Decolonial thought comes after the twilight of Marxism. Or, if we will, is a displacement of the critique of economic to cultural domination. The claim is that modernity, the West, and science were only instruments of colonization. As an alternative, we have to undo history and return to ancient knowledge. We call the conquered societies “originary”.
The conqueror is seen as an all-powerful subject, the real master that continues to rule even after independence movements. He is seen as a homogenous monster that created his culture. On the other side, there is the “other” now speaking as “me”. I was the other, I am the other, and as such, I am the truth of domination. The contingent encounter of different cultures is seen as an ontological event. The conqueror and the conquered as seen as complete and well-defined subjects. In the end, even if a decolonial discourse seems to be about culture, it is about geography, about having been before or after. The truth of the subaltern is granted by his or her mere existence, without any need to speak. He, in turn, has no subalterns, he is pure, absolute victim. We are not asked what we think, but “from where” or “as who”. As black, as woman, as indigenous.
There is nothing more colonial than thinking the conqueror created alone his own culture. There is no “West”. No pure West. Nietzsche, the philologist, knew this very well. He didn’t grant the Greeks great powers of creation (as so many Germans did, from Hegel to Heidegger), but a privileged stomach to digest the cultures around. To create is to process the surrounding cultures. The so-called West is Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Egyptian. It is Christian and Islamic. Its technology is Chinese, its mathematics, Islamic and Indian. And so on… When we say “modernity”, or “West” we are saying also Islam, Hermetism, Zoroastrism. This should help to stop seeing the West as a disease we have to take out of our bodies.
Symmetrically, the same should be said for the conquered. They also built empires, and systems of oppression. The EZLN bravely acknowledged that while critiquing capitalism, machismo was deeply rooted in their communities. They also called for a scientific congress, giving up the simplistic idea that they had a more originary knowledge of the world. Even the world originary is violent as it obscures the fact that every settlement takes place on top of another one. The “first” never exists. We always arrive some time later.
Sor Juana Inés de la Curz, the Mexican nun from the 18th century, offered a more radical decolonial thought. Se said: gods are powerless when no one adores them. They need people that offer them shelter. Gods are foreigners. Christians worship an Eastern god, but they were hospitable with Jesus and Mary. Mexicans worshiped virgin Mary. She was another form of the indigenous God-mother Tonantzin. But virgin Mary, says Sor Juana, is another name for an older goddess, namely, Isis.
It is impossible to say what belongs purely to Europe and purely to Mesoamerica. And it is also useless. Culture is, as Nietzsche says, a matter of stomach, of ruminating ideas, gods, practices. Some will be vomited. Some will be expelled. Some will be assimilated.