engaging the geo political economy of knowledge construction

8/14/2019 Engaging the Geo Political Economy of Knowledge Construction

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WORKING PAPER

Engaging the (geo)political economy of knowledge construction:Towards decoloniality and diversality in global citizenship education.

Vanessa AndreottiSchool of Mori, Social and Cultural Studies in Education, University of Canterbury , Aotearoa

This paper offers a synthesis of arguments mainly developed by Latin American scholars on the need for different epistemologies and a morenuanced understanding of modernity and coloniality in discussions aboutcosmopolitanism and global citizenship education. Informed by, but alsocritical of, world-systems theory (see Wallerstein 1974; 1984; 1991), thesearguments highlight the importance of the geopolitics of knowledgeconstruction and of situated theoretical approaches to questions related to the

political economy of global citizenship education. My intention in writing thissynthesis is not to present these scholars propositions as normative ideals,but as challenging and complementary or supplementary perspectives thatare missing on the table of educational debates related to global citizenshipeducation.

My contributions to this debate have focused on the use of postcolonial theoryand post-structuralism as analytical tools for critiques of global citizenshipeducation policy and practices, and as frameworks for pedagogical projectsthat emphasise self-reflexivity and relationality (see for example Andreotti2006; 2007; 2009; 2010). Hence, in choosing a different theoretical lens, it isalso my intention to affirm the need for an approach to scholarship thatrecognises that every theoretical approach will only offer a partial and limitedperspective on an issue: the complexity of global citizenship education cannotbe captured by any one theory. This approach emphasises that walking (andpushing) the edges of a theorys limits is part of our ethical responsibility asresearchers.

In this sense, I start with Puerto Rican i sociologist Ramon Grosfoguel (2008)who offers a comparison of world systems and postcolonial analyticalapproaches. He argues that both share a critique of developmentalism, ofEurocentric forms of knowledge, of gender inequalities, of racial hierarchies,and of cultural/ideological processes that foster the subordination of theperiphery in the capitalist world-system ( Grosfoguel, 2008:10). However,according to Grosfoguel, postcolonial critiques focus on agents of colonialcultures, while world-system critiques focus on structures of capitalaccumulation. He perceives a divide in terms of disciplinary associations:postcolonial critiques tend to come from academics in the humanities in areasrelated to literature, cultural studies or rhetoric, while world-systems critiquestend to come from academics in social sciences in areas related to politics,economics and sociology. Gosfoguel affirms that while postcolonial theorytends to be limited in its analysis of political-economic relations, world-

systems theory tends to be limited in its analysis of culture: both literaturesfluctuate between the danger of economic reductionism and the danger of


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culturalism (Grosfoguel, 2008: 11). He identifies a number of questionscentral to debates in both camps:

Can we produce a radical anti-capitalist politics beyond identitypolitics? Is it possible to articulate a critical cosmopolitanism beyond

nationalism and colonialism? Can we produce knowledges beyondthird World and Eurocentric fundamentalisms? Can we overcome thetraditional dichotomy between political-economy and cultural studies?Can we move beyond economic reductionism and culturalism? Howcan we overcome Eurocentric modernity without throwing away thebest of modernity as many Third World fundamentalists do?(Grosfoguel, 2008:1)

These questions and others presented later seem to be key in movingdebates around global citizenship beyond Eurocentrism and unexamineduniversality. Thus the aim of this article is to map implications of debatesarising from what I call decolonial world systems theory ii for a project ofglobal citizenship education that emphasises decoloniality and diversality, Idivided this article into four parts. I start with a summary of more generaldiscussions related to modernity in the works of the Latin AmericanModernity/Coloniality Group. I briefly outline the perspectives of four Latin

American scholars writing in conversation with one another (Enrique Dussel, Anibal Quijano, Arturo Escobar and Walter Mignolo) in their emphases on theimportance to re-imagine modernity as a project of violent epistemic andterritorial expansion in order to clear its past and point towards differentfutures . Second, I explore concepts related to epistemic racism in the work ofNelson Maldonado-Torres. Third, I present a summary of Boaventura deSouza Santos metaphor of abyssa l lines and abyssal thinking, as well as hiscall for an ecology of knowledges that is based on an alternative way to thinkabout alternatives . In the last part of the article, I summarise someimplications for three dimensions of global citizenship education that mayopen possibilities for decoloniality and diversality and I offer my owninterpretation of what decoloniality and diversality could look like inpedagogical practices.

The modernity coloniali ty group: introducing the darker side ofmodernity

The Argentinean sociologist Enrique Dussel (1998) asserts that the questionof modernity is characterised by two opposing paradigms: the Eurocentric andthe planetary. The Eurocentric paradigm constructs modernity as exclusivelyEuropean, something that develops in the middle ages and that subsequentlyexpands to other parts of the world. He argues that, within this paradigmEurope is believed to have exceptional internal characteristics (i.e. rationality)that justify its superiority over other cultures. In contrast, the planetaryparadigm positions Europe as the centre of a world system, not as anindependent system that has expanded. This centrality comes from thecomparative advantage gained from the colonization and integration of

Amerindia, which became its first periphery. This planetary paradigmrepresents modernity as the product and not the cause of European


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planetarization and Eurocentrism as the super-ideology that establishes thelegitimacy of the domination of the world system by its centre, justifying itsmanagement functions.

