David Lehmann - After the Decolonial

Behind these recent traumas lie deeper and more ancient historical wounds: in England, the legacies of slavery, of imperialism and of Ireland underlie the separation from Europe and the possible dismemberment of the United Kingdom. In Latin America, the legacies of colonialism, of slavery and of Republican assaults on indigenous land and institutions weigh on contemporary resistance to recognizing injustice and discrimination: the weariness and the resentment will not go away … nor will the suppressed guilt that haunts the generations of beneficiaries.

To remember, to restore, to repair … and then to forestall and control the backlash. That, translated as a compromise between identity politics and social justice, could stand as the motivation for the chapters that follow.

1 1. I say ‘Anglo-Saxon’ because in Latin languages la science or ciencia, like the German Wissenschaft, refers to a body of knowledge in general, not only to knowledge based on experimentation and numerical precision.

2 2. Cholo is widely used in Peru and Bolivia to refer to people located in between the indios and the more elite mestizos in the social hierarchy. It can also be used as a term of endearment (cf. ‘Hola cholito!’). Blanco is rarely used. Outsiders tend to assume that mestizo is also a term used to refer to people of mixed race or ‘light brown’ complexion, but in daily parlance it often refers simply to elites, local or national, and includes people who in Europe would count as white.

3 3. Consulting indigenous healers is a worldwide practice, but usually those healers appear as practitioners of ‘alternative’ or ‘homeopathic’ medicine and are detached from their ‘home base’, nor do they usually receive patients or clients in public hospitals.

4 4. The use of the word criolla is interesting because it seems to have gained popularity by not using the word indígena. ‘Criollo’ was used in Hispanophone countries in the colonial period to refer to elite people – not Indians or indigenous – born in the colonies, as distinct from those born in Spain. Perhaps the phrase is putting a slight distance between those entrepreneurs – whose presentation of self would appear undoubtedly Indian to an outsider – and the Indian masses.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.