Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-KnowledgeVolume 10Issue 1 Decolonizing the University: PracticingPluriversity

Article 9

1-1-2012

The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the UnitedStates: Between Liberal Multiculturalism, IdentityPolitics, Disciplinary Colonization, and DecolonialEpistemologiesRamn GrosfoguelUniversity of California - Berkeley, grosfogu@berkeley.edu

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Recommended CitationGrosfoguel, Ramn (2012) "The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United States: Between Liberal Multiculturalism, Identity Politics,Disciplinary Colonization, and Decolonial Epistemologies," Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Vol. 10: Iss.1, Article 9.Available at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/humanarchitecture/vol10/iss1/9

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I. I

NTRODUCTION

Ethnic studies in the United States rep-resents a contradictory space within whichtwo hegemonic discourses (identitarianmulticulturalism and disciplinary coloni-zation) and a counter-hegemonic one (de-colonial epistemologies) condense andenter into debate and struggle. In contrastto other parts of the world, ethnic studies inthe United States emerged as a part of thecivil rights movement for racialized minor-ities. In the late 60s and early 70s, a num-ber of student strikes and universityoccupations were organized by these mi-norities, leading to the creation of African-American, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian,and Indigenous studies programs in many

universities all over the United States. This

epistemic insurgency

was key to the openingof spaces in universities for professors fromethnic/racial groups suffering discrimina-tion and/or with non-Western epistemolo-gies in areas which were up to that pointmonopolized by white professors and stu-dents and Eurocentric epistemologies priv-ileging the Cartesian ego-politics ofknowledge (Grosfoguel 2008a).

In contast to the Eurocentric epistemol-ogy in Westernized universities which ischaracterized by the privileging of a West-ern male canon of thought and the study ofthe other as an object rather than as aknowledge-producing subjectconceal-ing at the same time the geo-politics andthe body-politics of knowledge through

Ramn Grosfoguel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and aSenior Research Associate of the Maison des Sciences de lHomme in Paris. He has published many articles andbooks on the political economy of the world-system and on Caribbean migrations to Western Europe and theUnited States.

The Dilemmas of Ethnic Studies in the United StatesBetween Liberal Multiculturalism, Identity Politics,

Disciplinary Colonization, and Decolonial Epistemologies

Ramn GrosfoguelUniversity of California at Berkeley

grosfogu@berkeley.edu

Abstract: This paper is an analysis of the Westernized university and its Eurocentricfundamentalism in relation to the subaltern struggles of racialized groups in America and itsimpact on the formation of ethnic studies in the university's epistemic structure. The paper goes onto discuss questions of epistemic racism/sexism and the dilemmas that ethnic studies programsconfront today in particular forms of disciplinary colonization, liberal multiculturalism andidentity politics.

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ISSN: 1540-5699. Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press) and authors. All Rights Reserved.

HUMAN ARCHITECTURE

Journal of the Sociology of Self-

A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

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which white academics and intellectualsthinkthe entry of professors of colorthrough affirmative action programs andthe creation of ethnic studies programsaimed at studying the problems confront-ing oppressed minorities constituted animportant change in the production ofacademic knowledges.

At that time (late 60s and early 70s),many of those minority professors wereactivist intellectuals who privileged thegeo-politics of knowledge and thebody-politics of knowledge over theego-politics of knowledge in the produc-tion of knowledges. This represented abreak, for the first time in Westernizeduniversities, with the subject-object dichot-omy of Cartesian epistemology. Instead of awhite male subject studying non-whitesubjects as objects of knowledge, assum-ing a neutral, privileged viewpoint not situ-ated in any space or bodyi.e., the ego-politics of knowledge, which allows thesubject to claim a false objectivity andepistemic neutralitywe have a new situa-tion in Westernized universities in theUnited States in which subjects from racial-ized minorities study themselves assubjects who think and produce knowl-edges from bodies and spaces (the geo-politics and body-politics of knowl-edge)approaches which had beenroutinely subalternized and inferiorized byWesternized racist/sexist epistemologyand power. Moreover, it can also be saidthat their work questioned the hegemonicwhite understanding of racialized minori-ties which sought to make the latter respon-sible for the marginalization and povertythey experience in the United States (forexample, the paradigms of the culture ofpoverty and modernization theory),thereby concealing the rampant racism ofthat society (Grosfoguel 2003). Not only didthis challenge the epistemic racisms/sexisms that recognize only the productionof theory by white/male Western subjectswhile non-whites are assumed to produce

