Eurocentrism Kritik - Gonzaga 2013

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 1
Eurocentrism K
Eurocentrism K GDI 2013

Eurocentrism K
1NC Shell

Eurocentrism K
1NC Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism shapes traditional policymaking knowledge
production the state, and democratic processes are
universalized and spread with policies like the plan
Frankzi, University of London, Birkbeck College, School of Law,
Graduate Student, 12
(Hannah, Center for InterAmerican Studies, Bielefeld University, Universitat
Bielefeld, Eurocentrism, http://elearning.unibielefeld.de/wikifarm/fields/ges_cias/field.php/Main/Unterkapitel52, Accessed:
7/3/13, LPS.)
Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

programme have drawn attention to the mythical character of this narrative by
arguing that coloniality, understood as a pattern of European violence in the
colonies, and modernity need to be understood as two sides of the same
coin. They also stress the constitutive role of the discovery of the
Americas which enables Europe to situate itself at the economic and
epistemological centre of the modern world system. The modern idea of
universal history, that is the writing of history of humankind in a frame of
progressive and linear time, has also been criticised as inherently
Eurocentric. This is because it construes the European development as
following the normal and necessary course of history and consequently
only accommodates the experience of other world regions in relation to it.
The construction of the Americas through a European lens is epitomised
by the fact that for a long time most accounts of American history started
with the arrival of the settlers (Muthyala 2001). Strategies deployed to
challenge this Eurocentric master narrative have involved replacing discovery with
disaster to stress the violence inherent in the process which was a key part of
European modernity.
Geopolitics of Knowledge
In contrast to more localised ethnocentrisms, Eurocentrism shapes the
production of knowledge and its proliferation well beyond Europe and the
western hemisphere. This is possible, critics argue, due to an epistemology
which pretends that knowledge has no locus. In western thought,
Descartes' proclamation of a separation of body and mind has led to an
image of the cognisant subject as abstracted from all social, sexual and
racial realities (Grosfoguel 2006, pp. 20ff, Gandhi 1998: 34ff). In consequence,
analytical categories such as state, democracy, equality, etc., formed
against the background of particular European experience and are
declared to be universally valid and applicable, independent of place
(Chakrabarty 2002, p. 288). This leads, according to Edgardo Lander (2002, p. 22),
to a naturalisation of liberal values and a devaluation of knowledge
produced outside the prescribed scientific system. Europe's successful
placing of itself at the centre of history also caused universities outside Europe to
teach it from a Eurocentric point of view and include predominantly northern
thinkers in their academic canons. Postcolonial scholarship has pointed out that
knowledge produced in the global South is recognised if the respective academics

Eurocentrism K
are working in European or US-American universities (Castro-Gmez 2005, p. 35).
As a means to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge, indigenous
universities have been founded in various Latin American countries. They demand
that different ways of knowing be recognised as valid and suggest that indigenous
knowledge can inspire new methodologies.
Eurocentrism frames social norms the normative function of

race, gender, sex and other types identity are reinforced by
Eurocentrism, causes inevitable inequality
Baker, University of Rochester, Graduate Student School of
Education and Human Development, 8
(Michael, Teaching and Learning About and Beyond Eurocentrism: A Proposal for
the Creation of an Other School, March 16, 2008,
http://academia.edu/1516858/Teaching_and_Learning_About_and_Beyond_Eurocentr
ism_A_Proposal_for_the_Creation_of_an_Other_School, accessed 7/12/13)
The Other School would be oriented around an alternative framework for knowledge
and understanding that we might call the decolonial paradigm, since its central aim
is to decolonize thinking and being, in part, through dialogue (not just the study of
cultures as objects of knowledge) with the diversity of ways of knowing and being
that have been devalued and eclipsed in Eurocentric education. The decolonial
paradigm of education would focus on concepts of culture and power. Culture is not
separate from politics and economics, contrary to the taken-for-granted disciplinary
divisions. .political and economic structures are not entities in
themselves, but are imagined, framed and enacted by individuals formed
in a certain type of subjectivity; a subjectivity that is also framed in the
dominant structure of knowledge (Mignolo, 2005, p. 112). The cultural
group (in the U.S. -- Anglo-American) with the most money and the most
political power is also the dominant culture reproduced in the school
curriculum. Most of us (particularly if we not white) recognize that a racial
hierarchy exists and is maintained by the dominant cultural group (for
example, see Huntington, 2004). Cultural diversity in multicultural
education is often more a way to manage or contain difference while
maintaining the racial hierarchy. Multiculturalism only became an issue and
concept in education during the unsettling 60s, when ethnic groups labeled racial
minorities raised their voices demanding that the promises of modernity be made
available to them as well as to whites. Racism is not simply the result of individual
prejudice and hateful expressions, but the consequence of the relations of power
that are historical and structural. The power side of culture can be
conveniently neutralized in the classroom as teachers and students learn
about diversity without examining how these differences have been
constructed, how they are reproduced in the curriculum, and how these
constructions continue to serve the white power elite. In English classes for
example, students read works that movingly depict personal struggles against
discrimination, without gaining any sense of how English literature was used to
teach people their distance from the center of civilization (Willinsky, 1989, p. ).
Multicultural education needs to include the study of how five centuries of
studying, classifying, and ordering humanity within an imperial context gave rise to
peculiar and powerful ideas of race, culture, and nation that were, in effect,

Eurocentrism K
conceptual instruments that the West used both to divide up and to educate the
world (Willinsky, 1989, pp. 2-3). Race, in other words, is a mental category of
modernity (Quijano, 2000, p. 536), created along with European colonization of the
Americas and the emergence of capitalism in the Atlantic commercial circuit in the
sixteenth century. Modernity/coloniality came together in the sixteenth
century during the emergence of the Atlantic commercial circuit that
propelled an incipient European capitalism and charted the racial
geopolitical map of the world. Racial classification and the divisions and
control of labor are historically intertwined the two parts of colonial
matrix of power (Quijano, 1999; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992). Types of work,
incomes earned, and geographical location among the worlds population
today profoundly reflect this racial capitalist hierarchy and domination
the coloniality of power. Coloniality of power has been since the sixteenth
century and is still today an epistemic principle for classifying the non-European
world in relation to Europe on the principle of skin color and brain capacity (i.e., race
and rationality). Ethnicities (local community identities based on shared
knowledge, faith, language, memories, tastes etc.) have been racialized within
this modern matrix of power (Sardar, Nandy & Wyn Davies1993).
Multicultural education therefore should be understood and consequently
taught within the colonial horizon of modernity, since the sixteenth
century. Racism is a symptom of the persistence of coloniality of power
and the colonial difference.
One of the achievements of imperial reason was to affirm European or
white, Christian, male, heterosexual, American, as a superior identity by
constructing inferior identities and expelling them to the outside of the
normative sphere of the real (Mignolo, 2006). Cultural differences then would
be recognized as part of the colonial difference in the 500-year history of control
and domination by the white, European, heterosexual, Christian, male through the
intersection of race, religion, gender, class, nationality and sexuality. The
coloniality of power is a European imposed racial classification system
that emerged 500 years ago and expanded along with (is constitutive of)
the modern/colonial world capitalist-system. Race, class, gender, and
sexuality and religion intersect as hierarchical elements within the
modern/colonial capitalist system of classification and power relations.
The alternative is to reject the aff - key to decolonize

education
Baker, Professor of Education and Human Development at the
University of Rochester, 12
(Michael, October 31 - November 4, , American Educational Studies Association,

Annual Conference Seattle, Washington, Decolonial Education: Meanings, Contexts,
and Possibilities,
http://academia.edu/3266939/Decolonial_Education_Meanings_Contexts_and_Possibl
ities, Accessed: 7/7/13, LPS.)
What do decoloniality and decolonial education mean? Where does this
movement come from? What are the key ideas that underlie and comprise
decolonial education? What does decolonial education look like in practice?
My presentation will introduce a decolonial perspective on modernity and sketch the

Eurocentrism K
implications of this perspective for rethinking modern education beyond the
epistemological boundaries of modernity. The overall argument can be seen as
an attempt to reveal, critique, and change the modern geopolitics of
knowledge, within which modern western education first emerged and
remains largely concealed. Decoloniality involves the geopolitical
reconceptualization of knowledge. In order to build a universal conception
of knowledge, western epistemology (from Christian theology to secular
philosophy and science) has pretended that knowledge is independent of the
geohistorical (Christian Europe) and biographical conditions (Christian white
men living in Christian Europe) in which it is produced. As a result, Europe
became the locus of epistemic enunciation, and the rest of the world
became the object to be described and studied from the European
perspective. The modern geopolitics of knowledge was grounded in the
suppression of sensing and the body, and of its geo-historical location. The
foundations of knowledge were and remain territorial and imperial. The
claims to universality both legitimate and conceal the colonial/imperial relations of
modernity (Mignolo, 2011). Decolonial education is an expression of the
changing geopolitics of knowledge whereby the modern epistemological
framework for knowing and understanding the world is no longer
interpreted as universal and unbound by geohistorical and bio-graphical
contexts. I think therefore I am becomes I am where I think in the body- and
geo-politics of the modern world system (Mignolo, 2011). The idea that
knowledge and the rules of knowledge production exist within sociohistorical relationships between political power and geographical space
(geopolitics) shifts attention from knowledge itself to who, when, why, and
where knowledge is produced (Mignolo, 2011). The universal assumptions
about knowledge production are being displaced, as knowledge is no longer coming
from one regional center, but is distributed globally. From this recognition of the
geo and body politics of knowledge, education, including the various
knowledge disciplines that comprise education and knowledge of
education, can be analyzed and critiqued with questions such as: who is the
subject of knowledge, and what is his/her material apparatus of enunciation?; what
kind of knowledge/understanding is he/she engaged in generating, and why?; who is
benefiting or taking advantage of particular knowledge or understanding?; what
institutions (universities, media, foundations, corporations) are supporting and
encouraging particular knowledge and understanding? (Mignolo, 2011, p. 189).
Decolonial thinking and writing first emerged in the initial formations of modernity
from the experiences of and responses to European colonization in the Andean
regions during the sixteenth century. The colonial context created a betweeness of
cosmologies for the colonized. This consciousness of being between cultures within
a dominant culture is the central feature of decolonial thought -- thinking from the
borders created by a totalizing cosmology associated with European modernity. For
example, the sixteenth century writings of Waman Puma de Ayala focused on ways
to preserve Aymara and Kechua knowledge cultures and co-exist within the new
world order (Mignolo, 2005). Today, decolonization is used among indigenous
intellectuals around the world, where a variety of models of decolonial education
have emerged. Decolonial thinking about education is rooted in the violent
occlusion of ways of knowing and being among indigenous civilizations in
the Americas within the imposition of a new world order. The conquest of
the Americas meant the demolition of indigenous education and economic systems.

Eurocentrism K
European Renaissance universities, for example, were soon transplanted across the
Atlantic that had no relation to the languages and histories of the native peoples.