Another Argentinian scholar, Walter Mignolo (2002) distinguishes two

macronarratives that can be associated with the paradigms described byDussel: that of Western civilisation and that of modern world systems.

According to Mignolo, the former is a philosophical narrative associated withliterature, philosophy and the history of ideas, locating its beginning in ancientGreece and the beginning of modernity in the eighteenth century, while thelatter is a narrative of the social sciences that situates the beginning of theprocess of world-systems formation in the fifteenth century and links it tocapitalism. Mignolo asserts that: the colonized areas of the world weretargets of Christianization and the civilizing mission, as the project of thenarrative of Western civilization, and they became the target of development,modernization, and the new marketplace as the project of the modern world-system (p.84). Mignolo argues that both metanarratives have their owndefenders and critics and he places Dussel in-between the two.

The modern world-system/planetary modernity macronarratives are centredon an articulation of power based on space rather than a succession of eventsin linear time. The Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano (1997) has called thisarticulation of power coloniality of power . This coloniality can beconceptualised as a global hegemonic model of power in place since theconquest of the Americas that articulated race and labour, space and peoples,according to the needs of capital and to the benefit of white European peoples(Escobar 2004:218). If modernity is conceptualised as the project of theChristian and secular West, then coloniality is: on the one hand - what theproject of modernity needs to rule out and roll over, in order to implant itself asmodernity and - on the other hand - the site of enunciation where theblindness of the modern project is revealed, and concomitantly also the sitewhere new projects begin to unfold. (e-mail exchange between Mignolo andEscobar cited in Escobar 2004:218). Quijanos coloniality of power features asthe overall dimension of modernity (its darker side). It sees colonialism asconstitutive of modernity, rather than derivative from modernity. In this sense,colonialism is conceptualised as an Eurocentric process of expansion of amode of knowing and representation that claims universality for itself, derived

from Europes position as centre (Escobar 2004:217).Dussel (1998) argues that the crises of modernity, after five centuries ofdevelopment, emerges from internal critiques (e.g. Nietzsche, Heidegger andthe post -modernists) that have been important , but that have not been ableto go beyond Eurocentrism, as the peripheral world does not appear to bemore than a passiv e spectator, still in need of being modernized (p.17). In asimilar way, Mignolo (2002) claims that it is problematic to think from thecanon of Western philosophy, even when part of the canon is critical ofmodernity (p.66). He concludes that such a mov ement reproduces the blindepistemic ethnocentrism that makes difficult, if not impossible, any political

philosophy of inclusion (ibid).


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In an attempt to formulate this political philosophy of inclusion, Mignolo (2002)expands on the planetary paradigm and the concept of coloniality byintroducing the notion of colonial difference, which refers to anacknowledgement of the construction of the classification of the planet in theModern/Colonial imaginary (p.13). He asserts that colonial expansion was

also the expansion of (European) forms of knowledge, even if critical ofcolonialism and that the Eurocentric paradigm of modernity has been blind tothe subalternisation of non-european knowledges. His concept of colonialdifference can be described as a loci of enunciation , a connector thatrefersto the changing faces of colonial differences throughout the history of themodern/colonial world-system and brings to the foreground the planetarydimension of human history silenced by discourses centering on modernity,postmodernity, and Western civilization (Mignolo, 2002:80). The colonialdifference is an effect of coloniality that, as Mignolo points out, can be eitherforeclosed or revealed (ibid).

Dussel (1998) also argues that the Eurocentric paradigm that conceptualizesmodernity as an exclusively European phenomenon that expanded from theseventeenth century on throughout all the backward cultures (p.18) cangenerate two positions about the future. The first position says that modernityneeds to be concluded (he asserts that Habermas and Apel defend thisposition). The second says that modernity does not have any positive qualitiesand propose that the project should be abandoned (he asserts that the post-modernists are its defenders). For the second paradigm that considersmodernity the rational management of a world-system, he identifies his ownposition, speaking from the world periphery (the colonial difference), as oneintending to recoup what is redeemable in modernity and to halt the practice sof domination and exclusion in the world system (p.20) a project ofliberation of the periphery, of overcoming the world system itself byformulating an ethics of liberation defined as transmodern. Dussel assertsthat he is coming from a different starting point from critical theory and fromcontinental philosophy, a different locus of enunciation that, according toMignolo is based on a different concept of time:

Since the Renaissance - the early modern period or emergence of themodern/colonial world time has functioned as a principle of order thatincreasingly subordinates places, relegating them to before or below

from the perspective of the holders (of the doors) of time. Arrangements of events and people in a time line is also a hierarchicalorder, distinguishing primary sources of thought from interesting orcurious events, peoples, or ideas. Time is also the point of referencefor the order of knowledge. The discontinuity between being and timeand coloniality of being and place is w hat nourishes Dussels need tounderline the difference (the colonial difference) between continentalphilosophy (Vattimo, Jrgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, MichelFoucault) and philosophy of liberation (p.21).

