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The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options
During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, coloniality emerged as a new structure of power as Europeans colonized the Americas and built on the ideas of Western civilization and modernity as the endpoints of historical time and Europe as the center of the world. Walter D. Mignolo argues that coloniality is the darker side of Western modernity, a complex matrix of power that has been created and controlled by Western men and institutions from the Renaissance, when it was driven by Christian theology, through the late twentieth century and the dictates of neoliberalism. This cycle of coloniality is coming to an end. Two main forces are challenging Western leadership in the early twenty-first century. One of these, “dewesternization,” is an irreversible shift to the East in struggles over knowledge, economics, and politics. The second force is “decoloniality.” Mignolo explains that decoloniality requires delinking from the colonial matrix of power underlying Western modernity to imagine and build global futures in which human beings and the natural world are no longer exploited in the relentless quest for wealth accumulation.
458 pages, Paperback
First published July 15, 1995
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About the author
Walter D. Mignolo
65 books92 followersWalter D. Mignolo is an Argentine semiotician (École des Hautes Études) and professor at Duke University, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and worked on different aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity, border thinking, and pluriversality.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 30, 2020
Notions of the postcolonial have now been around for so long we’ve stopped thinking of it as new: Edward Said’s
Orientalism
was published in 1978 – that’s 4 decades ago; at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies the Empire Wrote Back in 1989; and we all wondered, á la Spivak, if the Subaltern Could Speak in 1988. It’s hardly the new kid on the block yet it still seems to incite the most vociferous of views, or become depoliticised by being turned into a time (after colonialism), not a critique.
Yet, for all its sophistication and power, for all its insight, postcolonialism has a weak spot: Indigenous peoples, those objects of colonialism. In cases where postcolonialism became a time, Indigenous peoples said ‘hell no, we’re still colonised’, and when it became a critique postcolonialism seemed oddly oblivious to indigenous ways of being and doing – ontologies and epistemologies. A big part of the problem was the relationship between these postcolonial analysts and how they thought – or to modify Walter Mignolo, where they thought. In recent years social theorists have been finding voices they’d not heard before in part of the majority world/Global South that for many was surprising: a good and growing way into some of these thinkers can be found at Global Social Theory. Elsewhere Raewyn Connell published the sharp Southern Theory in 2007. One of the key voices in this ‘new’ world of majoritarian analyses is Walter Mignolo, Argentinian of Italian descent, US-based anthropologist and literary studies scholar.
Mignolo’s work is significant, as demonstrated by this compelling and difficult text, in that he proposes a key linkage in European thinking and action. For him, modernity – that child of the Enlightenment and Renaissance – has a dirty underbelly without which it could not exist: colonialism. He has been developing this argument for some time and presents this as a continuation of a case developed in two earlier books: The Darker Side of the Renaissance and Local Histories/Global Designs, but there is no need to have read those to make sense of this. For that (to make sense) you need a whole heap of time and patience, and a willingness to think flexibly – this is not a lolling by the pool on a summer’s afternoon kind of book.
Mignolo has a long view of history, using a reference point of the beginning of the 16th century and the onset of colonialism in the Americas (as they became known) to argue that before about 1500 the world was marked by a polycentric, pre-capitalist arrangement, but that by the middle of the 18th century the world was well established in a series of monocentric, capitalist arrangements centred initially on Spain, then Britain and then the USA, but since the beginning of the 21st century the world has become increasingly polycentric, remaining predominantly but not exclusively capitalist. He then suggests that there have been 5 responses to this increasingly polycentric world:
1. The first is dewesternisation, where challenges to the North Atlantic nexus have come from places such as Brazil, China and the like
2. The second is rewesternisation, where the North Atlantic nexus has sought to bring the global order back under its control
3. The third is a reorientation of the political left, down either of these de- or rewesternising paths
4. The fourth is what he calls decolonial options, sloughing off the ways of thinking and doing on which modernity is premised
5. The fifth is what he calls spiritual options operating mainly at the level of knowledge and subjectivity but also allowing for some community building
The analysis and focus of the book is dewesternisation and decolonial options, often playing off each other, complementing but also at odds. Not all of these are hostile to one another, but for Mignolo the key question alongside how these responses are played out is their attitude to Truth – that is to say whether there is one or several. ‘One truth’ models cannot coexist with ‘many truths’ models.