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Links

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Topic Links

Eurocentrism K
Knowledge Production
Eurocentrism shapes traditional policymaking knowledge
production the state, and democratic processes are
universalized and spread with policies like the plan
7/3/13, LPS.)
Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

programme have drawn attention to the mythical character of this narrative by
arguing that coloniality, understood as a pattern of European violence in the
colonies, and modernity need to be understood as two sides of the same
coin. They also stress the constitutive role of the discovery of the
Americas which enables Europe to situate itself at the economic and
epistemological centre of the modern world system. The modern idea of
universal history, that is the writing of history of humankind in a frame of
progressive and linear time, has also been criticised as inherently
Eurocentric. This is because it construes the European development as
following the normal and necessary course of history and consequently
only accommodates the experience of other world regions in relation to it.
The construction of the Americas through a European lens is epitomised
by the fact that for a long time most accounts of American history started
with the arrival of the settlers (Muthyala 2001). Strategies deployed to
challenge this Eurocentric master narrative have involved replacing discovery with
disaster to stress the violence inherent in the process which was a key part of
European modernity.
Geopolitics of Knowledge
In contrast to more localised ethnocentrisms, Eurocentrism shapes the
production of knowledge and its proliferation well beyond Europe and the
western hemisphere. This is possible, critics argue, due to an epistemology
which pretends that knowledge has no locus. In western thought,
Descartes' proclamation of a separation of body and mind has led to an
image of the cognisant subject as abstracted from all social, sexual and
racial realities (Grosfoguel 2006, pp. 20ff, Gandhi 1998: 34ff). In consequence,
analytical categories such as state, democracy, equality, etc., formed
against the background of particular European experience and are
declared to be universally valid and applicable, independent of place
(Chakrabarty 2002, p. 288). This leads, according to Edgardo Lander (2002, p. 22),
to a naturalisation of liberal values and a devaluation of knowledge
produced outside the prescribed scientific system. Europe's successful
placing of itself at the centre of history also caused universities outside Europe to
teach it from a Eurocentric point of view and include predominantly northern
thinkers in their academic canons. Postcolonial scholarship has pointed out that
knowledge produced in the global South is recognised if the respective academics

Eurocentrism K
are working in European or US-American universities (Castro-Gmez 2005, p. 35).
As a means to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge, indigenous
universities have been founded in various Latin American countries. They demand
that different ways of knowing be recognised as valid and suggest that indigenous
knowledge can inspire new methodologies.
How we read, write, and speak are important it shapes the

way we view ourselves and the world when we focus on
solely Western modes of thought we inevitably see indigenous
peoples as the Other
Smith, University of Waikato indigenous education professor, 7
(Linda Tuhiwai, 2007, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples, pg. 35-36, JZ)
As I am arguing, every aspect of the act of producing knowledge has
influenced the ways in which indigenous ways of knowing have been
represented. Reading, writing, talking, these are as fundamental to
academic discourse as science, theories, methods, paradigms. To begin with
reading, one might cite the talk in which Maori writer Patricia Grace undertook to
show that 'Books Are Dangerous'.21 She argues that there are four things that make
many books dangerous to indigenous readers: (1) they do not reinforce our values,
actions, customs, culture and identity; (2) when they tell us only about others they
are saying that we do not exist; (3) they may be writing about us but are writing
things which are untrue; and ( 4) they are writing about us but saying negative and
insensitive things which tell us that we are not good. Although Grace is talking
about school texts and journals, her comments apply also to academic writing.
Much of what I have read has said that we do not exist, that if we do exist it is in
terms which I cannot recognize, that we are no good and that what we think is not
valid.
Leonie Pihama makes a similar point about film. In a review of The Piano she says:
'Maori people struggle to gain a voice, struggle to be heard from the margins, to
have our stories heard, to have our descriptions of ourselves validated, to have
access to the domain within which we can control and define those images which
are held up as reflections of our realities.' 22 Representation is important as a
concept because it gives the impression of 'the truth'. When I read texts, for
example, I frequently have to orientate myself to a text world in which the centre of
academic knowledge is either in Britain, the United States orWestero Europe; in
which words such as 'we' 'us' 'our' 'I' actuall exclude me. It is a text world in which
(if what I am interested in rates 6l AiMAlii'BA) I Aoua leosgsd d.lat 1 he'ons Par#?' jp
the Third \XlgrJd Pa!#J' in the 'Women of Colour' world, part!J in the black or African
world. I read myself into these labels part!J because I have also learned that,
although there may be commonalities, they still do not entirely account for the
experiences of indigenous peoples.
So, reading and interpretation present problems when we do not see
ourselves in the text. There are problems, too, when we do see ourselves
but can barely recognize ourselves through the representation. One
problem of being trained to read this way, or, more correctly, of learning to
read this way over many years of academic study, is that we can adopt uncritically
similar patterns of writing. We begin to write about ourselves as indigenous

Eurocentrism K
peoples as if we really were 'out there', the 'Other', with all the baggage
that this entails. Another problem is that academic writing is a form of
selecting, arranging and presenting knowledge. It privileges sets of texts,
views about the history of an idea, what issues count as significant; and,
by engaging in the same process uncritically, we too can render
indigenous writers invisible or unimportant while reinforcing the validity
of other writers. If we write without thinking critically about our writing, it can be
dangerous. Writing can also be dangerous because we reinforce and
maintain a style of discourse which is never innocent. Writing can be
dangerous because sometimes we reveal ourselves in ways which get
misappropriated and used against us. Writing can be dangerous because, by
building on previous texts written about indigenous peoples, we continue
to legitimate views about ourselves which are hostile to us. This is
particularly true of academic writing, although journalistic and imaginative writing
reinforce these 'myths'.

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Epistemology
The Eurocentric worldview of the Aff compromises their
epistemology because it is a hegemonic and dominating lens.
It precludes the possibility of rational analysis.
Quijano, Peruvian Sociologist, 2k
(Anibal, Peruvian sociologist and humanist thinker, known for having developed the
concept of "coloniality of power". His body of work has been influential in the fields
of post-colonial studies and critical theory, 2000, Duke University Press, Coloniality
of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,
http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf, Accessed 7/5/13, JB)
The intellectual conceptualization of the process of modernity produced a
perspective of knowledge and a mode of producing knowledge that gives a
very tight account of the character of the global model of power:
colonial/modern, capitalist, and Eurocentered. This perspective and
concrete mode of producing knowledge is Eurocentrism.19 Eurocentrism is,
as used here, the name of a perspective of knowledge whose systematic formation
began in Western Europe before the middle of the seventeenth century, although
some of its roots are, without doubt, much older. In the following centuries this
perspective was made globally hegemonic, traveling the same course as the
dominion of the European bourgeois class. Its constitution was associated with
the specific bourgeois secularization of European thought and with the
experiences and necessities of the global model of capitalist
(colonial/modern) and Eurocentered power established since the
colonization of America. This category of Eurocentrism does not involve all of the
knowledge of history of all of Europe or Western Europe in particular. It does not
refer to all the modes of knowledge of all Europeans and all epochs. It is instead a
specific rationality or perspective of knowledge that was made globally
hegemonic, colonizing and overcoming other previous or different
conceptual formations and their respective concrete knowledges, as much
in Europe as in the rest of the world. In the framework of this essay I propose to
discuss some of these issues more directly related to the experience of Latin
America, but, obviously, they do not refer only to Latin America.

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Research
Research is directly linked to European imperialism ensures
the suppression of indigenous peoples
From the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write, and
choose to privilege, the term 'research' is inextricably linked to European
imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, 'research', is probably one of
the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary. When mentioned in
many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it conjures up bad memories, it
raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful. It is so powerful that indigenous
people even write poetry about research. The ways in which scientific
research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a
powerful remembered history for many of the world's colonized peoples. It
is a history that still offends the deepest sense of our humanity. Just knowing that
someone measured our 'faculties' by filling the skulls of our ancestors with millet
seeds and compared the amount of millet seed to the capacity for mental thought
offends our sense of who and what we are.1 It galls us that Western
researchers and intellectuals can assume to know all that it is possible to
know of us, on the basis of their brief encounters with some of us. It
appals us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our
ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then
simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas
and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own
culture and-own nations. It angers us when-practices linked to the last
century, and the centuries before that, are still employed to deny the validity of
indigenous peoples claim to existence, to land and territories, to the right
of self-determination, to the survival of our languages and forms of
cultural knowledge, to our natural resources and systems for living within
our environments.
This collective memory of imperialism has been perpetuated through the
ways in which knowledge about indigenous peoples was collected,
classified and then represented in various ways back to the West, and
then, through the eyes of the West, back to those who have been
colonized. Edward Said refers to this process as a Western discourse about the
Other which is supported by 'institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery,
doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles'.2 According to Said, this
process has worked partly because of the constant interchange between
the scholarly and the imaginative construction of ideas about the Orient. The
scholarly construction, he argues, is supported by a corporate institution which
'makes statements about it [the Orient], authorising views of it, describing it, by
teaching about it, settling it, ruling over it'.3 In these acts both the formal
scholarly pursuits of knowledge and the informal, imaginative, anecdotal
constructions of the Other are intertwined with each other and with the
activity of research. This book identifies research as a significant site of struggle

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between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways
of resisting of the Other. In this example, the Other has been constituted with a
name, a face, a particular identity, namely indigenous peoples. While it is more
typical (with the exception of feminist research) to write about research within the
framing of a specific scientific or disciplinary approach, it is surely difficult to discuss
research methodology and indigenous peoples together, in the same breath,
without having an analysis of imperialism, without understanding the complex ways
in which the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of
imperial and colonial practices.
Research ensures the divide between the West and the Other
as a tool of imperialism
Part of the project of this book is researching back in the tradition of 'writing back'
or 'talking back', that characterizes much of the post-colonial or anti-colonial
literature.10 It has involved a 'knowing-ness of the colonizer* and a recovery of
ourselves, an analysis of colonialism, and a struggle for self-determination.
Research is one of the ways in which the underlying code of imperialism
and colonialism is both regulated and realized. It is regulated through the
formal rules of individual scholarly disciplines and scientific
paradigms, and the institutions that support them (including the state).
It is realized in the myriad of representations and ideological
constructions of the Other in scholarly and 'popular' works, and in the
principles which help to select and recontextualize those constructions in such
things as the media, official histories and school curricula. Ashis Nandy argues that
the structures of colonialism contain rules by which colonial encounters
occur and are 'managed'.11 The different ways in which these encounters
happen and are managed are different realizations of the underlying rules
and codes which frame in the broadest sense what is possible and what is
impossible. In a very real sense research has been an encounter between the
West and the Other. Much more is known about one side of those encounters
than is known about the other side. This book reports to some extent on views that
are held and articulated by 'the other sides'. The first part of the book explores
topics around the theme of imperialism, research and knowledge. They can be read
at one level as a narrative about a history of research and indigenous peoples but
make much more sense if read as a series of intersecting and overlapping essays
around a theme.
Only using Western research is simply racist it conveys the

sense of innate superiority
Peoples, pg. 56, JZ)

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Research 'through imperial eyes' describes an approach which assumes
that Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas
possible to hold, certainly the only rational ideas, and the only ideas which
can make sense of the world, of reality, of social life and of human beings.
It is an approach to indigenous peoples which still conveys a sense of
innate superiority and an overabundance of desire to bring progress into
the lives of indigenous peoples - spiritually, intellectually, socially and
economically. It is research which from indigenous perspectives 'steals' knowledge
from others and then uses it to benefit the people who 'stole' it. Some indigenous
and minority group researchers would call this approach simply racist. It is
research which is imbued with an 'attitude' and a 'spirit' which assumes a
certain ownership of the entire world, and which has established systems
and forms of governance which embed that attitude in institutional
practices. These practices determine what counts as legitimate research
and who count as legitimate researchers. Before assuming that such an
attitude has long since disappeared, it is often worth reflecting on who would make
such a claim, researchers or indigenous peoples? A recent attempt (fortunately
unsuccessful) to patent an indigenous person in the New Guinea Highlands might
suggest that there are many groups of indigenous peoples who are still
without protection when it comes to the activities of research.24 Although in this
particular case the attempt was unsuccessful, what it demonstrated yet again is
that there are people out there who in the name of science and progress still
consider indigenous peoples as specimens, not as humans.

