Walter D. Mignolo > Quotes

“The point, however, is not where you reside but where you dwell.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options

“Decoloniality promotes pluriversality as a universal option—which means that what “should be” universal is in fact pluriversal, and not a single totality.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis

“Obviously, Western Christian Europeans had the right to build their own image of the world, like anybody else who had done so before them. But it was an aberration to pretend and act accordingly as if their specific image of the world and their own sense of totality was the same for any- and everybody else on the planet.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis

“Thus, one of the strong theses of the book is that there is no modernity without coloniality and that coloniality is constitutive, and not derivative, of modernity. This is the basic condition of border thinking: the moment you realize (and accept) that your life is a life in the border, and you realize that you do not want to “become modern” because modernity hides behind the splendors of happiness, the constant logic of coloniality. For precisely this reason, border thinking that leads to decoloniality is of the essence to unveil that the system of knowledge, beliefs, expectations, dreams, and fantasies upon which the modern/colonial world was built is showing, and will continue to show, its unviability.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking

“Disciplines are by definition based on territorial epistemologies: studying the borders doesn’t lead necessarily to border thinking . . . unless scholars engage in epistemological disciplinary disobedience and bring to the fore the existential experience of dwelling in the border. By”
― Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking

“Border thinking is an epistemology, an ethic and politics that emerge from the experiences of people taking their destiny in their own hands and not waiting for saviors. Today”
― Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking

“The Aztecs, it is often alluded and condemned, sacrificed human bodies to keep the Sun ongoing. Western modernity sacrifices (and it is accepted) whatever is needed to keep Civilization ongoing.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis

“Praxis is not a privilege of the Left. It is what the Right does too.”
― Walter D. Mignolo, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis