Political-cultural minorities, pluralization of history, and the break with continuity: on the denaturalization and politicization of modernity-colonialism

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the introduction of colonialism-racism as an interpretative axis of the process of Western modernity-modernization allows us to overcome two problematic assumptions of the normative paradigm of modernity: (a) the endogeny, autonomy, self-referentiality, and self-subsistence of modernity, which enables it to dispense, for its constitution and understanding, the others of modernity and, with this, erase colonialism-racism from its internal structure; and (b) the split and verticalization between modernity as an effective present, substantive actuality, and openness to the future, as post-traditional universalism via rationalization, versus all the others of modernity as an anthropological past, given its condition of traditionalism in general. Thus, colonialism-racism allows the positioning of difference, produced by modernity (in the form of this same colonialism-racism) as an powerful basis for the reconstruction of the philosophical-sociological discourse of modernity and, here, for the critique, reflexivity, and transformation of modernization, deconstructing this one-dimensional perspective that positions Europe as the source of all critique, all legitimacy, and all possibilities for transformation regarding the human. Difference would pluralize the histories, memories, and experiences of the modernity-colonialism-racism triad, making it possible to deconstruct the historical-sociological blindness that underlies this very self-understanding of Europe about itself and about anthropological difference.