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Resolution
The topic itself poses the wrong question
Besse, CUNY City College Professor, 4
(Susan K., Professor in the City College division of the CUNY agency, 2004, Hispanic
American Historical Review 84.3 (2004) 411-422, Placing Latin America in Modern
World History Textbooks,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hispanic_american_historical_review/summary/v084/84.
3besse.html, Accessed 7/5/13, NC)
The recent trend in world history to prioritize the theme of technology and
environment is not one that will give us tools to integrate better the
history of Latin American societies into the global narrative. Nor will big
history. I find it interesting and stimulating to ask the sorts of questions that
underlie big history, but these should not be the ones that frame world
history curricula. The search by two of the leading proponentsFred Spier and
Jared Diamond for a single, all-encompassing theoretical framework that
can unify all knowledge is illusory and dangerous. Moreover, the answers to
the big questions they posewhich falsely claim greater scientific merit by
drawing on hard data and subordinating culture to the realm of the epiphenomenal
are not ones that can help us in the contemporary world to explain such
short-term phenomenon as racism, sexism, religious fundamentalism, rapidly
shifting patterns of imperial power, and so on. In short, these frameworks of
analysis do not contribute to our understanding of our near and distant
neighbors nor to imagining how to build stable and just societies.22 We
need to ask questions that will make inquiry into the histories and
cultures of all the worlds peoples including Latin Americansrelevant.
The historical experience of Latin America since 1492 mirrors the global present, in
which the multiple pasts of Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Asians have
collided and intertwined, producing increasingly integrated, yet heterogeneous,
modern societies. That Latin America cannot be neatly defined as either
Western or non-Western should not be seen as a problem. Rather, the
problem lies in paradigms that naturalize and universalize the experiences
of Europe and that rank the societies of the world according to the degree to which
they achieved the technological advancement and social and political modernity of
Europe. Only when we frame new questions that move beyond strongly
materialist and developmentalist measures of historical influence and
significance will Latin America seem relevant. No amount of pressure for
equal attention can substitute for a paradigm shift that charts
intellectually compelling paths for how to write a culturally sensitive,
socially inclusive world history: one that asks how major global
transformations have been experienced by people whose impact has been
deemed insignificant and that gives priority to analyzing gender, race,
racial mixture, and cultural syncretism. As we move in this direction, Latin
American voices will begin to count for more than a few distracting passages.

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USFG
State representations distance us from real world
representations of politics the policymaking paradigm
guarantees imperialism
Reid-Brinkley, University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor
Communication, 8
[Shanara Reid-Brinkley, Rhetoric PhD & Prof @ Pitt, and the most competitively
successful black woman in CEDA history, The Harsh Realities Of Acting Black:
How African-American Policy Debaters Negotiate Representation Through Racial
Performance And Style, http://www.comm.pitt.edu/faculty/documents/reidbrinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf, accessed 7/7/13)
Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a
sense of detachment associated with the spectator posture.115 In other words, its
participants are able to engage in debates where they are able to distance themselves from
the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters can throw around terms like
torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate simulations can only
serve to distance the debaters from real world participation in the political
contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks:
the topic established a relationship through interpellation that inhered
irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters were .
The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such.
When we blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking,
we are not immune to the colonialist legacy that establishes our place on
this continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated
everyday in our name simply by refusing to acknowledge these
implications (emphasis in original).116
The objective stance of the policymaker is an impersonal or imperialist
persona. The policymaker relies upon acceptable forms of evidence, engaging in logical discussion,
producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters note, such a stance is
integrally linked to the normative, historical and contemporary practices
of power that produce and maintain varying networks of oppression . In
other words, the discursive practices of policy-oriented debate are
developed within, through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus,
these practices are critically implicated in the maintenance of hegemony .

Eurocentrism K
Economic Engagement
Economic engagement demonstrates a drive to control
uncivilized countries this justifies further attempts to
Americanize already independent countries
Peoples Daily, 63
(Peoples Daily, October 22, 1963, Foreign languages Press, Apologists Of NeoColonialism,
http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/neocolon.htm, Accessed
7/5/13, IGM)
The facts are clear. After World War II the imperialists have certainly not given
up colonialism, but have merely adopted a new form, neo-colonialism. An
important characteristic of such neo-colonialism is that the imperialists have
been forced to change their old style of direct colonial rule in some areas
and to adopt a new style of colonial rule and exploitation by relying on the
agents they have selected and trained. The imperialists headed by the United
States enslave or control the colonial countries and countries which have
already declared their independence by organizing military blocs, setting up
military bases, establishing federations or communities, and fostering puppet
regimes. By means of economic aid or other forms, they retain these
countries as markets for their goods, sources of raw material and outlets
for their export of capital, plunder the riches and suck the blood of the
people of these countries. Moreover, they use the United Nations as an
important tool for interfering in the internal affairs of such countries and for
subjecting them to military, economic and cultural aggression. When they are
unable to continue their rule over these countries by peaceful means, they
engineer military coups detat, carry out subversion or even resort to direct armed
intervention and aggression. The United States is most energetic and cunning
in promoting neo-colonialism. With this weapon, the U.S. imperialists are trying
hard to grab the colonies and spheres of influence of other imperialists and to
establish world domination. This neo-colonialism is a more pernicious and
sinister form of colonialism.
Interventionist US engagement reinforces the dominant,

Eurocentric frame of knowledge
7/3/13, LPS.)
Many substantial critiques of Eurocentrism, such as Edward Said's Orientalism
(1978) or Samir Amin's Eurocentrism (1988), have focussed on the production of
Eurocentric knowledge through Europe's encounter with and construction
of the Orient as distinct entity. The resulting localisation of the colonial divide
between Orient and Occident has been found as failing to accommodate the Latin

Eurocentrism K
American experience (Mignolo 1998). While both North and Latin America are
considered part of the Occident, they were and continue to be affected by
Eurocentrism in quite different ways. With regards to their insertion into
the global economy, the historical experience of the United States as part
of the centre, for example, differs substantially from that of many Latin
American countries whose productive sectors were organised so as to
serve the needs of (neo-)colonial powers. The way Eurocentric values
structure inter-American relations becomes apparent in, to name but one
area, development cooperation. Here, US actors intervene in the name of
liberal democracy and development in Latin American societies to help
them come closer to the universalized role model of the developed
northern state. On an intra-societal level, postcolonial studies have pointed out
how Eurocentric categories, such as race, continue to structure relations
among individuals in both North and South America, through, for example,
the exploitation of migrant workers.
Modernity, Universal History and the Americas
Most prominently, the concepts of modernity, progress and universal history
have been identified as inherently Eurocentric. The standard account, as
presented in encyclopaedias and European histories, captures modernity
in terms of a self-contained European process of moral and economic
progress.
The Plan uses an exploitative Eurocentric model in Latin

America
Mignolo, Duke University Cultural Anthropology Professor, 9
(Walter D., The Idea of Latin America, pg. 96-98, Google Books, EK)
The global idea of Latin America being deployed by imperial states today
(the US and the imperial countries of the European Union) is of vast territory
and a resource of cheap labor, full natural resources, exotic tourism, and
fantastic Caribbean beaches wanting to be visited, invested in, and
exploited. These images developed during the Cold War when Latin
America became part of the Third World and a top destination for neoliberal projects, beginning in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet (1973) and
followed up by Juan Carlos Menem in Argentina (1989) and Snchez Gonzlo de
Losada (1993) in Bolivia. Thus, for example, today many of the major
technological corporations are shifting production to Argentina (post-crash)
where they can hire technicians for around ten thousand dollars a year
while the US salary plus benefits for ten thousand dollars a year while the
US salary plus benefits, for the same type of job, could be as high as fifty
or sixty thousand dollars a year.
The section on "Latin America" in the CIA's report Global Trends 2015 relies on the
same "idea of Latin" America, which originated in the imperial designs of
nineteenth-century French ideologues in complicity with Creole elites. The CIA
forecasts that: by 2015, many Latin American countries will enjoy greater prosperity
as a result of expanding hemispheric and global economic links, the information
revolution, and lowered birthrates. Progress in building democratic institutions will
reinforce reforms and promote prosperity by enhancing investing confidence. Brazil
and Mexico will be increasingly confident and capable actors that will seek a greater
voice in hemispheric affairs. But the region will remain vulnerable to financial

Eurocentrism K
crises because of its dependence on external finance and the continuing
role of single commodities in most economies. The weakest countries in the
region, especially in the Andean region, will fall further behind. Reversals of
democracy in some countries will be spurred by a failure to deal effectively
with popular demands, crime, corruption, drug trafficking, and
insurgencies. Latin America especially Venezuela. Mexico and Brazil - will
become an increasingly important oil producer by 2015 and an important
component of the emerging Atlantic Basin energy system. Its proven oil reserves
are second only to those located in the Middle East.'
However, from the perspective of many who are being looked at and
spoken at (not to), things look a little bit different. The CIA s report cites
many experts on Latin America but not one person in Latin America who is critical of
the neo-liberal invasion to the South. For instance, the articles published by AlaiAmlatina, written in Spanish in the independent news media, do not "exist"
for a world in which what exists is written in English. That is part of the
"reality" of the "idea" of Latin America. The story is never fully told
because "developments" projected from above are apparently sufficient to
pave the way toward the future. "Expertise" and the experience of being
trained as an "expert" overrule the "living experience" and the "needs" of
communities that might subsume technology to their ways of life, and not
transform those ways of life to accord with capitalist requirements, using
technology as a new colonizing tool. The blindness of the CIAs experts, and
their reluctance to work with people instead of strolling over expecting everyone to
act according to their script, have led a myriad of social movements to respond - a
blatant example of the double-sided double-density of modernity/colonialist. It is
increasingly difficult for the CIA and other institutions controlling and managing
knowledge and information to silence them. The key issue here is the
emergence of a new kind of knowledge that responds to the needs of the
damnes. (the wretched of the earth, in the expression of Prantz Fanon).They are
the subjects who are formed by todays colonial wound, the dominant
conception of life in which a growing sector of humanity become
commodities (like slaves in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) or, in the
worst possible conditions, expendable lives. The pain, humiliation, and
anger of the continuous reproduction of the colonial wound generate
radical political projects, new types of knowledge, and social movements.
Globalization seeks to Americanize whole populations shuts

down any indigenous resistance
Jackson, MIT Anthropology, 9
(Jean E. Latin American Research Review Volume 44, Number 3, 2009, pg. 207
Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Indigenous Movements, muse, date accessed
7/5/2013 IGM)
The rise in international discourses of various kinds of rights indigenous,
human, citizenhas played an important role in Latin American indigenous
organizing, as have the treaties and covenants to which Latin American
countries are signatories. Also important, says Postero, are international
NGO funding and a global discourse that made indigenousness and
indigenous rights central tropes of social movement organizing in the 1990s
(5). The environmental movement has played a supporting role in some places, and

