Disciplinary Decadence and the Decolonisation of Knowledge - Lewis R. Gordon* - Abstract
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Total Pages | : 0 |
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ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1374417551 |
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Rating | : 4/5 (51 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: The formulation of knowledge in the singular already situates the question in a framework that is alien to times before the emergence of European modernity and its age of global domination, for the disparate modes of producing knowledge and notions of knowledge were so many that knowledges would be a more appropriate designation. [...] Enrique Dussel is a member of a community of scholars who have questioned the logic of self-reflection offered by the most recent stage of centric productions of knowledge.2 The philosophical framework of such rationalisation is familiar to most students of Western philosophy: René Descartes reflected on method in the seventeenth century, grew doubtful, and articulated the certainty of his thinkin. [...] That modernity was ironically also identified by Machiavelli but is often overlooked through how he is read today: in The Prince, Machiavelli wrote of the effects of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's victory over the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula.3 His focus on the repression wrought in the name of Christendom presumed, however, the continued significance of the Mediterranean in the commerce of. [...] The tendency is to find the sources of meaning from either the European side of the Mediterranean or from the north. [...] Their presence in this discussion is evident, but to summarise: The first is raised by the dehumanisation of people (making them into problems) in the modern world; the second pertains to the transformation of (emancipation from) that circumstance; and the third examines whether the first two, especially at the level of the reasons offered in their support, are justified.