I

say are very basic, development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human

happiness, of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our

basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness. Then

we fight for the environment, we must remember that the essential element of the environment is

called human happiness.