Eurocentrism K
the international indigenous movement has been front and center stage almost
everywhere.
The legacy of the cold war shaped U.S. efforts with respect to indigenous
communities in the region before the democratic transition. The results of
the efforts ranged from bad (various midcentury development initiatives in
Paraguay) to catastrophic (in Guatemala). Several more recent international
initiatives have had positive effects, as when accusations of genocide in Paraguay
led to hearings by the U.S. Senate and sub sequent termination of aid. World Bank
policies have begun to support indigenous claims as well. Note, however, Hales
comment that, although the World Bank supports indigenous rights, it
promotes economic policies that deepen indigenous structural poverty
and economic misery (37), an opinion Postero shares. Indigenous resistance
has been intense to more recent U.S. pressures, for example, in regard to a
Latin American Free Trade agreement and campaigns to eradicate coca
cultivation.
The logic of liberalism is part of the Eurocentric view of the

rest of the world that seeks to expand capital driven policies
that have placed Latin America in the cross hairs of colonial
exploitation and domination.
http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf, Accessed 7/5/13, NC)
Capitalist determinations, however, required also (and in the same historical
movement) that material and inter subjective social processes could not
have a place but within social relations of exploitation and domination. For
the controllers of power, the control of capital and the market were and are what
decides the ends, the means, and the limits of the process. The market is the
foundation but also the limit of possible social equality among people. For
those exploited by capital, and in general those dominated by the model of power,
modernity generates a horizon of liberation for people of every relation,
structure, or institution linked to domination and exploitation, but also the
social conditions in order to advance toward the direction of that horizon.
Modernity is, then, also a question of conflicting social interests. One of
these interests is the continued democratization of social existence. In this sense,
every concept of modernity is necessarily ambiguous and contradictory (Quijano
1998a, 2000b). It is precisely in the contradictions and ambiguities of
modernity that the history of these processes so clearly differentiates
Western Europe from the rest of the world, as it is clear in Latin America.
In Western Europe, the concentration of the wage-capital relation is the principal
axis of the tendencies for social classification and the correspondent structure of
power. Economic structures and social classification underlay theU with the
old order, with empire, with the papacy during the period of so-called competitive
capital. These conflicts made it possible for nondominant sectors of capital as well
as the exploited to find better conditions to negotiate their place in the structure of

Eurocentrism K
power and in selling their labor power. It also opens the conditions for a specifically
bourgeois secularization of culture and subjectivity. Liberalism is one of the clear
expressions of this material and subjective context of Western European
society. However, in the rest of the world, and in Latin America in particular,
the most extended forms of labor control are nonwaged (although for the
benefit of global capital), which implies that the relations of exploitation and
domination have a colonial character. Political independence, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, is accompanied in the majority of the new
countries by the stagnation and recession of the most advanced sectors of
the capitalist economy and therefore by the strengthening of the colonial
character of social and political domination under formally independent states. The
Euro centrification of colonial/modern capitalism was in this sense decisive
for the different destinies of the process of modernity between Europe
and the rest of the world (Quijano 1994).

Eurocentrism K
State to State Engagement

The concept and the actions of the State is inherently
Eurocentric
Quijano, sociologist and humanist thinker, 2000
(Anibal, a Peruvian sociologist and humanist thinker, known for having developed
the concept of "coloniality of power". His body of work has been influential in the
fields of post-colonial studies and critical theory, 2000, Coloniality of Power,
Eurocentrism, and Latin America, P. 558,
www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf, Accessed: 7/5/13, LPS.)
The Nation-State One of the clearest examples of this tragedy of
equivocations in Latin Amer- ica is the history of the so-called national
question: the problem of the modern nation-state in Latin America. I will
attempt here to review some basic 557 Quijano . Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin
America issues of the national question in relation to Eurocentrism and the
coloniality of power, which, as far as I know, is a perspective that has not been fully
explored. 25 State formations in Europe and in the Americas are linked and
distinguished by coloniality of power. Nations and states are an old
phenomenon. However, what is currently called the modern nation-state
is a very specific experience. It is a society where, within a space of
domination, power is organized with some important degree of democratic
relations (as democratic as possible in a power structure), basically in the
control of labor, resources, products, and public authority. The society is
nationalized because democratized, and therefore the character of the state is as
national and as democratic as the power existing within such a space of domination.
Thus a modern nation-state involves the modern institutions of citizenship and
political democracy, but only in the way in which citizenship can function as legal,
civil, and political equality for socially unequal people (Quijano 1998a). A nationstate is a sort of individualized society between others. Therefore, its members can
feel it as an identity. However, societies are power structures. Power
articulates forms of dispersed and diverse social existence into one
totality, one society. Every power structure always involves, partially or
totally, the imposition by some (usually a particular small group) over the rest.
Therefore, every possible nation-state is a structure of power in the same
way in which it is a product of power. It is a structure of power by the ways in
which the following elements have been articulated: ( a ) the disputes over the
control of labor and its resources and products; ( b ) sex and its resources and
products; ( c ) authority and its specific violence; ( d ) intersubjectivity and
knowledge. Nevertheless, if a modern nation-state can be expressed by its members
as an identity, it is not only because it can be imagined as a community. 26 The
members need to have something real in common. And this, in all modern nationstates, is a more or less democratic participation in the distribution of the control of
power. This is the specific manner of homogenizing people in the modern
nation-state. Every homogenization in the modern nation-state is, of course,
partial and temporary and consists of the common democratic participation in the
generation and management of the institutions of public authority and its specific
mechanisms of violence. This authority is exercised in every sphere of social

Eurocentrism K
existence linked to the state and thus is accepted as explicitly political.
But such a sphere could not be democratic (involving people placed in unequal
relations of power 558 Nepantla as legally and civilly equal citizens) if the social
relations in all of the other spheres of social existence are radically undemocratic or
antidemocratic. 27 Since every nation-state is a structure of power, this implies
that the power has been configured along a very specific process. The
process always begins with centralized political power over a territory and
its population (or a space of domination), because the process of possible
nationalization can occur only in a given space, along a prolonged period of time,
with the precise space being more or less stable for a long period. As a result,
nationalization requires a stable and centralized political power. This space is, in this
sense, necessarily a space of domination disputed and victoriously guarded against
rivals.
European centralized states synonymous emergence with

colonial domination of Latin America intrinsically ties State
action to an inherent Eurocentric discourse that justifies mass
colonialism, imperialism, and ethnic cleansing
In Europe, the process that brought the formation of structures of power
later configured as the modern nation-state began, on one hand, with the
emergence of some small political nuclei that conquered their space of
domination and imposed themselves over the diverse and heterogeneous
peoples, identities, and states that inhabited it. In this way the nationstate began as a process of colonization of some peoples over others that
were, in this sense, foreigners, and therefore the nation-state depended
on the organization of one centralized state over a conquered space of
domination. In some particular cases, as in Spain, which owes much to the
conquest of America and its enormous and free resources, the process
included the expulsion of some groups, such as the Muslims and Jews,
considered to be undesirable foreigners. This was the first experience of
ethnic cleansing exercising the coloniality of power in the modern period
and was followed by the imposition of the certificate of purity of blood. 28 On the
other hand, that process of state centralization was parallel to the
imposition of imperial colonial domination that began with the
colonization of America, which means that the first European centralized
states emerged simultaneously with the formation of the colonial
empires. The process has a twofold historical movement, then. It began as an
internal colonization of peoples with different identities who inhabited the same
territories as the colonizers. Those territories were converted into spaces of
internal domination located in the same spaces of the future nation-

Eurocentrism K
states. The process continued, simultaneously carrying on an imperial or external
colonization of peoples that not only had different identities than those of the
colonizers, but inhabited territories that were not considered spaces of internal
domination of the colonizers. That is to say, the external colonized peoples were not
inhabiting the same territories of the future nation-state of the colonizers. 559

Eurocentrism K
Toward
Toward describes a relationship that is aid from one to an
irrational other. This entrenches paternalism, which reflects
innate Eurocentric practices and discourses
Baaz Gothenburg University, PhD Peace and Development
Research, 5
(Maria Eriksson, Zed Books, The Paternalism of Partnership, Google book, p.153-155,
accessed 7-6-13 KR)
The critique of Eurocentrism articulated in the development aid context

often centred on the meaning and location of rationality. It disturbed the
opposing of a rational, scientific Self to an irrational Other. It questioned the
imagery of the backward Other whose actions and resistance to development are
located within an irrational, traditional mentality. As one development worker
concluded:
Also Tanzanians are rational in their choices, even when we development workers
do not experience these choices as rational. There is a reason why the farmer
chooses the traditional way even if he/she has learned other ways to do it, which we
claim would give higher incomes, a higher standard of living, etc. The question the
development worker should ask him/herself should be, 'Why is the farmer making
this choice?' Do not ask, 'Why are they not doing what I tell them to do?! Ask
instead 'Why are they doing as they are doing?' (AISEI> December 1997)
Questioning the location of rationality and Truth also tends to destabilize belief in
the value of development aid. It challenges the mandate of the development worker
Self. As one worker put it:
The whole thing is a bit constructed and strange. How can you imagine that
someone who comes from another part of the world should know better what to do
in Tanzania in order to move the country forward. The whole idea is a bit absurd
from start to finish. (Interview 18)
Most interviews, then, articulate a positioning against Eurocentrism. This process
was both explicit and implicit. The explicit positioning is, of course,
above all, reflected in the partnership discourse itself. While the
partnership discourse has a strong instrumentalist dimension linked to
sustainability, it also has a moral dimension ar- ticulating the need to
challenge the paternalism of development aid. Hence, the discourse of
partnership - the disavowal of paternalism, a new definition of the
development worker role as adviser rather than manager, the introduction
of a new terminology - reflects the workings of a critique of Eurocentric
development practices.
One Other who sometimes figured in this more explicit positioning was the
missionary. While references to the mission are not always expressed in
terms of opposition and criticism, missionary work, when it was mentioned
in interviews, often functioned as the opposed Other, in relation to which a
non-paternalist Self is constructed.' The mission was here linked to
cultural imperialism and forcing beliefs upon others.
DW I just know that I don't want to come as a missionary ... because it is impossible
to plant an alpine flower on the savanna. It will not grow. You have to plant a flower

Eurocentrism K
which is adapted and suited to the conditions here and give it the proper nutrition....
I am afraid to come as a missionary because, with all due respect, they came here
because they thought that the message they brought was good and right. They
believed in it, but with hindsight one can conclude that it was wrong.
Q And you are not convinced that what you believe in is right?
DW No, it's right for me but it might not be right for other people. (Interview 22)
The positioning against Eurocentric development also had an implicit
dimension. This was expressed in comments such as 'you could say that
this is a culturally imperialist viewpoint, but...' (Interview 34) or 'you
might think that this sounds racist, but.. / (Interview 37). Yet this
dimension was evident above all in the many hesitations and reversals in
the interviews - efforts to avoid terminology which could be read as
expressions of Eurocentrism or racism.
People are so enormously ... they believe in the superstitious. (Interview 11)
Yes, but they are very good, you know ... but sometimes I think that they are ... that
we are a bit too gullible. (Interview 21)
Even though it is debatable whether such reversals indicate any
significant difference in the meanings attached to the Self and the Other,
they do display an awareness of - and demonstrate the operation of anti-racist and anti-imperialist discourses. They reveal efforts to present
the development worker Self as 'aware' and as situated outside racism
and Eurocentric development discourses. Such reversals, that is, show
the presence of an anti-racist critique of development inasmuch as
assertions such as 'people are so enormously superstitious*, or 'they are
gullible* are known to be expressions of Eurocentrism or racism, and are
therefore rephrased accordingly: 'people believe in the superstitious'; 'we
are a bit too gullible').