only folklore, mythology, or culture butnever knowledge equal to that of the West,it also opened up the

potential

for the decol-onization of knowledge, by also challeng-ing the Cartesian ego-politics ofknowledge of Western Social Sciences/Humanities and counterposing to this thegeo-politics and body-politics of knowl-edge of subaltern subjects. I say poten-tial, because this decolonial process is notcomplete and faces several obstacles. Thisarticle seeks to identify these obstacleswhich ethnic studies still confront.

However, it is necessary first to clarifysome concepts that are indispensable forour discussion.

II. E

PISTEMIC

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ACISM

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EXISM

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NIVERSITIES

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-S

YSTEM

The Modern/Colonial Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric World-System (Grosfoguel 2008a

1

)is composed of a heterarchy or intersection-ality of multiple global power structuresbeyond the sole economic and politicalstructures frequently identified in world-system analysis and neo-marxist political-economy perspectives more generally. Inmy work on decolonizing paradigms inpolitical-economy, I identify about fifteenglobal power structures of the world-system. In this section I would like todiscuss one of these structures: the globalepistemic hierarchy in the world-system.This hierarchy produces and reproducesthe same structure of the global racial/ethnic hierarchy and the global Judeo-

1

For a justification of this characterizationof the contemporary world-system and the car-tography of power implied in this large phrase,see the online English version of this article orig-inally published in Portuguese in: Decoloniz-ing Political Economy and Postcolonial Studies:Transmodernity, Border Thinking and GlobalColoniality (http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2008-07-04-grosfoguel-en.pdf).

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Christian gender/sexual hierarchy of theworld-systemthat is, it privileges assuperior Western male knowledges andtreats as inferior knowledges that arewomen-centered and non-Western. Thisracist/sexist hierarchy of knowledge oper-ates on a world-scale with variations andparticularities in different regions of theworld according to the diverse colonial andlocal histories. As will be discussed below,this global epistemic hierarchy is notmerely a superstructure but is constitutiveof capitalist accumulation at a world-scale.Without it, there would be no historicalcapitalism as we know it today.

This epistemic hierarchy has its owndiscourses, ideology and institutionalframework. Eurocentrism is the globaldiscourse/ideology of the epistemic hierar-chy. Eurocentrism as an epistemic perspec-tive privileges the knowledges, memoriesand histories of the Westernized male colo-nizers throughout the world. This episte-mology is institutionally globalized aroundthe world through the Westernized univer-sity. The Westernized university is orga-nized around a canon of thought that isboth Western and masculine. Nearly alldisciplines in the social sciences and thehumanities, with very few exceptions, priv-ilege in their canon of thought Westernmale thinkers. Not even Western womenare included within the canon, while non-Western males and women are excludedfrom it. This is not a question of representa-tion or recognition, but rather one of howWestern universities are provincial in theirscope while claiming to be valid for allhumanity beyond time and spacethat is,while pretending to be universal.

The main problem is that the Western-ized university model, with its provincialsexist/racist structure of thought and itsnineteenth century liberal disciplinarydivisions of knowledge, is institutionallyglobalized around the world. The provin-cialism of Westernized universities, withtheir Eurocentric sexist/racist foundation

of knowledge, is taken as the normalityeverywhere it goes. Non-Western socialscientists, historians, philosophers and crit-ical thinkers, thinking from different geo-politics and body-politics of knowledgeand/or from different cosmologies/episte-mologies, are considered inferior to West-ern male epistemologies and, thus,excluded as valid knowledge from theWesternized university. Thus, the Western-ized university is a machine of global massproduction of

Eurocentric fundamentalism

.Any critical thinking or social scientificdevelopment produced by and from a non-Westernized perspective/epistemic loca-tion is inferiorized, received with suspicionand considered as not serious or notworthy of being read in the Westernizeduniversity.