His case is built on four lines of analysis: where thinking happens; where doing happens; the notions of the colonisation of time and of the colonisation of space. His critique of these questions is dense and demanding (noting that thinking and doing are made spatial, not personal: this is not an identity-prioritising but focuses on structural relations with space and empire/colonialism). Crucially, however, it leads to a two fold conclusion. The first aspect of the case about the appearance of a decolonial world is that it is not prescriptive but allows for many options (this is the basis of the Zapatista call for one world containing many worlds, and their emphasis on dignity and the right to exist). This is not a backward looking case though, and Mignolo includes a subtle discussion of cosmopolitanism as a singularising practice of modernity, when in a world of decolonial options there is the possibility of cosmopolitan localism, throwing of the singularity that is modernity and allowing for many ways of being.
Towards the end (on p317) he pulls all of this together into three principle points: the emphasis on where one thinks and does (what he calls pluriversal localism); the need for self-awareness, that is knowing where one thinks and does; and finally on this as the basic analytic tool of decolonial thinking and the starting point for visions of the future and the beginning of ways to get to those visions (and here there are some suggestive hints of Erik Olin Wright’s notion of real utopias).
The book therefore does two things: first is lays out approaches to making sense of the world that allow us to get beyond the constraints of modernity and its underpinning colonial matrix of power, and secondly it suggests ways to hail into existence decolonial options for change. Putting it that way makes the book sound a lot like a ‘self help’ title: it is a serious and major piece of philosophical and social analysis that underpins and is part of a growing scholarly tendency to rethink the world, to unsettle the intellectual power of the North Atlantic ways of seeing that have limited our understandings of the world we live in and acted as a source of systems of oppression. Most importantly, it takes seriously ways of thinking and doing from outside the minority world of the Global North, and accentuates the significance of indigenousness in struggles for social change.
It comes with my highest recommendation – but remember, take it slowly and let it percolate.
Yet, for all its sophistication and power, for all its insight, postcolonialism has a weak spot: Indigenous peoples, those objects of colonialism. In cases where postcolonialism became a time, Indigenous peoples said ‘hell no, we’re still colonised’, and when it became a critique postcolonialism seemed oddly oblivious to indigenous ways of being and doing – ontologies and epistemologies. A big part of the problem was the relationship between these postcolonial analysts and how they thought – or to modify Walter Mignolo, where they thought. In recent years social theorists have been finding voices they’d not heard before in part of the majority world/Global South that for many was surprising: a good and growing way into some of these thinkers can be found at Global Social Theory. Elsewhere Raewyn Connell published the sharp Southern Theory in 2007. One of the key voices in this ‘new’ world of majoritarian analyses is Walter Mignolo, Argentinian of Italian descent, US-based anthropologist and literary studies scholar.
Mignolo’s work is significant, as demonstrated by this compelling and difficult text, in that he proposes a key linkage in European thinking and action. For him, modernity – that child of the Enlightenment and Renaissance – has a dirty underbelly without which it could not exist: colonialism. He has been developing this argument for some time and presents this as a continuation of a case developed in two earlier books: The Darker Side of the Renaissance and Local Histories/Global Designs, but there is no need to have read those to make sense of this. For that (to make sense) you need a whole heap of time and patience, and a willingness to think flexibly – this is not a lolling by the pool on a summer’s afternoon kind of book.
Mignolo has a long view of history, using a reference point of the beginning of the 16th century and the onset of colonialism in the Americas (as they became known) to argue that before about 1500 the world was marked by a polycentric, pre-capitalist arrangement, but that by the middle of the 18th century the world was well established in a series of monocentric, capitalist arrangements centred initially on Spain, then Britain and then the USA, but since the beginning of the 21st century the world has become increasingly polycentric, remaining predominantly but not exclusively capitalist. He then suggests that there have been 5 responses to this increasingly polycentric world:
1. The first is dewesternisation, where challenges to the North Atlantic nexus have come from places such as Brazil, China and the like
2. The second is rewesternisation, where the North Atlantic nexus has sought to bring the global order back under its control
3. The third is a reorientation of the political left, down either of these de- or rewesternising paths
4. The fourth is what he calls decolonial options, sloughing off the ways of thinking and doing on which modernity is premised
5. The fifth is what he calls spiritual options operating mainly at the level of knowledge and subjectivity but also allowing for some community building
The analysis and focus of the book is dewesternisation and decolonial options, often playing off each other, complementing but also at odds. Not all of these are hostile to one another, but for Mignolo the key question alongside how these responses are played out is their attitude to Truth – that is to say whether there is one or several. ‘One truth’ models cannot coexist with ‘many truths’ models.