Eurocentrism K
Object/subject of the resolution

Engagement is Eurocentric the plan posits a dichotomizing
view of Latin America, one that views action in terms of
object and subject
Baca, University of Arizona assistant professor of English and
Mexican American studies, 10
(Damian, Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114 BCE to 2012 CE, Edited by Damian Baca
and Victor Villanueva, p. 1 -2)
The Americas continue to contain the legacy of classical colonialism and remain tied
to the economic dependencies of neocolonialism, so that the "post" of
postcolonialism reflects more of a wish than a reality for too many of the Western
Hemisphere. Since the time of Columbus, colonial agendas and policies
have engendered their own rhetorics of justification and explanation.
European modernity presumed a universal hegemony over political
ideology, cultural meanings, and historical narrative. This legacy can be
heard today in the discourses of "advanced/ primitive,"
"development/underdevelopment," "modern/premodern," or
"citizen/alien," terms that organize geopolitical locations by their
purported relationship to the vanguard narrative of Occidentalism. But
rhetorical traditions of the Americas and the Caribbean evidence a rich discourse of
critique of Anglo- and Eurocentric ideologies. In a real sense, modernity begins
with the encounter of the "New World" and the creation of a new "Other
Within," so that rhetorical practices of the Americas stand in a unique
position vis-a-vis the development of that modernityand its
concomitants of colonialism, of racialized subjectivities, of the crisis of
European reason, and of late global capitalism. Argentine liberation
philosopher Enrique Dussel points out that the more recent metanarratives
of Western thoughtpostmodernism, transnationalism, and globalization
are themselves still mired in an Occidental teleology that imagines
European and Anglo-American cultures to be the sources of historical
advance, theoretical transformation, and literary vision.1 Conversations in
Rhetoric and Composition Studies that engage in these topics need to take notice
and understand this critique.
US policies towards Latin America reinforce a hierarchal form

of relations engagement uses paternal rhetoric to justify a
top-down approach
Young, NYTimes, 4/20/13
(Kevin, 4/20/13, The Good, the Bad, and the Benevolent Interventionist: U.S. Press
and Intellectual Distortions of the Latin American Left
http://www.nytexaminer.com/2013/04/the-good-the-bad-and-the-benevolentinterventionist-u-s-press-and-intellectual-distortions-of-the-latin-american-left/, date
accessed 7/5/13 IGM)

Eurocentrism K
The good-left/bad-left thesis may seem more enlightened and progressive
than classic racist or imperialist rhetoric in that it does not lump all Latin
Americans together, but in fact the clever colonizer has always distinguished
between good and bad members of the subordinate group. When Columbus
sailed through the Caribbean in the 1490s, he contrasted the peaceful Arawaks of
Cuba to the aggressive, allegedly cannibalistic Caribs to the southeast (Hulme,
1994: 169171, 190). European and U.S. imperialists, as well as Latin American
elites, employed similar discursive strategies over the following centuries.2 In
the early twentieth century, both the jingoists led by Theodore Roosevelt and the
Wilsonian idealists contrasted the unruly children of Central America and the
Caribbean with the more responsible leaders in the bigger Latin American countries.
Woodrow Wilson and his appointees pledged to replace the naughty
children of Latin America with good men, whom they would teach the
South American republics to elect (Schoultz, 1998: 244, 272, 192197;
Kenworthy, 1995: 30; cf. Johnson, 1980: 209, 217; Black, 1988). Later, following the
1959 Cuban Revolution, U.S. policy came to focus on assisting the good Latins while
isolating, and often exterminating, the bad; many of the tropes used to characterize
Hugo Chvez in the past decade have clear precedents in government and press
depictions of Fidel Castro starting four decades earlier (Platt et al., 1987; Johnson,
1980: 113, 241; Landau, 2006; Chomsky, 2008). Similar binary depictions have long
characterized Orientalist discourse toward Asian and African peoples, particularly
Muslims (Mamdani, 2004).
Historically these distinctions have helped to justify outside intervention in
the name of protecting the good from the bad, and today the
benevolent interventionist frame often accompanies the good-left/badleft frame. Just as Columbus was protecting the peaceful Arawaks from the savage
Caribs, the U.S. government promotes democracy through its relations with
the good left, protecting those countries from the bad left. By definition, all
such interventions are undertaken with noble and humanitarian intent. This
paternalistic discourse has remained remarkably consistent throughout
the history of imperialism and internal colonialism, albeit with new
rhetorical demons and pretexts in each successive epoch: corruption,
endemic revolts, and European intervention in Wilsons day, Communism
during the Cold War, and autocrats, populists, terrorists, and drug cartels
since the Soviet Unions collapse. The main demons are typically external to
Latin Americaoften associated with the Old World, the Soviet Union, or, more
recently, various Asian and Middle Eastern countriesbut there are usually internal
demons, too (Kenworthy, 1995: 1837).
Press coverage of right-wing coups against Venezuelas Hugo Chvez in 2002
and Hondurass Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and of the U.S. governments role in
and after those coups, offers stark examples of media support (open or tacit)
for recent U.S. interventionism. In both cases the U.S. response was
accompanied by reports and opinion pieces about legitimate U.S. security concerns
and honest regard for democracy. In addition to praising U.S. motives, news reports,
opinion pieces, and intellectual commentary often implied that Latin
Americans both needed and wanted U.S. intervention.

Eurocentrism K
Mexico
Our actions towards Mexico depict a deep-seated Eurocentric
mindset, ignoring the cultures and rights of the people there.
Mexicomatters, 4
(MexicoMatters, Racism or Eurocentrism? How the U.S. Views Mexico

http://www.mexicomatters.net/mexicousrelations/04_racismoreurocentrism_howthe
usviewsmexico.php, accessed 7-4-13 , KR)
In a recent interview on BBC television, Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa,
criticized U.S. foreign policy. His criticism is hard to refute: that the U.S. did not
react to the genocidal conflicts in Rowanda and Somalia with the same intensity,
interest and direct intervention that Bosnia and Kosovo received.
Is it racist? I think the racist card is played too often in the States and white folks,
understandably react with a "here we go again" attitude. So if it isn't racist what is
it? I believe a primary cause of Euro centrism is our public education
system. Most of us were "educated" to believe the lie that the birth of
civilization occurred on the European continent.
It wasn't until I traveled to the southern most state of Mexico - Chiapas,
did I realize that the Olmec and Mayan cultures predated the Greeks and
Romans. A civilization whose astronomers knew the world was round and
understood the planetary and solar system. Architects whose buildings
and pyramids, thousands of years later, still stand as testament to their
quality; like the aquaducts that still carry water throughout the city.
Mathmeticians, politicians, artists and musicians that predated the ones we studied
in our Euro focused history books.
Hiking through the ruins of Palenque I was transfixed by what I saw and
experienced. The ruins are in incredably good condition and spread out over miles
of parkland. Palenque transported me back thousands of years. I felt the energy
that still remains of the highly sophisticated city that once existed in this beautiful,
magical, ancient jungle.
I was transformed as an American in Palenque. I began to see myself as a
descendent of a great and ancient American culture and civilization. No longer was I
shackled with a European bench mark of civility. I could see even more clearly the
historical and cultural blinders that shapes the yankee attitude toward the rest of
the world. A profound arrogance that stems from something I heard from anglos in
my youth: "if you white you all right, if you brown stick around, but if you black-stay
back".
For me, U.S. foreign policy has always been and still is morally bankrupt.
We cannot be proud of our international human right's policies. If we can
accept the obvious hipocracy of doing business with the Chinese while
maintaining a boycott against Cuba we must reject any claims of moral
objectivity.
It was U.S. foreign policy in Mexico that ignored: the ruling PRI party
rigging elections, using federal police and the military to torture and
intimidate citizens, imprison political dissenters and labor organizers. We
wittingly assisted an autocratic government that used our aid to implement a
system of corruption, so pervasive, that it will take decades to dismantle. Mexico

Eurocentrism K
today, suffers from U.S. aid that supported a political regime, that in all
probability, would have fallen were it not for Uncle Sammy's tolerance of
tyranny in exchange for border stability. So before criticizing Mexico, think
about how we supported the end result.
I believe norteamericanos are still befogged by English traditions and
beliefs in "the white man's burden". That the man of color is less civilized
than their European ancestors and somehow unworthy of the same status
or concern. That is why the first U.S. made nuclear power plant was tested
in Rincon, Puerto Rico and not in New York. Ironic since New York has
more Puerto Ricans than the mother island. However, the Italians, English,
Irish, German and French descendants in New York outnumber those in Puerto Rico.
Please do not think me Anti American or anti white, I am a U.S. citizen and of mixed
anglo and latin heritage. I look more caucasian than Latin. As an American, I am
proud, that no other nation has embraced and assimilated so many folks from
around the world of all colors. I know too many Mexicanos, in particular, whose lives
have been immensely improved by migrating to the States. Imagine if our foreign
policy was based on the same noble principles we practice toward immigrants and
citizens residing within the continental United States.
We, U.S. citizens, should insist on a well defined, written foreign policy. If it is U.S.
policy, we should be able to read it. What we have now is no policy at all; only
subjective and expedient reactions to world events; Why can't our leadership
develop a well thought out set of criteria that really stands for freedom
and justice for all? A document we can refer to. That guides our decisions
and can be used to measure our success. A benchmark document that
citizens can use to judge our diplomatic leadership.
We can do a better job in assisting all our neighbors and especially our
closest and most important trading partner MEXICO. If we were clear
about our goals and expectations we could achieve greater success for
both countries. If our foreign policy was really directed toward the best
interests of mankind. If our foreign policy made practical sense it would reflect a
dedication to improving human rights and social economic conditions. Only with a
clear vision and road map will we stem the tide of so many "foreigners" trying to
escape onto our shores legally or illegally.
We are the most powerful nation in the world and all nations want our assistance.
Only by being unconditionally true to our values of freedom and justice
will we be successful in creating a lasting peace among all people. By
helping all the citizens of the world prosper, without the yoke of tyranny,
we will be doing the right thing for ourselves and all our brothers and
sisters irregardless of race or nationality.
The colonialist Eurocentric mindset is leading to a

seismological shift- where we push out cultures of regions like
Mexico all together
Shohat, New York University Professor of Cultural Studies and
Stam New York Professor of French Filmmaking, 97 (Ella, Robert,
1997, Routledge, Unthinking Eurocentrism, JSTOR, page 59-61, accessed 7-4-13
KR)

Eurocentrism K
Eurocentric thinking, in our view, is fundamentally unrepresentative of a
world which has long been multicultural. At times, even multiculturalists
glimpse the issues through a narrowly national and exceptionalist grid, as
when well-meaning curriculum committees call for courses about the
"contributions" of the world's diverse cultures to the "development of
American society," unaware of the nationalistic teleology underlying such
a formulation. "Multiculturedness" is not a "United Statesian" monopoly,
nor is multiculturalism the "handmaiden" of US identity politics.14 Virtually
all countries and regions are multicultural in a purely descriptive sense. Egypt melds
Pharaonic, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Christian/Coptic, and Mediterranean influences;
India is riotously plural in language and religion; and Mexico's "cosmic race"
mingles at least three major constellations of cultures. Nor is North
American multiculturalism of recent date. "America" began as polyglot and
multicultural, speaking a myriad of languages: European, and Native
American.
While the fashionability of the word multiculturalism might soon pass, the
reality to which it points will not soon fade, for these contemporary
quarrels are l the surface manifestations of a deeper "seismological shift"
- the decolonization of global culture - whose implications we have barely
begun to register. Only an awareness of the inertia of the colonialist
legacy, and of the crucial role of the in prolonging it, can clarify the deepseated justice of the call for culturalism. For us, multiculturalism means
seeing world history and contemporary social life from the perspective of
the radical equality of peoples status, potential, and rights.
Multiculturalism decolonizes representation not ' in terms of cultural
artifacts - literary canons, museum exhibits, film series -but also in terms
of power relations between communities.

