Decolonial Feminism and the Decolonial Turn

Abstract

One of the recently emerged approaches in the humanities and social sciences that attempts to act in the role of a connector between various experiences of otherness, determined by the imperial-colonial dimension of modernity, is the decolonial turn or decolonial option. There are several points formulated by decolonial humanists which I attempt to dialogue with here. First of all, it is a fundamental rethinking of modernity from its underside (Dussel 1996). According to Enrique Dussel, modernity as a European phenomenon is “constituted in a dialectical relation with a non-European alterity that is its ultimate content. Modernity appears when Europe affirms itself as the ‘center’ of a World History that it inaugurates: the ‘periphery’ that surrounds this center is consequently part of its self-definition … (Dussel 1995, 65) Modernity includes a rational ‘concept’ of emancipation that we affirm and subsume. But, at the same time, it develops an irrational myth, a justification for genocidal violence. The postmodernists criticize modern reason as a reason of terror; we criticize modern reason because of the irrational myth that it conceals” (Mignolo 2007, 454).