We find the same structure of knowl-edge in Westernized universities every-where in the world, no matter where theyare located. Be they in Dakar, Buenos Aires,New Delhi, Manila, New York, Paris orCairo, they have fundamentally the samedisciplinary divisions and the same racist/sexist canon of thought. Thus, in terms ofglobal capitalism, the Westernized univer-sity produces the Westernized political andeconomic elites all over the world, withoutwhich the world-system would be unman-ageable. Through this mechanism, the corepowers of the world-system are able toform the Westernized Eurocentric funda-mentalist elites that will suppress any alter-native way of thinking beyond the systemand will carry to every corner of the worldits epistemic racist/sexist knowledge struc-tures and policies. This monocultural, mo-noepistemic and monocosmological Euro-centric fundamentalist framework is whatdefines who is a valid social agent, who is aterrorist, who is a plausible candidate towin an election, and who is a valid interloc-utor in the globe today. Moreover, the West-ernized university is a machine ofepistemicide (Sousa Santos 2010). It infe-riorizes and destroys the epistemic poten-

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tial of non-Western epistemologies.The absurdity of this epistemic struc-

ture has been demonstrated very well inthe work of Portuguese social scientist,Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010). He haspointed out many times that if we examinewhat is called social theory in the socialsciences of Westernized universities today,it comes fundamentally from Western malethinkers of only five countries: Italy, France,Germany, England and the United States.The claim is that the social theory created toaccount for the social experience andhistory of these five countries, whichcomprise only 12% of the worlds popula-tion, should be taken as valid and universalfor the rest of the countries of the world,which account for 88% of humanity. Thisstructure throws away the social experi-ence of most of humanity.

Epistemic racism/sexism is one of themost hidden forms of racism in themodern/colonial capitalist/patriarchalWestern-centric/Christian-centric world-system we inhabit (see Grosfoguel 2008a).To move beyond this structure wouldrequire not a

uni

-versity (where one episte-mology defines for the rest the questionsand the answers to produce a colonial,

uni

-versal social science and humanities) but a

pluri

-versity (where epistemic diversity isinstitutionally incorporated into necessaryinter-epistemic dialogues in order toproduce decolonial, pluriversal socialsciences and humanities). This is whyBoaventura de Sousa Santos calls for anecology of knowledges (2010) as a pointof departure to decolonize knowledge andthe Westernized university. According toSousa Santos, the ecology of knowledgesis an opening to a new decolonial space ofepistemic diversity where Western socialsciences are not the only source of validknowledge but one among others.

III. E

THNIC

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TUDIES

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: I

DENTITIES

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OLITICS

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RANSMODERNITY

For the first time in 500 years of global-ization of the Westernized universities (firstChristian-centric, then secular Eurocentric,and, more recently, the corporate univer-sity), the irruption of the US civil rightsstruggles for the decolonization of the USempire penetrated the Westernized univer-sity at the center of empire, challenging itsknowledge production in a radical way.Ethnic Studies, Women Studies, QueerStudies, etc., were founded within theUnited States Westernized universities, inresponse to the demands of people of color,women and gay/lesbian movements. Thegoal of these programs is not to produce aparticular knowledge that will be addedon in order to supplement the socialsciences and humanities today, but

toproduce a pluriversal decolonial social scienceand humanities

. Pluriversal decolonial socialsciences would have epistemic diversityguiding their processes of knowledgeproduction. The kinds of knowledgesEthnic Studies, Women Studies and QueerStudies have produced challenge theracist/sexist capitalist/patriarchal Westerncanon of thought and epistemology. Inopposition to white male hegemonic iden-tity politics, which are hidden as the normwithin the process of knowledge produc-tion, these subalternized subjects devel-oped via a struggle against identity politics.However, this does not mean that there aresmall groups inside these new fields ofknowledge that reproduce a subaltern kindof identity politics.

Identity politics sets out from an identi-tarian and culturalist reductionism thatends up essentializing and naturalizingcultural identities. In these identitarianprojects there is a powerful suspiciontowards groups whose ethnic/racial origin

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differs from their own. This epistemicclosure of walled identities is what charac-terizes the

Eurocentric fundamentalism

of thehegemonic identity politics of Westernmale epistemology, which produces phobiaand rejection of non-Western epistemolo-gies and knowledges.