An ethics and philosophy of liberation imply that the location of the speaker,

her/his experience of colonial difference needs to be revealed and becomethe starting point for thinking. Mignolo justifies his position by stating that


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global designs (religious, economic, social, and epistemic) emerged asresponses to the propagation of an epistemology that was assumed to haveuniversal value across time and space (p.69). From a similar standpoint,Colombian anthropologist, Arturo Escobar (2004) summarises Mignolos pointasserting that the seeming tr iumph of Eurocentered modernity can be seen

as the imposition of a global design by a particular local history, in such a waythat it has subalternised other local histories and designs (p.217). Theimplication is that within discourses of progress and civilisation, time acts as aprinciple that arbitrates and ranks both knowledge and being (i.e. who countsas human). Non-European epistemologies and ontologies are translated intouniversalised European epistemological parameters as inferior, less evolved,primitive, erroneous or eccentric culturally tainted derivatives. Thismovement of subalternisation and normalisation is generally referred to as theepistemic violence of colonialism.

This violence affects cultural difference: those who stubbornly i nsist onmaintaining their own vision of progress or reason face the danger of beingisolated, impoverished and discriminated against (Canagarajah, 2002:245).This is illustrated by Mignolo with reference to the double bind facing Africanphilosophe rs according to Bernasconi (cited in Mignolo, 2002): [e]ither

African philosophy is so similar to Western philosophy that it makes nodistinctive contribution and effectively disappears; or it is so different that itscredentials to be genuine philosophy will always be in doubt (p.70).

The end of this Eurocentric and civilizing system of Western epistemology,according to Dussel, is marked by three limits. The first is the ecologicaldestruction of the planet. For Dussel, this limit is marked by theconceptualisation of nature as an exploitable object that exists to increase therate of profit of capital. The second limit is poverty (the destruction ofhumanity). This limit is marked by the unequal distribution of wealth andlabour caused by a an economy that sanctions exploitation, accumulation andconsumerism. The third limit is the impossibility of the subsumption of peoplesand cultures through modernisation processes. This is marked by movementsof resistance (Dussel, 1998).

In relation to this third limit, Mignolo, Dussel, Quijano and Escobar attempt tocreate a common ground for peoples in the periphery by proposing that the

colonial difference should be the starting point for knowledge and thinking.They claim that their border position should be revealed and become theepistemological position where people speak from (i.e. a locus ofenunciation). Mignolo conceptualises border thinking as an epistemic modethat works as a double critique to crack the imaginary of the modern/colonialworld system away from Eurocentrism as an epistemological perspective. Asa double critique, border thinking establishes alliances with the internalcritique of modernity [] at the same time that it marks the irreducibledifference of border thinking as a critique f rom the colonial difference(Mignolo, 2000:87). As an epistemic mode, border thinking affirms the maxim:I am where I think ( 89).


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Escobar (2004) summarises the theoretical differential of the Latin AmericanModenity/Coloniality Research Group as: 1) the location of the origins ofmodernity in the fifteenth century with the conquest of America and thecontrol of the Atlantic; 2) the conceptualisation of colonialism, postcolonialismand imperialism as constitutive of modernity; 3) the adoption of the planetary

paradigm which sees modernity as a world rather than an European phenomenon; 4) the identification of domination of non-Europeans as acentral and necessary feature of modernity; 5) the formulation of the linkbetween modernity and coloniality represented in the notion of Eurocentrismas a mode of knowing and hegemonic representation derived from Europesposition as centre that claims universality for itself.

The group acknowledges the importance of the internal critique of modernity(i.e. post-modernism and post-structuralism), but recognise its limits in theforeclosure of colonial difference. Their proposal for political articulation canbe summarised as the need to take seriously the epistemic force of localhistories and to think th eory through the political praxis of subaltern groups(Escobar 2004:217).

Nelson Maldonado-Torres: epistemic racism

Puerto Rican philosopher Maldonado-Torres (2004), drawing on the work ofMignolo, Quijano and others, deploys coloniality of power as an analyticaltool that could counter the forgetting of spaciality (expansionist control oflands), epistemic racism (elimination and subjugation of difference) andgeopolitics of knowledge production (epistemic violence) in Eurocentricaccounts of the making of modernity. He defends that, as an analytical tool,coloniality of power links together racial formation, the control of labor, thestate and knowledge production (39). For Maldonado -Torres, Quijano andMignolo, this analytical tool brings to the s urface the darker side ofmodernity: the fact that modernity depends on coloniality for its existence.

Maldonado-Torres (2004) proposes that, if the darker side of modernity isforgotten, what results is a kind of universalism located in a spaceless realm.This spacelessness prompts the emergence of an epistemicaly neutralsubject who speaks from Europe (or America/Canada) as a privileged

epistemic site adopting a universalistic perspective that does away with thesignificance of geopolitical locatio n (37). Hence, this neutral epistemic subjectwill tend to believe that s/he alone can map the world and draw associatio nsbetween thinking and space ( 30) that are valid for all the rest of humanity. ForMaldonado-Torres, this alleged neutrality and universality, in turn, producesepistemic blindness:

At the end, such belief in neutrality, I would like to suggest, tends toreproduce blindness, not in regard to space as such, but in relation tonon-European ways of thinking and to the production and reproductionof the imperial/colonial relation, or what I would like to refer to, following

the work of the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, as coloniality.(2004:30)


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Maldonado-Torres (2004) associates the allegedly neutral-universal stancewith the search for European (or Western) roots, which characterises theworks of influential philosophers such as Heidegger, Levinas, Negri,Habermas and Derrida. He affirms that these authors reproduce a belief that

is at the heart of the project of modernity: the be lief that people cannot get bywithout Europes theoretical and cultural achievements ( 32). Hence, thissearch for European roots results in an epistemic blindness constitutive ofboth modernity and postmodernity, a will to ignorance that Maldonado-Torrestranslates (with reference to the work of Frantz Fanon) as the forgetfulness ofdamnation.(45) :

The forgetfulness of the damned is part of the veritable sickness of theWest, a sickness that could be likened to a state of amnesia that leadsto murder, destruction and epistemic will to power with goodconscience (2004:36).