His case is built on four lines of analysis: where thinking happens; where doing happens; the notions of the colonisation of time and of the colonisation of space. His critique of these questions is dense and demanding (noting that thinking and doing are made spatial, not personal: this is not an identity-prioritising but focuses on structural relations with space and empire/colonialism). Crucially, however, it leads to a two fold conclusion. The first aspect of the case about the appearance of a decolonial world is that it is not prescriptive but allows for many options (this is the basis of the Zapatista call for one world containing many worlds, and their emphasis on dignity and the right to exist). This is not a backward looking case though, and Mignolo includes a subtle discussion of cosmopolitanism as a singularising practice of modernity, when in a world of decolonial options there is the possibility of cosmopolitan localism, throwing of the singularity that is modernity and allowing for many ways of being.
Towards the end (on p317) he pulls all of this together into three principle points: the emphasis on where one thinks and does (what he calls pluriversal localism); the need for self-awareness, that is knowing where one thinks and does; and finally on this as the basic analytic tool of decolonial thinking and the starting point for visions of the future and the beginning of ways to get to those visions (and here there are some suggestive hints of Erik Olin Wright’s notion of real utopias).
The book therefore does two things: first is lays out approaches to making sense of the world that allow us to get beyond the constraints of modernity and its underpinning colonial matrix of power, and secondly it suggests ways to hail into existence decolonial options for change. Putting it that way makes the book sound a lot like a ‘self help’ title: it is a serious and major piece of philosophical and social analysis that underpins and is part of a growing scholarly tendency to rethink the world, to unsettle the intellectual power of the North Atlantic ways of seeing that have limited our understandings of the world we live in and acted as a source of systems of oppression. Most importantly, it takes seriously ways of thinking and doing from outside the minority world of the Global North, and accentuates the significance of indigenousness in struggles for social change.
It comes with my highest recommendation – but remember, take it slowly and let it percolate.
November 1, 2023
A leading theorist in coloniality/modernity and decolonial thinking, Walter Mignolo’s seminal 2011 book is perhaps even more urgent and relevant given the fractured state of the world today. Acknowledging Anibal Quijano as the main figure who pioneered this “epistemic and political project”, the book takes a deep dive into many of Mignolo’s signature concepts, from pluriversality to border thinking, delinking, and the colonial matrix of power.
Early on, Mignolo archly comments that “The fact that Western civilisation was the most recent civilisation in human history doesn’t mean that it was the best, that the rest of the world should follow suit.” Indeed, this book is eminently readable, with Mignolo having a knack to detangle his complex thoughts and present them in a strikingly provocative manner that gets the reader thinking about a lot of his or her assumptions regarding the ‘modern’ world.
According to Mignolo, the first step in adopting a decolonial mindset is to delink from decoloniality by not looking for alternative modernities, but for alternatives to modernity. It is a subtle yet profound distinction that echoes throughout the book. It is also what ultimately contributes to the title:
‘Modernity’ is a complex narrative whose point of origination was Europe; a narrative that builds Western civilisation by celebrating its achievements while hiding at the same time its darker side …
That darker side, of course, is coloniality. “Modernity goes hand in hand with coloniality and, therefore, that modernity has to be assumed in both its glories and its crimes.” Decoloniality can seem like an odd patchwork of ideas and approaches rather than a coherent theory. At times, it reminds me of social democracy, especially as advocated by SF author like Kim Stanley Robinson or a Marxist theorist like Fredric Jameson.
What is the end point of decoloniality? The perceived problem with postcolonialism is that it proposed that coloniality ended post-independence for the many countries subjugated by other empires. But the colonial matrix of power reveals that coloniality is very much entrenched with capitalism, and hence is still perpetuated by the ‘modern’ world as we know and understand it.
Is advocating for social change like Mignolo does a case of preaching to the choir, or is there something innately more revolutionary and destabilising about decoloniality? Certainly, it is in direct opposition to capitalism, and argues that we cannot continue as a successful species or maintain the planet for future generations if we continue along our current path. Which is taking is straight into the darkness that shrouds modernity.
Early on, Mignolo archly comments that “The fact that Western civilisation was the most recent civilisation in human history doesn’t mean that it was the best, that the rest of the world should follow suit.” Indeed, this book is eminently readable, with Mignolo having a knack to detangle his complex thoughts and present them in a strikingly provocative manner that gets the reader thinking about a lot of his or her assumptions regarding the ‘modern’ world.