Identity politics usually maintainclosed identitarian frontiers even amongoppressed groups themselves that practicea subaltern form of identity politics,making dialogue and political alliancesamong them impossible. In some cases theyend up inverting hegemonic racism andreproducing an inverted racism by makingthe subaltern ethnic/racial group into onewhich is culturally and/or biologicallysuperior to whites.

In sharp contrast to such identity poli-tics there are what Angela Davis (1997) callsidentities on politics. The latter are basedon ethico-political-epistemic projects whichare open to all regardless of ethno/racialorigin. For example, the Zapatistas in thesouthwest of Mexico are an insurgentindigenous movement that thinks epistem-ically from an Amerindian epistemologi-cal/cosmological points of view. These areopen to all people and groups who supportand sympathize with their political propos-als as well as those who criticize them inconstructive ways. Within the Zapatistamovement there are whites and mestizos.The movement led by Evo Morales inBolivia is an indigenous movement thatthinks from the perspective of the Ayllcosmology of the Aymara communities.This movement counts, among its leadersand in its ranks, both white and mestizoactivists who have assumed the Aymaraethico-political-epistemic political projectas well as those who provide constructivecritiques to the movement.

Another example would be Africanspiritual practices in the Americas that,while setting out from cosmologies/episte-mologies of African origin (Yoruba, Bantu,etc.), are nevertheless open to the participa-

tion of all. That is to say, there is no corre-spondence between the ethico-epistemicidentity of the project (in this case its indig-enous or African origin) and the ethnic/racial identity of the individuals whoparticipate in the movements. As a result,these movements are quite distinct fromidentity politics, since they exclude noone who supports their project for reasonsof ethnic/racial origin.

If Eurocentrism seeks to disqualifythese alternative epistemologies in order toinferiorize, subalternize, and discreditthemthereby constructing a world ofunitary thought that does not allow us tothink of other possible worlds beyondwhite, masculine, neo-liberal capitalistglobalizationthe project proposed herewould be one that transcends the Eurocen-tric epistemic monopoly of the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal Western-Centric/Christian-centric world-system.To recognize that there exists an epistemicdiversity in the world poses a challenge tothe existing modern/colonial world. It isno longer possible to construct a globaldesign through a single epistemology as asingle solution to the problems of theworld, be it from the left (socialism,communism, etc.) or from the right (devel-opmentalism, neo-liberalism, liberaldemocracy, etc.). On the basis of thisepistemic diversity there are various anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonialand anti-imperialist proposals that offerdifferent ways of confronting and resolvingthe problems produced by the sexual,racial, spiritual, linguistic, gender, and classpower-relations within the currentmodern/colonial capitalist/patriarchalworld-system (Grosfoguel 2008a). Thisdiversity of proposals rooted in otherepistemologies that have been subal-ternized and silenced by Eurocentric epis-temology would provide ways oftranscending Eurocentered modernity thatgo beyond those proposals involving theculmination of that modernity (Habermas

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1985) or the development of postmoder-nity. The latter represent Eurocentriccritiques of Eurocentrism (Mignolo 2000).

What we are speaking of, then, isdeveloping what the philosopher of libera-tion Enrique Dussel (1994) calls transmo-dernitythe utopian project for thefulfillment, not of modernity or postmoder-nity, but rather of the incomplete and unfin-ished project of decolonization. Trans isused here in the sense of beyond. In anutopian transmodern world there exist asmany proposals for the liberation ofwomen and democracy as there areepistemologies in the world. Parisianfeminists of difference cannot imposetheir solutions or their forms of struggleagainst patriarchy on Islamic feminists inIran, indigenous Zapatista feminists inMexico, or black feminists in the UnitedStates, just as the Western world cannotimpose its liberal concept of democracy onindigenous, Islamic, or African forms ofdemocracy. Zapatismo sets out from Tojola-bal cosmology to redefine democracy ascommand [while] obeying, and its insti-tutional practice constitutes the communityspaces known as caracoles (shells).Such concepts are very different from West-ern democracy in which those whocommand do not obey and those who obeydo not command, and in which the practi-cal institutional forms are parliaments ornational assemblies.

