Decolonial Aesthetics / Aesthesis has become a connector across the continents
Walter Mignolo
Essay: Re:emerging, Decentring and Delinking. Shifting the Geographies of Sensing, Believing and Knowing
A review of Sharjah Biennial 11 curated by Yuko Hasegawa ( Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
The epistemic and cultural privilege of European modernity is over, as is
the politico-economic privilege. The shift to the eastern hemisphere
and the 'Global South' is founded in both economic growth and cultural
confidence. Hasegawa noticed that the artists of the 'Global South' and
'Far East' are using the same techniques originating in the west, but
privileging identity when using them. A parallel with the global
economic order is in place: the planetary economic order is capitalist,
but the BRICs countries are acting on politico-economic state identities
and delinking from the IMF and the World Bank.
[12]
Dignity is at stake at every level here, for the simple reason that
identity is what Eurocentrism taught the rest of the world to despise so
as to become modern (postmodern or altermodern), developed and
'civilized.
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But what is not fine is to expect the universalization of western
localities and sensibilities, simply because you cannot universalize the
local without erasing the localities of others. That was and is the
problem with the Eurocentred idea of modernity. Once, people around the
world believed that 'the way' was to embrace western modernity. Now, the
trick has been uncovered and the departures have already begun. They
are wide and far spread.
Essay Delinking
Decolonizing solidarity resources and ideas organised by Clare Land