According to Mignolo, the first step in adopting a decolonial mindset is to delink from decoloniality by not looking for alternative modernities, but for alternatives to modernity. It is a subtle yet profound distinction that echoes throughout the book. It is also what ultimately contributes to the title:
‘Modernity’ is a complex narrative whose point of origination was Europe; a narrative that builds Western civilisation by celebrating its achievements while hiding at the same time its darker side …
That darker side, of course, is coloniality. “Modernity goes hand in hand with coloniality and, therefore, that modernity has to be assumed in both its glories and its crimes.” Decoloniality can seem like an odd patchwork of ideas and approaches rather than a coherent theory. At times, it reminds me of social democracy, especially as advocated by SF author like Kim Stanley Robinson or a Marxist theorist like Fredric Jameson.
What is the end point of decoloniality? The perceived problem with postcolonialism is that it proposed that coloniality ended post-independence for the many countries subjugated by other empires. But the colonial matrix of power reveals that coloniality is very much entrenched with capitalism, and hence is still perpetuated by the ‘modern’ world as we know and understand it.
Is advocating for social change like Mignolo does a case of preaching to the choir, or is there something innately more revolutionary and destabilising about decoloniality? Certainly, it is in direct opposition to capitalism, and argues that we cannot continue as a successful species or maintain the planet for future generations if we continue along our current path. Which is taking is straight into the darkness that shrouds modernity.
May 17, 2021
this book is very sexy and fascinating but also so hard to read........ wish i had a physical copy because reading it on my laptop ruined my eyes.
that said, if you're interested in decolonial theory, there's no better place to start. i love mignolo and reading him in second year changed me.
that said, if you're interested in decolonial theory, there's no better place to start. i love mignolo and reading him in second year changed me.
June 20, 2012
Easily one of my favorite books describing the differences between "Western & Non-Western Ideology". Took forever for me to read what must be a Graduate level philosophy book. Worth the time it took and learned alot and opened my eyes that much more to how the "West" tries to define how the rest of the World should live. Highly recommended reading but keep a dictionary with you and whatever you do, don't even think about rushing this read. It's definitely one that will make you think and question the way things are in our society that much more.
July 27, 2025
Sooo sexy. My decolonial bible.
April 28, 2021
This feels like different versions of the same chapter: presenting the same argument but revealing a slightly different facet each time: it can feel repetitive, but by god it drills decolonialism into you deep.
Essentially, it's an effective plea to recognize the arbitrariness of even our most basic paradigms, showing how they're basically all relics of colonial thinking with destructive biases built in. It's a quintessentially postmodern argument, but links practice with theory very well to show multiple potential paths to move forward.
Mignolo balances well the need to deconstruct the problems of current global liberal capital while still including that optimistic creativity that his decolonial options present. It's very academic but has the excitement of applicability in the open-endedness that he emphasizes.
Once you get the gist of the argument, the rest is mostly variation and detail with a lot of concern over semiotics (obviously). But it's still a wonderful tool to continue to question your own biases and ensure that we can build a better more plural world together.
Essentially, it's an effective plea to recognize the arbitrariness of even our most basic paradigms, showing how they're basically all relics of colonial thinking with destructive biases built in. It's a quintessentially postmodern argument, but links practice with theory very well to show multiple potential paths to move forward.
Mignolo balances well the need to deconstruct the problems of current global liberal capital while still including that optimistic creativity that his decolonial options present. It's very academic but has the excitement of applicability in the open-endedness that he emphasizes.
Once you get the gist of the argument, the rest is mostly variation and detail with a lot of concern over semiotics (obviously). But it's still a wonderful tool to continue to question your own biases and ensure that we can build a better more plural world together.
February 28, 2017
D E C O L O N I Z E T H E W O R L D
September 2, 2021
I took a while to warm to this because of the way it was written. One of my friends who has lived on several continents but started off in Africa complained that this was South American-centred and ignored most other non-European peoples.
I am not sure I agree with all of it, the idea of pluriversality is idealistic and I am not convinced it is practical for saving the species (but what else do we have?). I am not sure I agree with everything in this book but it sure made me think and rethink.
Also...I just really don't like Kant at this point.
I do feel like this is a book that more people should read, not just over-excited academic types like me but people in general.