He also associates this search for roots with epistemic racism. Maldonado-Torres defines this kind of racism as a systemic amnesia that forgetsgeopolitical relations at work in the making of modernity. This results in thenon-recognition of radically different epistemologies:

As all forms of racism, epistemic racism is linked with politics andsociality. Epistemic racism disregards the epistemic capacity of certaingroups of people. It may be based on metaphysics or ontology but itsresults are nonetheless the same: the evasion of the recognition ofothers as fully human beings (2004:34)

The criteria for full humanity relates to ones capacity for intellectual creativityand rationality defined in European terms (Maldonado-Torres, 2004). Hence,those who are perceived to lack both intellectual and rational capacity areregarded as not-fully-human. Maldonado-Torres refers to this subject positionas the coloniality of being:

Coloniality of Being suggests that Being in some way militates againstones own existence. Levinas, a racialized and persecuted subject, hadan intimation into this reality. Being was not something that opened to

him the realm of signification, but something that seemed to make himthe target of annihilation.(2004:43)

Maldonado-Torres (2004) notes that conceptions of Being in the works ofthinkers ideologically located in Europe differ from those who focus on theway different subjects with different histories and memories experiencemodernity and respond to its legacies in the contemporary world (42). Heasserts that critics of Eurocentrism who are firmly grounded in Eurocentrismitself tend to critique modernity at the same time that they try to rescue it.Such critiques, by leaving out questions of spaciality and coloniality, fail tochallenge the racist geopolitics of knowledge at the heart of Western

discourse and, hence, reproduce epistemic racism. This rescuing of modernitygenerally takes the form of a critique of universals that, at the same, reaffirms


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Europe as a site of epistemic privilege (especially in relation to criticalthinking):

This form of hegemonic identity politics would not be so problematic if itdid not assume that the critique of instrumental reason is enough to

account for the logic of coloniality. There is in much of critical thinkingthe tendency to recognize critical thought only when it uses the termsof debate that derive from consideration of certain coordinates typicallylocated in crucial spaces for the production of modern and postmodernideologies (2004: 40-41).

Maldonado-Torres (2004) is also critical of multicultural attempts to includedifferent voices in Eurocentric sites of conversation, where difference isdomesticated to become palatable and confirm the universalism of Europeanreason. He states that this kind of multiculturalism hides in this way a deepermultiracism that only recognizes the right for difference when peoples are welldomesticated by capitalism, the market economy and liberal ideals of freedomand equality (49).

These multicultural sites of dialogue are grounded on a belief in dialecticalthinking that forecloses its own parameters of intelligibility (or palatability).This leads to a forgetting of constitutive absences in dialectical process. ForMaldonado-Torres, these absences relate back to those who are damned:

Taking Du Bois and Wynters lead, I would like to suggest that from theperspectives of the repeatedly racialized groups of modernity,particularly indigenous people and people of African or Afro-mixed ex-slave descent, but also Jews and Muslims, a concept of Beingpremised on what is often referred to as the dialectics of modernity andthe nation, and their supposed overcoming by the emergence ofimperial sovereignty or Empire, miss the non-dialectical character ofDamnation (2004:42)

In order to address this damnation, the unequal distribution of vulnerabilities,oppression and suffering, Maldonado-Torres (2004) calls for a transgressionof Eurocentric boundaries. He states that we would need to introduce ideasthat emerge from the experience of colonization and persecution of different

subjectivities (44). However, he poses a begged question: How can onecommunicate with subjects who are a priorily suspected of lacking reason?Part of the answer, for Maldonado-Torres is the introduction of geopoliticalrelations in the narratives of modernity in order to make its darker sidevisible, as the Latin American group emphasise. He u ses Frantz Fanonsproject of decoloniality as an example:

Fanons philosophical geopolitics were transgressive, decolonial andcosmopolitan. He wanted to bring into view what had remainedinvisible for centuries. He was claiming the need for the recognition ofdifference as well as the need for decolonization as an absolute

requirement for the proper recognition of human difference and the


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achievement of a post-colonial and post-European form of humanism(2004:36).

Maldonado- Torres (2004) project involves a process of epistemictransformation and decolonial cosmopolitanism leading to a movement

towards radical diversality: a critique of roots that brings into light bothcoloniality and the epistemic potential of non- European epistemes (30). Inthis sen se, he contrasts Fanons project of decolonization as a dislocation ofthe subject, with Levinas and Heideggers search for European roots:

Decolonization is about the creation of a new symbolic and materialorder that takes the full spectrum of human history, its achievementsand its failures, into view. This side of history is what neither Heideggernor Levinas could see or did not want to see. Their search forEuropean roots blinded them to this kind of decolonial geopolitics.Instead of giving primacy to the search for roots in Europe orelsewhere, Fanons decolonial consciousness aims to dislocate thesubject through the awareness of a response to those who are lockedin positions of subordination. Rather than trying to find roots in theearth, Fanon proposed responding responsibly to the damned of theearth (2004:36).

Boaventura de Souza Santos (2007) : abyssal lines, abyssal thinking

If decolonization is the creation of a new symbolic and material order thattakes the full spectrum of human history, its achievements and its failures, intoview , Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos (2007) offers ametaphor that enacts this project and complements Maldonado- Torres (2004)contribution to a conversation on the possibility of an approach to globalcitizenship education that emphasises decoloniality and diversality. Hisconcept of abyssal lines and abyssal thinking make the coloniality of powermore visible and accessible to those who have not engaged with these ideasbefore.

Santos (2007) asserts that Modern Western thinking operates as abyssalthinking. He defines abyssal thinking as a system consisting of visibledistinctions which are based on invisible distinctions that are established

through a logic that defines social reality as e ither on this side of the abyssalline or on the other side of the abyssal line He explains:

The division is such that the other side of the line vanishes as realitybecomes nonexistent, and is indeed produced as non-existent.Nonexistent means not existing in any relevant or comprehensible wayof being. Whatever is produced as nonexistent is radically excludedbecause it lies beyond the realm of what the accepted conception ofinclusion considers to be its other. What most fundamentallycharacterizes abyssal thinking is thus the impossibility of the co-presence of the two sides of the line. To the extent that it prevails, this

side of the line only prevails by exhausting the field of relevant reality.


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Beyond it, there is only nonexistence, invisibilit y, nondialecticalabsence (2007:2).

He associates this side of the line (i.e. metropolitan societies) with theparadigm of regulation/emancipation and the other side (i.e. shifting colonial

territories) with appropriation and violence (committed by this side of theline). He states that the Modern Abyssal line is not fixed, but that its positionat any one time is heavily controlled and policed. He also acknowledges thatthe displacements of the line have affected the distinction between themetropo litan and the colonial in recent times, in many spaces turning thecolonial into an internal dimension of the metropolitan ( 2007:9).

Modern Abyssal thinking thrives in the making and radicalization ofdistinctions that make the abyssal line in which they are grounded invisible.One example is the distinction between scientific truth and falsehood, which isprojected as universal. This universality, according to Santos (2007) ispremised on the invisibility of ways of knowing that do not fit parameters ofacceptability established by Modern knowledge, law and science in theirabyssal mode of operation (akin to Maldonado- Torres epistemic blindnessand racism towards the damned) . The result is that, as seen from this sideof the line, on the other side of the line there is no real knowledge; there arebeliefs, opinions, intuitive or subjective understandings, which, at the most,may become objects or raw materials for scientific enquiry (2). As a result, avast array of cognitive experiences are wasted. Santos (2007) refers to thistrashing of epistemologies as epistemicide (16).

In legal terms, it is this side of the line that determines what is legal andillegal based on State or International Law, eliminating the possibilities andexperiences of social realms where such distinctions (i.e. State, International,legal, illegal) would be unimaginable as forms of organization:

This radical denial of co-presence grounds the affirmation of the radicaldifference that, on this side of the line, separates true and false, legaland illegal. The other side of the line comprises a vast set of discardedexperiences, made invisible both as agencies and as agents, and withno fixed territorial location (Santos, 2007:3).

This denial of co-presence translate s into a hegemonic contact that convertssimultaneity with non-contemporaneity [making up] pasts to make room for asingle homogeneous future (3) (hence a search for roots in Europe or in theWest!). The project of a homogeneous future justifies the violence andappropriation carried out in its name (Quijanos coloniality of power). Thus,one part of humanity (considered sub-human), on the other side of theabyssal line, is sacrificed in order to affirm the universality of the part ofhumanity on this side of the line (Santos, 2007).

Santos (2007) argues that the struggle for global social justice is inseparablefrom the struggle for global cognitive justice and that both struggles require

post-abyssal thinking (5). This implies that political resistance must be premised upon epistemological resistance (10), which calls not for more


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alternatives but for an alternative thinking about alternatives (10) (akin toMignolos border thinking and Maldonado -Torres decolonial project towardsdiversality). Such alternative way of thinking about alternatives, for Santos(2007) , needs a sociology of emergences (2004) which involves the symbolicamplification of signs, clues, and latent tendencies that, however inchoate and

fragmented point to new constellations of meaning as regards both to theunderstanding and the transformation of the world ( 2007:10). This recognitionof epistemological diversity beyond scientific knowledge, entails a renouncingof any general epistemology. However, he asserts that

Throughout the world, not only are there very diverse forms ofknowledge of matter, society, life and spirit, but also many and verydiverse concepts of what counts as knowledge and the criteria thatmay be used to validate it. In the transitional period we are entering, inwhich abyssal versions of totality and unity of knowledge still resist, weprobably need a residual general epistemological requirement to movealong: a general epistemology of the impossibility of a generalepistemology (Santos, 2007:12).

