Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America

Abstract

Aníbal Quijano (1928–2018) was born in Yanama, Peru, and became involved in Marxist-socialist revolutionary politics at a young age. He was an active part of the conceptualization of dependence theory in the 1960–1970s and of the shaping of Latin American critical thought. Trained as a sociologist, Quijano refused the identification of full-time academic. His intellectual interest, energy, and contribution were always militant in scope: a perspective for analyzing and re-reading the world from Latin America, from the complex weave of race and capital that is the coloniality of power. This book is the first collection in English of selected essays of this influential Latin American thinker. It not only introduces English-language readers to Quijano’s thought but also provides a fundamentally distinct lens for reading today’s world system of power from its origins in the so-called periphery, that is, from Latin America and the Global South.