I am not sure I agree with all of it, the idea of pluriversality is idealistic and I am not convinced it is practical for saving the species (but what else do we have?). I am not sure I agree with everything in this book but it sure made me think and rethink.
Also...I just really don't like Kant at this point.
I do feel like this is a book that more people should read, not just over-excited academic types like me but people in general.
December 17, 2019
4 stars because the author fails in my opinion to properly articulate the main point of the book and because, in my opinion, doesn't really take this thinking to the next step.
The important thing to take away from this book is the concept of coloniality of power and decoloniality. The coloniality of power refers to all the epistemic and ontological positions that are imposed upon all of the world. In this book, the author uses European Colonialism as an example. Intitailly, the Europeans imposed a christian ontology and epistemology upon everyone. Example of these are the idea of an afterlife, the seperation of humans from animals, knowledge is gained through the Bible and the inferiority of non-christian worldviews. These were ontological and epistemological positions that were regarded as superior and imposed on everyone else. But Europeans later abandoned Christianity for Science/Rationality/Modernity. Now there was no after-life, not the same separation of man and animal, knowledge was to be gained by science and everything else was inferior!
The change from Christianity to Science didn't disrupt the coloniality of power. There was still a hierarchy between different ontologies and epistemologies. This is where decoloniality comes in, which is the position that one believes that there can be no hierarchy between different ontologies and epistemologies!
However, due to the authors failed understanding of capitalism, he decides to go on an anti-capitalist rant from this position. Coloniality of power is one of the most severe critiques of forced collective ownership and one of the best arguments for private property (which is CAPITALISM). There can be no respect if there are no borders. With private property, any individual can live out her ontology or epistemology as she wishes, without the interference from someone else. Private property nullifies the hierarchies between different ontological and epistemological positions. Whoever owns the property decides! But under non-capitalist systems (systems which reject private property in any sort of degree) you will always have colonialism. E.g. Sweden which has forced 11 years compulsory education, whose curriculum is strictly and ONLY decided by the government. Sweden which finances abortion with the tax money of christians and muslims who believe the act of abortion to be a murder. Only by existing in Sweden, say by working or buying any goods (and thereby paying VAT) you finance what in a christian and muslim ontological position is, murder.
Therefore, this book is in my opinion one of the best defenses of capitalism and its morality. Walter D. Mignolo and Aníbal Quijan truly deserve our thanks!
The important thing to take away from this book is the concept of coloniality of power and decoloniality. The coloniality of power refers to all the epistemic and ontological positions that are imposed upon all of the world. In this book, the author uses European Colonialism as an example. Intitailly, the Europeans imposed a christian ontology and epistemology upon everyone. Example of these are the idea of an afterlife, the seperation of humans from animals, knowledge is gained through the Bible and the inferiority of non-christian worldviews. These were ontological and epistemological positions that were regarded as superior and imposed on everyone else. But Europeans later abandoned Christianity for Science/Rationality/Modernity. Now there was no after-life, not the same separation of man and animal, knowledge was to be gained by science and everything else was inferior!
The change from Christianity to Science didn't disrupt the coloniality of power. There was still a hierarchy between different ontologies and epistemologies. This is where decoloniality comes in, which is the position that one believes that there can be no hierarchy between different ontologies and epistemologies!
However, due to the authors failed understanding of capitalism, he decides to go on an anti-capitalist rant from this position. Coloniality of power is one of the most severe critiques of forced collective ownership and one of the best arguments for private property (which is CAPITALISM). There can be no respect if there are no borders. With private property, any individual can live out her ontology or epistemology as she wishes, without the interference from someone else. Private property nullifies the hierarchies between different ontological and epistemological positions. Whoever owns the property decides! But under non-capitalist systems (systems which reject private property in any sort of degree) you will always have colonialism. E.g. Sweden which has forced 11 years compulsory education, whose curriculum is strictly and ONLY decided by the government. Sweden which finances abortion with the tax money of christians and muslims who believe the act of abortion to be a murder. Only by existing in Sweden, say by working or buying any goods (and thereby paying VAT) you finance what in a christian and muslim ontological position is, murder.
Therefore, this book is in my opinion one of the best defenses of capitalism and its morality. Walter D. Mignolo and Aníbal Quijan truly deserve our thanks!
May 11, 2018
The book contains several very good ideas. Unfortunately the author repeats them at least 100 times and at the end of the book in becomes unbearable.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews