Nelson Maldonado-Torres – Coloniality of power and metaphysical catastrophe

In this last epic interview of the ArA series, Adrián Groglopo and Nelson Maldonado-Torres discuss what makes modern Western colonialism exceptional and incomparable to other and earlier forms of domination and imperial expansion, what consequences colonialism has today, and how decoloniality can reconstitute human relationships. This is a video to come back to and to study as it offers a rich account of the links between Western modernity and coloniality, as well as a generative view of decoloniality as an attitude and as an unfinished project.

Nelson Maldonado-Torres argues that the modern world is founded on the demographic, environmental, and metaphysical catastrophe of indigenous genocide, the invention of Blackness and Indigeneity, the Middle Passage, and the racial division of the world, including the imbrication of race with gender and class. He approaches decoloniality as counter-catastrophic activity: a creative challenge to the problematic premises of Western modernity, instead of as a reformist or episodic process.

For Maldonado-Torres, decoloniality and counter-catastrophe exceed the limits of multiculturalism as well as liberal diversity and inclusion. With radical generosity at its core, the decolonial turn is a reconstitution of the healthy human difference that is recognized through otherness and that thrives in the face of that otherness. Inviting relationships of giving and receiving instead of creating wars and essentializing differences, decoloniality is an idea of an-other form of relationality, as well as another way of creating human relationships. The decolonial turn is a counter-catastrophic turn, a way of action to restore humanity through generous and affirmative relations beyond the paradigm of war.

Producerad av Antirasistiska Akademin, år 2018, med stöd av MUCF. www.antirasistiskaakademin.se
Projektansvarig och intervjuare: Adrián Groglopo – Ordföranden för Antirasistiska Akademin och lektor i socialt arbete vid Göteborgs universitet
Foto och klipp: Sergio Joselovsky
Projektassistent: Talía Murillo