He suggests that, from this side of the abyssal line, a recognition of culturaldiversity does not necessarily translate into a recognition of epistemologicaldiversity (his critique is similar to Maldonado- Torres critique ofmulticulturalism).

Santos (2007) advocates for an ecology of knowledges based on arecognition of the plurality of heterogeneous knowledges (one of them beingmodern science) and on the sustained and dynamic interconnections betweenthem without compromising their autonomy (11) . In Santos (2007) ecology ofknowledges, knowledges and ignorances intersect: as there is no unity ofknowledge, there is no unity of ignorance either (12). Given theinterdependence of knowledges and ignorances, the ideal would be to createinter -kno wledges where learning other knowledges does not mean forgettingones own (Santos, 2007) . Hence, the ecology of knowledges he proposesaims to enable epistemological consistency for pluralistic, propositionalthinking ( 2007:12) where scientific knowledge is not discredited, but used incounter hegemonic ways:

Such use consists, on the one hand in exploring the internal plurality ofscience, that is, alternative scientific practices that have been madevisible by feminist and postcolonial epistemologies and, on the otherhand, in promoting the interaction and interdependence betweenscientific and non-scientific knowledges (2007:13)

Within the ecology of knowledges, the limits and value of knowledges areattributed according to the notion of knowledge -as-intervention-in- reality andnot knowledge as -a-representation-of-reality (Santos, 2007:13). He proposesthat the credibility of cognitive construction [be] measured by the type ofintervention in the world that it affords or prevents ( ibid). He suggests that the

ecology of knowledges not only requires a break from the mono-epistemicismof this side of the abyssal line, but also a radical co -presence, or the


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conflation of contemporaneity with simultaneity, which involves theabandonment of the notion of linear time (11) (as Mignolo also proposes) andthe cultivation of a spontaneity that refuses to deduce the potential from theactual (17).

The ecology of knowledges is a destabilizing epistemology to theextent that it engages in a radical critique of the politics of the possiblewithout yielding to an impossible politics (Santos, 2007:17)

This drive towards egalitarian simultaneity is based on an idea ofincompleteness: since no single type of knowledge can account for allpossible interventions in the world, all of them are incomplete in differentways. Hence each knowledge is both insufficient and inter-dependent onother knowledges ( Santos, 2007:17).

Santos (2007) summarises post- abyssal thinking as learning from the Souththrough an epistemology of the South (11). Such thinking should confront themono- epistemicism of this side of the Abyssal line with an ecology ofknowledges.

It is in the nature of the ecology of knowledges to establish itselfthrough constant questioning and incomplete answers. This is whatmakes it a prudent knowledge. The ecology of knowledges enables usto have a much broader vision of what we do not know, as well as ofwhat we do know, and also to be aware that what we do not know isour own ignorance, not a general ignorance.(2007:18)

So what? Now what? Implications for global citizenship education

In this article, I propose that the conceptual syntheses of the works of Mignolo(2002), Dussel (1998), Quijano (1997), Escobar (2004), Maldonado-Torres(2004) and Santos (2007) presented so far open different possibilities forcreating meaning in relation to at least three inter-dependent dimensions ofglobal citizenship education. The first is how educators imagine the globe inglobal citizenship and education. The second is how educators imaginethemselves as global educators and their students as global citizens. Thethird is how educators imagine knowledge and learning beyond Eurocentric

paradigms. I offer a situated analysis of the implications for each dimensionwith key questions that could guide the pursuit of further conversationstowards more emphasis on decoloniality and diversality (beyondeurocentrism) in global citizenship work.

In terms of how educators imagine the globe, the strongest message of theconceptual syntheses is that moving beyond Eurocentrism requires anaccount of the darker side of modernity through an understanding of thecoloniality of power (i.e. seeing colonialism as constitutive of modernity ratherthan derivative from it). In this sense, Mignolo proposes an emphasis oncolonial difference as a recognition of the classification of the planet in the

Modern/Colonial imaginary ( 2000:13) and of the epistemic violences ofmodernity and their effects. Similarly, Maldonado-T orres work emphasises


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the non-negotiable universals in a global citizenship project (if there are any)?Whose perspectives are represented in these universals? Whoseepistemology forms the basis of this project? Whose perspectives orepistemologies could have been silenced or absent in this project? Does thiswork reinforce the belief that people cannot get by without

European/American help, ideas or intervention? How can we move beyonddepoliticised projects that focus on individual skills towards a broaderunderstanding of ideology, culture and political-economies? How can we undothe consciousness of superiority lodged in the self (Spivak, 2004:534)through over socialisation on this side of the line that affirms that the price ofgreatness is responsibility for the other (ibid)? How do we support learners inthe difficult stages of this undoing when they face the uncertainty, fear, angerand possible paralysis that comes in the early stages of the renegotiation of(and of disenchantment with) epistemic privilege?