Transmodernity is not an everythinggoes relativism, since we are speaking of acritical anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-Eurocentric (never anti-European), anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspectivethat is born from the epistemic diversity ofthe world. For decolonial thought there isno single epistemology that can claim amonopoly over critical thinking on theplanet as imperialism has sought to do forWestern thought in the last 500 years of theworld-system. My proposal here is to rede-fine ethnic studies departments/programsas transmodern decolonial studies.

IV. ETHNIC STUDIES IN THE UNITED STATES

Ethnic studies in the United States is atpresent torn between two problems of thecoloniality of global power: 1) the identitypolitics of liberal multiculturalism in theUnited States and 2) the disciplinary coloni-zation of the Western colonial humansciences (social sciences and the humani-ties) over these spaces.

Furthermore, those forms of identitypolitics that absolutize and privilege theidentities and projects of their ownethnic/racial group at the expense of otherracialized/inferiorized subjects lead themto view other ethnic/racial groups withsuspicion and as competitors, includingthose who share a similar situation ofethnic/racial discrimination. The scholarswho promote the worst forms of identitypolitics in ethnic studies programs end up:1) celebrating their own identity while leav-ing ethnic/racial hierarchies as such intact;or 2) emphasizing their own ethnic/racialgroup, gazing at their own navel and, as aresult, considering themselves to be inconstant competition with other groups thatare equally discriminated against, therebycontributing to the reproduction of a systemof divide and conquer which also main-tains intact the status quo of ethnic/racialhierarchies. Thus, both identity politicspositionsthat of liberal multiculturalidentitarians as well as that of militantidentitariansend up in complicity withthe ethnic/racial hierarchies of whitesupremacy by leaving the status quo intact.Beginning with the first point: the organiza-tion of ethnic studies departments andprograms takes place on the basis of ethno/racial identities (African-American, Asian-American, Latino, Indigenous, etc.) in theUS. A minority of scholars in the field ofethnic studies uses this structure to repro-duce the worst kind of identity politics.Rather than decolonial studies, identitypolitics tend to reproduce colonial rela-

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tions that manifest two main tendencies:one based in Anglo-American lightliberal multiculturalism and the other basedon the chauvinist and nationalist absoluti-zation of ones own ethnic/racial identity tothe detriment of dialogue and alliance withother racially oppressed groups. Hege-monic liberal multiculturalism allows eachracialized group to have its space and cele-brate its identity/culture, as long as they donot question the ethnic/racial hierarchies ofwhite supremacist power and as long asthey leave the status quo intact. This privi-leges certain elites within the racialized/inferiorized groups, granting them a spaceand resources as tokens, model minor-ity, or symbolic showcases, therebygiving a cosmetic multicultural tinge towhite power, while the majority of thesepopulations victimized by this rampantracism experience the coloniality of poweron a daily basis. Condoleezza Rice is one ofthe most extreme examples of this policy.This African-American woman has beenone of the architects of the racist foreignpolicy of the Euro-American empire (whitecapitalist elites) in the Middle East and Iraq,thereby giving an anti-racist and multicul-tural face to what otherwise are racist impe-rial policies.2

The other tendency of the coloniality ofknowledge (Lander 2000) is the academicdisciplinary colonization of ethnic studies.Disciplinary colonization occurs when thefields of knowledge within ethnic studiesare divided on the basis of the disciplinary

specializations of the human sciences(social sciences and the humanities) andethnic studies are carried as thinking onor about rather than thinking from,with and alongside the ethnic/racialgroups in question. Instead of producingknowledge from the critical thought createdby racialized/inferiorized subjects, thesedisciplines impose the Western canon ofthought and the Western Cartesian pointzero epistemology (Castro-Gomez 2006)the point of view that does not assume itselfas a point of view, i.e., the Gods eye viewthat has characterized modern Westernphilosophy from Descartes to the present inthe Western human sciences. This hasaffected the production of knowledges inethnic studies departments/programsbecause instead of producing knowledgesfrom and with these ethnic/racialgroups and aimed at their liberation, such aperspective privileges the production ofknowledges about the others accordingto the colonial epistemological tradition,from 16th-century Christian missionaries topresent-day Cartesian social scientists. Thistradition makes of the racialized/inferior-ized subject an object of study to controland exploit. This raises the following ques-tions: Knowledge for what and for whom?Is it possible to produce neutral knowledgesin a society that is divided in racial, sexual,spiritual, and class terms? If epistemologynot only has color but also sexuality, gender,cosmology, spirituality, class, etc., it is notpossible to assume the myth or falsepremise of neutrality and epistemologicalobjectivity (the point zero of the ego-politics of knowledge) as the Westernsciences claim to do.

