Philosophy and Coloniality

April 16-17, 2018

Despite decades of sustained criticism, the idea that philosophy began in ancient Greece, inaugurating a specifically Western road from mythos to logos, which has subsequently been exported to the rest of the world, is still a widespread one. How is the idea of philosophy as a distinctively Western cultural form inevitably imbricated with the duress of imperialism and colonialism? What is the relationship between philosophy and coloniality, understood, broadly speaking, as the condition generated by the politics of colonialism? Is coloniality still a useful concept? If philosophy is an immanent capacity of human thinking, why is it the case that the countries usually represented in the Western philosophical canon are barely more than a handful of them?

Bringing together thinkers from a diversity of cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, this conference offers a forum to tackle these questions from a multiplicity of points of view.

Monday, April 16

11:00 AM Moderator: Jaskiran Dhillon

Kyle Powys Whyte: “Indigenous Philosophizing in Our Ancestors Dystopia”

Linda Alcoff: Eurocentrism as a Philosophical Practice”

1:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM Moderator: Sandro Mezzadra

Jodi Byrd: “The (De)Coloniality of Relationality in Southeastern American Indian Philosophies”

Chiara Bottici: “Imaginal Past: Philosophy, Coloniality and the Politics of Remembrance”

4:00 PM Coffee Break

4:30 PM-6:30 PM  Moderator: Emmalon Davis

Walter Mignolo: ” Is Philosophy still a useful concept? On Nahuatl Thought, Coloniality of Knowledge and Western Philosophy”

Lewis Gordon: ” Philosophy and Decoloniality in Africana Philosophy”

 

Tuesday, April 17

9:00 AM Moderator: Dmitri Nikulin

Mariana Ortega: ” To(o) Queer the Artist: A Decolonial Aesthetic of Self-Making”

Eduardo Mendieta: “Towards a Decolonial Philosophical Imaginary”

11:00 AM Coffee Break

11:15 AM-1:15 PM Moderator: Tomás Pimenta

Nelson Maldonado-Torres:” What is (decolonial) Critique?”

Enrique Dussel: “The ‘Second Century’ Marx”

 

Organized by Chiara Bottici and Tomás Pimenta. Co-sponsored by the Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice (CESJ), the Janey Program in Latin American Studies, and the New School for Social Research Office of the Dean.