In terms of imagining knowledge and learning beyond Eurocentric paradigms,Mignolo (2002), Maldonado-Torres (2004) and Santos (2007) proposecomplementary projects that suit different subject positions. For those who areable to cross from the other side of the abyssal line to this side, Mignolo(2000) calls for the use of border thinking as an epistemic principle that aimsto crack the Modern/colonial imaginary making the darker side of modernityand the coloniality of power visible. Similarly, for those on this side of the line and those crossing, Maldonado-Torres (2004) proposes a decolonialgrammar of critical analysis which would recog nise its own vulnerability (52).He calls for an examination of the mechanisms that create subordination andinvisibility, as well as of our own complicity with patterns of domination. Hestates that this examination is more about searching for invisible faces thansearching for imperial roots; more about radical critique than about orthodoxalignments against what are persistently conceived as the barbarians ofknowledge (2004:51). This would requir e the creation of a new symbolic andmaterial order that takes the full spectrum of human history, its achievementsand its failures, into view ( Maldonado-Torres, 2004:36).

Maldonado- Torres (2004) and Mignolos (2000;2002) insistence on diversalityrequires the making of a space for the enunciation and exp ression of non-Western cosmologies and for the expression of different cultural, political andsocial memories ( 2000:51). This space would help make visible the

existential conditions of people with different legacies, cosmologies andaspirations for the transformation of the world and of the ego (Maldonado-Torres, 2004). For this space to grant equality, it cannot be based ondialectics (as constitutive of European universalist epistemologies) or a veiledaspiration for consensus (as also constitutive of European universalistepistemologies). In Mignolos (2000) words this space needs to accord peoplethe right to be different because they are equals (311). This space demandsan alternative thinking of a lternatives ( Santos, 2007: 10). This alternativethinking needs to conceptualise knowledge, culture and identities as verbs (Bhabha, 1994) and resists homogenisations while affirming specificities. Theimplication for education is that educators would need to let go of the

aspiration for fixed blueprints of futures and ideal societies (projected from asingle worldview to be imposed worldwide) that are traditionally constitutive of


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the project of schooling (as imagined from an European perspective andimposed around the world). This entails a renegotiation of epistemic privilege(on this side of the line) that is pedagogically difficult as it is generallyperceived first as a loss (of grounds, and certainties: chaos, the end ofeverything - see Andreotti 2010).

The notions of an ecology of knowledges and post-abyssal thinking proposedby Santos (2007) complement the idea of diversality defended by Mignolo(2000; 2002) and Maldonado-Torres (2004) in three different ways. First theyfocus on the inter-relations and insufficiency of all knowledge systems.Second, they bring to the fore the problematic and provisional nature ofcreating a general epistemology that could work in the unmaking the abyssallines. In addition, they emphasise the need to rethink the parameters ofvalidation and limits of knowledge and truth in terms of knowledge-as-intervention-in- reality rather than knowledge as -a-representation-of- reality(Santos, 2007:13). Santos (2007) aligns with Mignolo (2000; 2002) in thesuggestion that in post-abyssal thinking, ecologies of knowledge or projects ofdiversality, the will to transform (the coloniality of power or abyssal lines)should precede the will to truth (which anchors the coloniality ofpower/abyssal lines) (Mignolo, 2000:26). Santos (2007) also aligns withMignolo (2000;2002) in his call for an abandonment of the notion of linear time(and hierarchical categories such as traditional/modern) that enables theconflation of contemporaneity with simultaneity (i.e. an abandonment of theidea that the first/Developed/Western world is ahead in progress/time). Ineducation, this would require what Trinidadian scholar Jacqui Alexander(2005) has called a re- scrambling of our here and now (of this side of theabyssal line) with the then and there (that we attribute to the other side)tow ards a here and there and then and now (2005:190).

Maldonado-Torres (2004) suggests some questions that could guide this kindof work in global citizenship education:

Why not engaging seriously Muslim intellectuals? Why not trying tounderstand the deeply theoretical claims that have emerged in contextsthat have known European coloniality? Why not breaking with themodel of the universal or global and furthering the growth of anepistemically diverse world? (2004:50).

I would add five one million-dollar questions to his list: 1)How can one engagewith different epistemologies ethically, responsibly and critically withouthomogenizing, essentialising or romaticising them? 2) How can one interruptones own assumptions in order to engage with other epistemologies on theirown terms? 3) How can one avoid absolute relativism (i.e. knowledgesystems seen as homogeneous, static and independent rather thandynamic, contingent and inter-dependent)? 4)How can one do thissuccessfully without reproducing the belief that precisely by doing this I amnecessarily better, I am necessarily indispensable, I am necessarily the onewho rights wrongs, I am necessarily the end product for which history

happened (Spivak, 2004: 532)? 5) How can one avoid creating new abyssallines in the work against abyssal lines? These questions are part of a debate


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that is ongoing and they highlight the fact that the inclusion of Otherepistemologies and the undoing of abyssal lines in pedagogical work (oranywhere else) cannot be a quick fix exercise with simple tick -this- boxstandards of success (Spivak, 2004).

Conclusions: towards a pedagogy of dissensus

So, what would decoloniality and diversality look like in global citizenshipeducation practice? And are educational projects that emphasisedecoloniality, diversality, post-abyssal thinking, border thinking or ecologies ofknowledge possible in contemp orary educational institutions, which can beseen as official producers of neutral-universal subjectivities firmly groundedon this side of the abyssal line? My response to the first question is thatglobal citizenship work informed by these principles would show a high levelof engagement with other epistemologies and social movements , as well asa number of key characteristics. These would include (but not be exclusiveto):

- a strong emphasis on the geopolitics of knowledge production in orderto enable learners to face abyssal lines and work through theirunmaking;

- a focus on the development of hyper-self-reflexivity, not as a form ofhyper-rationality, but as an opening to modes of being not anchored in(allegedly) universal reason; and

- a pedagogical emphasis on dissensus in order to support learners inthe development of their ability to hold paradoxes and not beoverwhelmed by complexity, ambiguity, conflict, uncertainty anddifference.