Furthermore, that current which hopesto make ethnic studies into interdiscipli-nary studies reproduces the same prob-lems mentioned above. Interdisciplinaritymaintains disciplinary identities intact(with their canon and Eurocentric episte-mology) and only opens up an interdiscipli-nary dialogue within Western

2 The same could be said of the Obama Ad-ministration. Although Obama came to poweras part of a mass movement discontent witheight years of Bush Administration that led todomestic and international chaos and a newGreat Depression, his commitments with WallStreet, Transnational Corporations and the Pen-tagon make the present US imperial state (witha Black President in charge) a white power im-perial structure with a black face. This is part ofwhat I have described elsewhere as the 21st cen-tury post-civil rights new apartheid (neo-apart-heid) imperial structure in place in the UnitedStates (Grosfoguel 2008b).

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epistemology, closing itself off to a trans-modern dialogue between various episte-mologies. If we think not from academicdisciplines but instead from the notion oftransdisciplinarity in the sense of goingbeyond disciplinary knowledges, then theethnic studies project would be opened upto epistemological diversity instead of thecurrent monotopism and monologue of thedominant Western Eurocentric fundamen-talist epistemology that refuses to acknowl-edge any other epistemology as a space forthe production of critical or scientificthought. The disciplinary colonization ofethnic studies constitutes an epistemic colo-nization since these academic disciplinesprivilege a Eurocentric epistemic canon.

V. CONCLUSION

My point is not to dismiss the impor-tant and useful critical work producedfrom within the disciplinary fields of West-ern academia. I am simply questioning thecolonial Eurocentric nature of mainstreamdisciplines and, thus, the appropriatenessof creating ethnic studies departments/programs, if these are reduced merely tostudying the sociology of race, the anthro-pology of ethno/racial identities, thehistory of (not from or with) blacks,the economics of the insertion of indige-nous labor, etc. To colonize ethnic studiesthrough the Western disciplines does notconstitute an innovation in the field ofknowledge production. It was alreadypossible to do so through the respectiveacademic disciplines of the humansciences, and it requires neither ethnic stud-ies departments nor programs.

It would be a different story if ethnicstudies departments or programs proposedto open themselves up to transmodernity,that is, to the epistemic diversity of theworld, and redefine themselves as trans-modern decolonial studies, offering tothink from and with those others

subalternized and inferiorized by Eurocen-tered modernity, offering to define theirquestions, their problems, and their intel-lectual dilemmas from and with thosesame racialized groups. This would giverise to a decolonial methodology verydifferent from the colonial methodology ofthe social sciences and the humanities(Smith 1999). It would also imply a trans-modern dialogue between diverse ethico-epistemic political projects and a thematicinternal organization within ethnic studiesdepartments/programs, one based onproblems (racism, sexism, xenophobia,Christian-centrism, other epistemolo-gies, Eurocentrism, etc.) rather than eitherethnic/racial identities (Blacks, Indige-nous, Asians, etc.) or Western colonialdisciplines (sociology, anthropology,history, political science, philosophy, arts,economics, etc.).3

Ethnic studies, once redefined astransmodern decolonial studies, wouldmake an extremely important contributionnot only to the decolonialization of the pro-duction of academic knowledge toward adecolonial transmodern social sciences andhumanities, but also to liberation as the po-litical project toward the (epistemic, social,political, economic, and spiritual) decoloni-zation of those groups oppressed and ex-ploited by the Western-centric/Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal modern/co-lonial world-system.4

3 Here I am not implying that Latino Stud-ies, African-American Studies, Asian AmericanStudies or Native American Studies should notexist as such. To maintain these programs is im-portant in order to focus on the particular contri-butions the experience of each of these groupsbrings towards the decolonization of the world.What I am saying here is that inside each ofthese programs, the focus of research should beprimarily based on problems rather than on af-firming identity politics. 4 For a perspective very close to that whichI am proposing here, see Maldonado-Torres(2006).

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