Eurocentrism K
Venezuela
Venezuela is in a battle of fighting against Eurocentrism, any
increase in engagement would distrust the fight
Augusto Baldi, advisor to the Brazilian regional federal court,
12 (Csar, 2-6-12, Critical Legal Thinking, New Latin American Constitutionalism:
Challeneging Eurocentrism & Decolonizing History
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2012/02/06/new-latin-american-constitutionalismchallenging-eurocentrism-decolonizing-history/ accessed 7-4-13 KR).
According to Viciano Pastor and Dalmau Martinez, this new constitutionalism would be characterized by: a) the substitution of constitutional continuity for a break with the previous system, while strengthening, in a
symbolic sense, the political dimension of the Constitution; b) the innovative potential of the texts, seeking national integration and a new form of
institutionalism; c) foundations based on principles, rather than rules; d)
the extension of the constitutional text itself, as a consequence of the
constitutional past as well as of the complexity of the subject matter, but
communicated in accessible language; e) a ban on constituted powers controlling their own capability for constitutional reform and, therefore, a
greater degree of rigidity, dependent on the new constituting process; f)
seeking instruments that rebuild the relationship between sovereignty
and government, with participatory democracy complementing the system
of representation; g) an extensive bill of rights, incorporating international treaties and integrating marginalized sectors; h) breaking with the
predominance of diffuse control of constitutionalism in favour of focused
control, including mixed formulas; i) a new model of economic constitutions, alongside a strong commitment to Latin American integration, not
just in economic terms.
The two authors analysis appears on occasions to identify the Colombian Constitution (1991) as the start of the cycle, but in other instances declares it to be
that of Venezuela (1999). As a consequence, they end up placing within a
single process three distinct cycles of pluralist constitutionalism,
described well by Raquel Yrigoyen: a) multicultural constitutionalism
(19821988), which introduces the concept of cultural diversity and
recognizes specific indigenous rights; b) pluricultural constitutionalism
(19882005), which develops the concept of a multiethnic nation, and
pluricultural State, incorporating a wide range of indigenous rights, for
those of African origin and other groups, especially in response to ILO
Convention 169, while at the same time implementing neoliberal policies,
with fewer social rights and more market flexibility; c) plurinational constitutionalism (20062009), in the context of the adoption of the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and which proposes the re-founding of the State, with explicit recognition of the
thousand-year-old roots linking indigenous groups to the land, and discussing the end of colonialism. And it is precisely the establishment of a new
constitutional paradigm, following the examples of Ecuador and Bolivia, that the
aforementioned constitutionalists do not seem to recognize. In this sense, Raquel

Eurocentrism K
Yrigoyen, Bartolom Clavero and Ramiro vila Santamaria seem to be correct when they highlight the pertinence of these two processes in relation
to the previous Latin American constitutionalism. A model that, according
to Ramiro vila Santamaria, would be a transformative constitutionalism
because it is based on other parameters. A few of those stand out.
First: the re-founding of the State is the other aspect of the recog nition of
colonialism, as well as the thousand-year-old origins of peoples and
nations that have been overlooked. This re-founding requires the reinvention of
institutions and organizational processes. Examples of this in the case of Bolivia are
the Plurinational Constitutional Court, the election of judges and the four distinct
levels of autonomy; in Ecuador, there are functions (not powers), including transparency and social control functions and electoral functions, as well as special
regimes of territorial organization.
Second: a range of rights that break away from divi sions (be they civil or
political; economic, social or cultural; or related to old age) and Eurocentrism. This becomes most evident in the case of Ecuador, which recognizes
seven categories of rights: those of buen vivir (well-being); those of people and
groups who are most in need (old people, young people, pregnant women, people
with a disability, people held prisoner, drug users, drifters , and those suffering from
serious illness); those of communities, peoples and nations; those of participation;
those of freedom; those of nature; as well as a section on responsibilities. However,
this can also be seen in the case of Bolivia, where they have introduced rights of
indigenous nations and a range of constitutional duties.
Third: such constitutions are not just influenced by the UN Declaration,
but are also fundamentally constructed from indigenous leadership, of
which they are also a result, a role that is different from indigenous
justice (in the case of Bolivia it is subject only to the Constitutional Court)
and a new vocabulary based on the indigenous worldview itself (the recognition of the rights of PachamamaMother Earthin Ecuador and the
principles of the Bolivian nationof Aymaran originare some examples).
And they highlight the need to combat racism (including in relation to indigenous
peoples, not just towards black communities, as is usual).
Fourth: the insistence on decolonization (most evident in the case of Bolivia, which
emphasizes education itself as a decolonizing force), as well as the intercultural process (developed in a more consequential way in the case of Ecuador). It follows, too,
that plurinationality comes to question the limits of the constitutional State and
imposes a new institutionalism.
To overlook certain innovative parameters of the two Constitutions and
attempt to place in the same category the Colombian Constitution of 1991,
which recognized cultural diversity in a limited way (despite the Constitutional Courts role being one of the most advanced examples of constitutionalism on
the continent), is to overshadow if not deny the protagonism and the struggle of the
indigenous peoples to decolonize their history and hence to establish an authentic
plurinational State; and in doing so, pose an intense challenge to the Eurocentric
parameters of constitutionalism.

Eurocentrism K
Topic Country Names

Renaming land is a direct form of colonization it eradicates
the culture of the indigenous peoples and forces Western
ideals upon them
Conceptions of space were articulated through the ways in which people
arranged their homes and towns, collected and displayed objects of significance,
organized warfare, set out agricultural fields and arranged gardens, conducted
business, displayed art and performed drama, separated out one form of human
activity from another. Spatial arrangements are an important part of social
life. Western classifications of space include such notions as architectural
space, physical space, psychological space, theoretical space and so forth.
Foucault's metaphor of the cultural archive is an architectural image. The
archive not only contains artefacts of culture, but is itself an artefact and
a construct of culture. For the indigenous world, Western conceptions of
space, of arrangements and display, of the relationship between people and the
landscape, of culture as an object of study, have meant that not only has the
indigenous world been represented in particular ways back to the West,
but the indigenous world view, the land and the people, have been
radically transformed in the spatial image of the West. In other words ,
indigenous space has been colonized . Land, for example, was viewed as
something to be tamed and brought under control. The landscape, the arrangement
of nature, could be altered by 'Man': swamps could be drained, waterways diverted,
inshore areas filled, not simply for physical survival, but for further exploitation of
the environment or making it 'more pleasing' aesthetically. Renaming the land
was probably as powerful ideologically as changing the land . Indigenous
children in schools, for example, were taught the new names for places that they
and their parents had lived in for generations. These were the names which
appeared on maps and which were used in official communications. This newly
named land became increasingly disconnected from the songs and chants
used by indigenous peoples to trace their histories, to bring forth spiritual
elements or to carry out the simplest of ceremonies. More significantly,
however, space was appropriated from indigenous cultures and then
'gifted back' as reservations, reserved pockets of land for indigenous
people who once possessed all of it.
The act of renaming the world is the act of claiming territory

and exalting the conquerors

Eurocentrism K
Unlike Tasman, who visited only one coastline, Cook circumnavigated New Zealand
and proceeded to rename the entire country at will. This renaming was at
one level entirely arbitrary, responding to the fortunes or misfortunes of those
on board the ship and to the impressions gained from out at sea of the land they
were observing. Other names, however, recalled the geography and people
of Britain. These names and the landmarks associated with them were
inscribed on maps and charts and thus entered into the West's archive as
the spoils of discovery. The renaming of the world has never stopped. After
the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1 840 and settlement by British settlers
became more intensive, townships, streets and regions were renamed after other
parts of the British Empire. Some towns took on names which reflected Britain's
battles in other parts of its Empire, such as India, or Britain's heroes from its various
conquests of other nations. Naming the world has been likened by Paulo
Freire to claiming the world and claiming those ways of viewing the world
that count as legitimate .10

Eurocentrism K
Energy Development
US self-interest has always been the driver of Latin American
policy, energy development is just a new round of imperialism
Leonard, Professor of History at the University of North
Florida, 86
(Dr. Thomas M., Central America: A Microcosm of U.S. Cold War Policy
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/julaug/leonard.html, date accessed 7/5/13 IGM)
In contrast, Lyndon Johnson gave support to those governments in sympathy
with U.S. policies, which meant governments of the right and extreme
right. This tendency was more pronounced after the 1965 Dominican Republic crisis
and the appointment of Thomas C. Mann as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin
American Affairs. Mann was emphatic: communism in the Western Hemisphere
was intolerable because it threatened U.S. national security.14 The
communist issue intensified as a result of Fidel Castro's rise to power in
Cuba which generated fear that his revolution would spread throughout the
hemisphere. For its part, the United States forced the isolation of Cuba from
hemispheric affairs, supported anti-Castro forces, and even sponsored
assassination plots. In response to this new communist threat, the United States
implemented the Alliance for Progress in 1961. In return for financial support, Latin
American governments pledged themselves to agrarian and tax reformsmeasures
not welcomed by Latin elites. However, little significant progress was made in
tearing down the vestiges of traditional society. Moreover, because of civil
disruptions at home, the agony of Vietnam, and the perceived lessened
threat of Fidel Castro by mid-decade, the United States lost interest in the
Alliance for Progress, which passed quietly in 1971.15
The drift away from Latin America continued under Presidents Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford. Inter-American affairs were relegated to a veritable limbo.
Trade, not aid, was the guidepost. Agreements with the Soviet Union, the
misadventures of Ch Guevara, and Castro's growing dependence on the dtente
minded Soviet Union lessened the threat to security and, coupled with the 1973
U.S. supported overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, lessened the
communist threat to the hemisphere. Cambodia, China, and the Middle
East in global affairs, plus Watergate on the domestic scene, were more
important than Latin America. "Benign neglect" best described U.S. policy
toward Latin America during the first half of the 1970s. Without pressure
from the north, right-wing military dictatorships became commonplace in the south.
The energy crisis focused new attention on Latin America. Rich in natural
resources, including oil, Latin America became more important to the
United States. Henry Kissinger recognized this fact in 1976 and began a
new dialogue with Latin American nations. President Jimmy Carter recognized
the new realities too. He accepted the report by the Center for Inter-American
Relations (commonly known as the Linowitz Report) that Latin America had
achieved a degree of independence from the United States and that the outmoded
policies of domination and paternalism should be rejected. The 1977 Panama Canal
treaties were evidence of this change in U.S. thinking.16