My postcolonial lens would also like to see in this decolonial globalcitizenship a commitment to ongoing critical engagement with decolonialtheory itself. Although there are some safeguards in the ideas outlined hereagainst absolute relativism and identity politics, there is still a risk ofterritorializing difference and homogenizing modernity if educators adopt ahalf-baked, simplified version of it (which is a serious possibility given theincreasing instrumentalist drive in education).

My situated response to the second question related to the feasibility of thiskind of work in contemporary educational institutions is that it depends on thediscursive possibilities at work in a specific context, as well as the educatorsability to negotiate between discourses (i.e. their ability to border think) . Inmy own work I have found it very useful to make strategic alliances in spacesprivileging internal critiques of modernity - even those that could potentiallysanction dangerous neoliberal practices and reinforce abyssal lines, such asdiscourses of knowledge societies and 21 st century education. My argumentis that between enunciation (e.g. of a neoliberal educational agenda) andinterpretation in a specific context (e.g. teachers on the ground) lies a spaceof negotiation and creative opportunity that is always pregnant with (risky)

possibilities. This space is extremely useful for those who can re-work thesediscourses and interfere in the geopolitical economy of knowledge production


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by displacing or interrupting certain constructions of meaning and enablingothers. In this kind of work, the possibility of transformation of meaning andabyssal likes (i.e. border thinking) takes precedence over the compulsivedescription of reality-as-truth (which characterizes a project of neutrality-universality). The role of an educator, as seen from this perspective, is as a

cultural broker, negotiating between discursive systems: disrupting old pattersand creating new possibilities (always already embedded, contaminated,constrained and enabled by the context). But, as Spivak reminds us time aftertime: there are never any guarantees (2004). How to develop a teachereducation programme around this is a different (and more problematic) matteras it will need to respond to institutions that more than often require fast,predictable and easily measurable outcomes that provide a sense ofimmediate reward and satisfaction to client -learners (and the kind ofeducation I am talking about does not fit such scripts very easily).

Beyond my rational response to the practicalities of better theoreticallyinformed global citizenship education that upholds cognitive justice andepistemological pluralism lies an intuitive drive that I would like toacknowledge here. This drive translates into the I hope that, one day, mystudents on this side of the line will have no difficulty or anxiety (or offerresistance) to engage ethically at a personal level, and to learn from (andthrough) ways of being and knowing both similar and different to thoseEduardo Galeano (1991) describes in The Book of Embraces :

In these countries, the god Eleggua carries death in the nape of hisneck and life in his face. Every promise is a threat, every loss adiscovery. Courage is born of fear, certainty, of doubt. Dreamsannounce the possibility of another reality, and out of delirium emergesanother kind of reason (25).

According to Cartwright (2003) these ways of being offer a polyrhythmicpoetics of becoming that is

[s]imultaneously postmodern, premodern and interior to all modernity isbuilt upon, answers continually emerging local/global needs fortraditions and repertoires of countercultural resistance to monoculturalforces of university, monotheistic canons of scriptural authority,

monologic patterns of identity and being plantationed in us (p.170).This embrace and poetics of being, most of the time, still seem a long wayaway in my institutionalized professional practices. But I believe this is anideal worth working for both in my personal/spiritual and professional lives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Consortium for Peace Studies at theUniversity of Calgary for their hospitality and support towards the completionof this work through the Dr. Arthur Clark Global Citizenship Fellowship

awarded in 2010.


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Andreotti, V. (2009). Engaging critically with objective critical analysis: asituated response to Openshaw and Rata. International Studies inSociology of Education, 19( 3):217-227

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Andreotti, V. (2006). Soft versus critical global citizenship education.Development Education: Policy and Practice, 3 (Autumn): 83-98.

Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

Cartright, K. (2003). Voodo hermeneutics/The crossroad sublime: soul music,mindful bodies and Creole consciousness. The Mississippi Quarterly,Vol. 57:157-170.

Dussel, E. (1998). Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits ofModernity. In F. Jameson & M. Miyoshi (Eds.), The Cultures ofGlobalization (3-31). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Maldonado-Torres, N. (2004). The topology of being and the geopolitics ofknowledge: Modernity, empire, coloniality. City , 8(1):29-56

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Spivak, G. (2004). Righting wrongs. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103(2/3):523-581.

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i I concur with Grosfoguel who argues that natio nal identities are colonial constructions(2007:18).That is why I often do not define myself as a Brazilian author or educator. However, I decided to usethe national identities to introduce the scholars in this article to emphasise (albeit inadequately) anabsence of Other voices in global citizenship education debates. ii I have chosen to focus on one representative article from six different scholars: five from LatinAmerica and one from Portugal. Accessibility (both in terms of language and online availabilitythrough creative commons agreements) was one of the criteria of selection with a view to encouragereaders to engage with this literature.

engaging the geo political economy of knowledge construction

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