Eurocentrism K
Oil Development
Oil development is part of the Eurocentric logic that ignores
indigenous pleas to leave them alone and exploits the entirety
of Latin America
Stetson, Boise State Assistant Professor, 11
(George, PhD, Assistant Professor, Boise State University, 2011, Ethnicity from
Various Angles and Through Varied Lenses: Yesterday's Today in Latin America,
Indigenous Resistance to Oil Development, Google Books, Page 225, Accessed
7/10/13, NC)
There is still much work to do in terms of understanding the positions of
indigenous peoples. Part of the difficulty is related to the level of diversity within
the indigenous movement. Furthermore, indigenous peoples are often weary of
(and take offense to) attempts to speak for all indigenous peoples. However, some
of the difficulty also lies in the degree of sophistication in many of indigenous
responses, arguments, and positions. This sophistication- combined with the
state's Eurocentric mindset -has made it increasingly difficult for state to
take indigenous claims seriously.
FINAL COMMENTS: EUROCENTRIC MODERNITY AND THE ERASURE OF INDIGENOUS
POLITICS
My argument is that the Peruvian state finds it difficult to understand
indigenous political positions because they are stuck in a Eurocentric
conception of modernity, which owes its existence to Europe, not to the
realities, experiences, and histories of the indigenous peoples of Latin
America. Eurocentric modernity is based on universal values, a teleological
notion of development - the apex being Europe and the United States and a modern-capitalist ( and socialist) framework that values land and
natural resources as exploitable material for the benefit of the modern
nation. Following this logic, it is difficult for the state to understand how
anyone could oppose oil development , especially "poor" people from
the Amazon, which is perhaps why Garda repeatedly argues that indigenous
ideological backwardness is one of the main obstacles to Peruvian development
and also why the president of Perupetro finds it difficult to understand why
"poor" indigenous peoples might oppose oil development.

Eurocentrism K
Oil/Resource Link
Mass scale expansion of natural resource exploitation was
started by Eurocentrism and continues to be fueled by that
same epistemology today; the end point of this is empirically
slavery and racism.
Kellecioglu, International economist, 10
(Deniz, International economist, Real-World Economics Review, issue no. 52, Why
some countries are poor and some rich a non-Eurocentric view,
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue52/whole52.pdf, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
Western European kingdoms went imperial because they needed to - at the end of
the fifteenth century Europe was in less good shape than other parts of the world.
The continent had had its population size halved through long periods of epidemics
like the socalled Black Death (Crosby 1999). Before this time period, poverty and
richness seem to have been about at the same levels between societies (Maddison
2001). Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that imperial ambitions
and hegemony are not exclusive to Europeans. World history reveals that
human groups have for long gone imperial against each other all over the
world. In more recent times we have had the English, French, Dutch, Russian and
others going imperial from Europe; in Asia we have had the Mongols, Chinese,
Japanese, Turkish, Arabs and many others going imperial; in Africa there have been
the empires of Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Ashanti, Zulu and several others. In
America there were the Aztecs, Inca and the Maya civilizations in particular, waging
imperial wars and rule. In our context, this means European colonizers are not
particularly vicious or intelligent, since every set of ethnic groups have
been involved in colonial endeavour. In parallel, colonised people are not
particularly kind or less intelligent, since every set of ethnic groups has been
subject to colonial rule.
However, the expansion of Western Europe became significantly different
from other colonial processes. In relevance to our context, the process
particularly included:
Global proportions,
Ecological imperialism,
Mass permanent settlements,
Slaves embodied solely by darker skinned people, and
Colour-coded racism.
Considering the first point listed above, before the outreach of the Iberian
kingdoms, most imperial ambitions where continental or regional. Perhaps
it was not a coincidence that it was the Spanish and the Portuguese who initiated
this extraordinary expansion. Their geographical location is 'far out' from
continental Europe and the Mediterranean shores, hampering beneficial
interactions. In addition, the kingdoms had significant hatred for the Muslims of
northern Africa, thus impeding potentially beneficial trade (Landes 1998). Perhaps
the curiosity incentive was higher for naval exploration in such a location with
surrounding sea. Of course, it was not their intention to discover a 'new'
continent. They where lucky to do so, particularly when it turned out that

Eurocentrism K
their bacterial flora, together with the bacterial flora of their animals,
where devastating and most often lethal for the Indigenous Americans.
This is what Alfred W. Crosby (1999) calls ecological imperialism. This is very crucial,
since the cost of the expansionary and extraction process became less
costly. It was now easier to extract vast areas of landmasses and thus
natural resources, which was followed by accumulations in economic,
political and social power , which in turn created further spectrum for
colonial settlements and expansions in other parts of the world.
Further, the great natural resources of the 'new' continent demanded huge
quantities of labour for the extraction and production processes (Diamond
1997). This could be supplied cheaply through existing trade networks of
slaves, from the geographically optimal continent of Africa. Slaves, inferior,
as their societal status suggested, where now concretely observed as people with
darker morphological traits. Now on one side were the people in governance:
western Europeans with light body colours, on the other side were
enslaved people under direct rule: Africans with dark body colours. While
in between there were other people under European sovereignty: Indigenous
Americans, Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and other African and Asian people with darker
morphological traits than Europeans. These perceptions in particular must
have laid the foundations for the orderly colour-coded racism in Western
Europe and their settlement nations.
Attempts to obtain natural resources from the earth were

started by and are continued today by consumptive patterns
stemming from Eurocentrism.
Stetson, Boise State Assistant Professor, 12
(George, PhD, Assistant Professor, Boise State University, 2012, Sage Publications,
Oil Politics and Indigenous Resistance in the Peruvian Amazon: The Rhetoric of
Modernity Against the Reality of Coloniality,
http://jed.sagepub.com/content/21/1/76.abstract, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
Modernity/Coloniality and Eurocentric Development
Modernity/coloniality (M/C) is a theoretical approach inspired by the work
of scholars, mostly from Latin America, including Walter Mignolo (Argentina),
Enrique Dussel (Mexico), Anibal Quijano (Peru), Arturo Escobar (Colombia), who
claim that the idea of modernity, along with its corollaries development
and modernization, are heavily influenced by a Eurocentric perspective.
Here eurocentric modernity is guided by a logic that informs political, economic, and
social thought and is not only predominant in mainstream institutions like the World
Bank, IMF, and the WTO, but also permeates political institutions like the modern
nation-state.5
Modernity is most often associated with the intellectual effort on the part
of Enlightenment thinkers to develop objective science, to accumulate
knowledge, and to dominate and control nature. For Harvey, modernity is
related to the pursuit of human emancipation by free and autonomous individuals,
leading to rational forms of social organization and thought that liberate humans
from irrational notions of myth, religion, and superstition (1989, p. 12). Modernity,

Eurocentrism K
thus, reorients the idea of history and progress around the logic of
development, where perpetual betterment is always possible (Escobar,
2007, pp. 181-182). According to most classical (Kant, Hegel, Weber, Marx, etc.) and
critical thinkers (Habermas, Giddens, Taylor, Touraine, Lyotard, Rorty, and Foucault),
the origins of modernity are generally located in France, Germany, and England
around the time of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution
and became consolidated with the Industrial Revolution. Together, these views
suggests that modernity can be explained by factors that are generally internal to
Europe (Escobar, 2007, p. 181).
M/C scholars, conversely, explain the origins of modernity as external to
Europe, beginning with Conquest of the Americas and the economic
control of the Atlantic. Drawing from Wallersteins world systems analysis,
the modern world (capitalist) system was born in the 16th century when
European powers began to expand their reaches through colonial domination. This
emphasizes the role that the extraction of precious minerals and (later)
the production of agriculture commodities played in financing the
Industrial Revolution and fomenting the modern world capitalist system
(see Dussel, 2002, p. 223; Wolf, 1982/1997). Rather than understand modernity as a
process where European Enlightenment thinkers introduced (i.e., Locke, Smith,
Descartes, Comte) a new logic and rationality, M/C highlights the fact that
European modernity (as a logical structure) was based on the imposition of a
Eurocentric representation of knowledge and power that suppressed and
marginalized other forms of knowledge in a hegemonic project of modern
development (Escobar, 2004, p. 217).
Coloniality, argues Mignolo, is the reverse and unavoidable side of modernity its
darker side, like the part of the moon that we do not see when we observe it from
the earth (2000, p. 22). Not the same as colonialism, which refers to specific
historical periods, rather, coloniality refers to the logical structure of
colonial domination that maintained Spanish, Dutch, British, and U.S.
dominance in Latin America throughout history (Mignolo, 2005, p. 7) a nd
permitted the genocidal acts against indigenous peoples and Africans and
the marginalization of knowledges, religions, and of nonmodern
cultures. When the logic of coloniality surfaces, it is explained through rhetoric or
promise of modernity, where all problems can be corrected with modern
development. Critically, this logic has been alive since the 16th century when the
Spanish crown appropriated massive amounts of land and brutally exploited
indigenous peoples and slaves, all justified in the name of the logic of salvation and
progress (Mignolo, 2005, pp. 10-11).

Eurocentrism K
Science Cooperation
Marginalization of local scientific traditions
Cueto Professor in the School of Public Health at the Universidad
Peruana Cavetano, and Esguerra, Ph.D History Professor at The
University of Texas at Austin, 9
(Marcos, an historian and a professor in the School of Public Health at the
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Per. and Jorge Caizares, s the
Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin,
2009, History of Science Society, Latin America,
http://www.hssonline.org/publications/NonWesternPub/Latin_America.html,
Accessed: 7/3/13, LPS.)
Marginality, traditional values, scarce demand from local economic forces,
and foreign dependence are considered factors that contribute to the
meager societal support for or appreciation of scientists in contemporary
Latin America. But during the past fifty years, a number of countries have
demonstrated that science can evolve under adverse conditions. For example,
during the 1950s, Argentina and Brazil created national councils of science and
technology. In the following decade, Venezuela founded a major center for scientific
research called the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientficas. Argentina
has had a consistent nuclear policy since the 1950s and developed a nuclear power
potential in the region. Yet Latin America still must struggle to overcome
isolation, lack of international visibility, and absence of a continuous
scientific tradition. The public largely fails to appreciate that research is needed
to achieve development. Administrative and political structures that encourage
scientists to accomplish their work are undeveloped. Moreover, a significant
proportion of scientists continue to depend on training abroad, which encourages a
brain drain and disrupts the continuity of research. Another important theme
addressed in this section will be the response of Latin American physicians and
scientists to the challenges of pandemics of Cholera and AIDS.

Eurocentrism K
Development
Their model of economics leads to abuses of power that cause
unending exacerbations of impoverishment and poverty.
Trainer, U of New South Wales Conjoint Lecturer, 9
(Ted, Dr. Ted Trainer is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences,
University of New South Wales, 2009, Social Work, University of NSW, THE SIMPLER
WAY: WORKING FOR TRANSITION FROM CONSUMER SOCIETY TO A SIMPLER, MORE
COOPERATIVE, JUST AND ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY
http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/OUREMPIRE.htm, Accessed 7/5/13, JB)
"The impoverished and long abused masses of Latin Americawill not stay
quietly on the farms or in the slums unless they are terribly afraidthe
rich get richer only because they have the guns. The rich include a great
many US companies and individuals, which is why the United States has
provided the guns." Chomsky and Herman, 1979, p.3. "No socialist or
communist government giving top priority to the needs of its people would,
if it had any choice in the matter, willingly sell natural resources, especially the
produce of its soils, at such very low returns to the common people as the
typical Third World government does now. '. . . no democratic government
could permit its country's resources to be developed on terms favourable
to American corporate and government interests." Katsnelson and Kesselman,
1983, p. 234. To repeat, the essential evil within the system is to do with the
extremely uneven shares of wealth received. For instance, the bulk of the wealth
generated by coffee production now goes to plantation owners,
transnational corporations, and consumers in rich countries. Coffee
pickers often receive less than 1% of the retail value of the coffee they pick.
Any genuinely "socialist" or "nationalist" government would drastically redistribute
those shares, or convert the land to food production, if it could, meaning that people
in rich countries would then get far less coffee etc., or pay much higher prices.
Hence we again arrive at the basic conclusion: a more just deal cannot be given to
the people in the Third World unless rich countries accept a marked reduction in the
share they receive from wealth generated in the Third World. Any genuinely socialist
government would certainly clamp down on the bonanza terms now granted to
transnational corporations, such as long tax-free periods, few restrictions on
transfers of funds, repressive labour laws, low safety standards, controlled or
banned unions, and weak environmental laws. Even more important is the
taken for granted doctrine that development can only be of what people
with capital will make most profit from, not of the industries that will
benefit most people. (See on appropriate development, Trainer 2000.)

Eurocentrism K
Advantage links

Eurocentrism K
War Impacts
All their impacts are sabre-rattling and seek to justify the
same colonial mindset we criticize. Their model of threat
construction should be rejected.
Said, Columbia University English and Comparative Literature,
3
(Edward, Columbia University, English and Comparative Literature, author
Orientalism, AUGUST 05, 2003, Orientalism 25 Years Later Worldly Humanism v.
the Empire-builders, http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/05/orientalism/,
Accessed 7/5/13, IGM)
Worse yet, education is threatened by nationalist and religious orthodoxies

often disseminated by the mass media as they focus ahistorically and
sensationally on the distant electronic wars that give viewers the sense of
surgical precision, but in fact obscure the terrible suffering and
destruction produced by modern warfare. In the demonization of an unknown
enemy for whom the label "terrorist" serves the general purpose of keeping people
stirred up and angry, media images command too much attention and can be
exploited at times of crisis and insecurity of the kind that the post-9/11 period has
produced. Speaking both as an American and as an Arab I must ask my reader not
to underestimate the kind of simplified view of the world that a relative handful of
Pentagon civilian elites have formulated for US policy in the entire Arab and Islamic
worlds, a view in which terror, pre-emptive war, and unilateral regime change
backed up by the most bloated military budget in historyare the main
ideas debated endlessly and impoverishingly by a media that assigns itself
the role of producing so-called "experts" who validate the governments
general line. Reflection, debate, rational argument, moral principle based
on a secular notion that human beings must create their own history have
been replaced by abstract ideas that celebrate American or Western
exceptionalism, denigrate the relevance of context, and regard other
cultures with contempt.

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Democracy
Attempts to expand democracy to non- democratic nations are
rooted in Orientalism
Sadowski, associate professor, Political Studies and Public
Administration Beirut University, 97
(Yahya, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/52818/william-b-quandt/politicalislam-essays-from-middle-east-report Political Islam: Essays from Middle East
Report, date accessed 7/4/2013 IGM)
The collapse of communism in 1989 and the victory over Iraq in 1991
sparked a wave of triumphal declarations by Western pundits and analysts
who believed that all viable systemic alternatives to Western liberalism
had now been exhausted and discredited. Some then tried to sketch foreign
policy appropriate to the new world order. A consistent theme of this new
thinking was that the peoples of the developing countries must now
acknowledge that liberal democracy is the only plausible form of
governance in the modern world. Accordingly, support for democratization
should henceforth be a central objective of US diplomacy and foreign
assistance. This trend was not welcomed by all. Autocrats in the Arab world,
particularly the rules of the Gulf states, were appalled t the thought that
Washington might soon be fanning the flames of republican sentiment. The
prevailing democratic system in the world is not suitable for us in this
region, for our peoples composition and traits are different from the traits
of that world, declared King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in March 1992. The kings
stance suits many US policy makers just fine. Former secretary of defense and CIA
chief James Schlesinger spoke for more than himself recently when he asked
whether we seriously desire to prescribe democracy as the proper form of
government for other societies. Perhaps the issues is most clearly posed in the
Islamic world. Do we seriously want to change the institutions in Saudi Arabia? The
brief answer is no- over the years we have sought to preserve those
institutions, sometimes in preference to more democratic forces coursing
throughout the region.
Latin American democracy impacts come from a flawed

understanding of the politics relying on stereotypes
Remmer, U of Chicago PhD, 91
(Karen L. Remmer, PhD University of Chicago, Specialties: Comparative Politics,

Political Economy, Political Institutions, 1991, Comparative Politics, Vol. 23, No. 4,
pp. 479-495, New Wine or Old Bottlenecks? The Study of Latin American
Democracy, http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/tlr/sources/Issue
%2089.7/Negretto/fn113.remmer.pdf, Accessed 7/5/13, NC)
The development of a more adequate theoretical understanding of Latin
American democracy has been hampered rather than advanced by the
research strategies represented in recent literature: theoretical denial,
voluntarism, barefoot empiricism, and intellectual recycling. The specific
weaknesses of each of these approaches, however, point the way towards opposing

Eurocentrism K
and more constructive strategies for theorizing about democracy in Latin America.
From these signposts, it is possible to suggest an alternate theoretical
agenda to guide the development of future research. The first step
toward constructing a more adequate understanding of Latin American
political democracy is to recognize the need for theoretical revision. To
continue to emphasize the cyclical nature of Latin American politics or the
fragile and epiphenomenal nature of democracy is, in effect, to ignore the
inadequacies of established theory in the face of confounding political
developments: namely, the unheralded collapse of authoritarianism and the
surprising vitality of political democracy in the face of repeated prophecies of
imminent demise. In view of the dismal predictive record established to date, it is
time scholars abandoned ahistorical cyclical theories and authoritarian
political forecasting in favor of research focused on evolving political
realities. The process of democratization that has been underway in Latin
America for more than a decade must be explained, not explained away.
Second, it should be recognized that voluntaristic approaches stressing variables
such as virti and fortuna represent a retreat from theory rather than a solution to
the problems posed by the failure of established approaches and theories. While
shifting levels of analysis often 490 Karen L. Remmer yields significant dividends in
the social sciences, focusing research upon the realm of the contingent and
particular is unlikely to provide much in way of enlightenment. The origin,
functioning, and breakdown of democracy in Latin America can not be
understood without reference to sociopolitical forces and processes that
are institutional, societal, and international in scope. An emphasis on
voluntarism results in a neglect of these levels of analysis and thus to the
discarding of the substance of theory as derived from the analysis of politics in the
rest of the world. Latin America ends up being portrayed as a region in
which political choices are unconstrained by social forces or public
opinion, leaders are unrelated to followers, and political outcomes are the
product of accidental and unpredictable configurations of events. Such a
portrayal comes dangerously close to resurrecting old stereotypes about
the irrational and personalistic nature of Latin American political reality.

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Regional Instability
The Latin American war impacts that they read come from a
flawed understanding of the politics in Latin America and what
has necessitated those politics. Their authors look at Latin
America from a Western Perspective and jump at any chance to
make Latin America look barbaric and uncivil.
The development of a more adequate theoretical understanding of Latin
American democracy has been hampered rather than advanced by the
research strategies represented in recent literature: theoretical denial,
voluntarism, barefoot empiricism, and intellectual recycling. The specific
weaknesses of each of these approaches, however, point the way towards opposing
and more constructive strategies for theorizing about democracy in Latin America.
From these signposts, it is possible to suggest an alternate theoretical
agenda to guide the development of future research. The first step
toward constructing a more adequate understanding of Latin American
political democracy is to recognize the need for theoretical revision. To
continue to emphasize the cyclical nature of Latin American politics or the
fragile and epiphenomenal nature of democracy is, in effect, to ignore the
inadequacies of established theory in the face of confounding political
developments: namely, the unheralded collapse of authoritarianism and the
surprising vitality of political democracy in the face of repeated prophecies of
imminent demise. In view of the dismal predictive record established to date, it is
time scholars abandoned ahistorical cyclical theories and authoritarian
political forecasting in favor of research focused on evolving political
realities. The process of democratization that has been underway in Latin
America for more than a decade must be explained, not explained away.
Second, it should be recognized that voluntaristic approaches stressing variables
such as virti and fortuna represent a retreat from theory rather than a solution to
the problems posed by the failure of established approaches and theories. While
shifting levels of analysis often 490 Karen L. Remmer yields significant dividends in
the social sciences, focusing research upon the realm of the contingent and
particular is unlikely to provide much in way of enlightenment. The origin,
functioning, and breakdown of democracy in Latin America can not be
understood without reference to sociopolitical forces and processes that
are institutional, societal, and international in scope. An emphasis on
voluntarism results in a neglect of these levels of analysis and thus to the
discarding of the substance of theory as derived from the analysis of politics in the
rest of the world. Latin America ends up being portrayed as a region in
which political choices are unconstrained by social forces or public
opinion, leaders are unrelated to followers, and political outcomes are the

Eurocentrism K
product of accidental and unpredictable configurations of events. Such a
portrayal comes dangerously close to resurrecting old stereotypes about
the irrational and personalistic nature of Latin American political reality.

Eurocentrism K
Regional Leadership
Regional hegemony is a reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine
dictating that the region is ours to own and keep, reinforcing
the worst forms of a Eurocentric paradigm
Thornton, Director of the North American Congress on Latin America
08
(Christy, 10/1,The Monroe Doctrine is Dead; Long Live the Monroe Doctrine! The
United States' "New" Approach to Latin America, Left Turn,
http://www.leftturn.org/?q=node/1249, accessed 7/7/13, sbl)
And it's the attempt to get "back in the game"-on the part of both the Bush
Administration and the two major candidates vying to succeed him-that should be
cause for concern among activists here in the US. The argument that the
United States has neglected Latin America and has therefore lost its
influence in the region-that while we were looking away, Chvez and his
friends squatted our backyard-misses two obvious realities. First, more
and more Latin Americans, not just Chavistas but citizens from Argentina to
Mexico, have actively rejected policies that marry representative
democracy to neoliberal economics, and have begun to construct
alternatives, from the community to the national and regional level. Second, the
US has made very real interventions during the Bush administration, in the
name of "democracy promotion" and the "war on drugs" and the "war on
terror." It seems highly unlikely that the people of Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba,
Bolivia, Colombia, or Mexico-just to name a few-feel that they've been
"neglected" by a United States that is actively funding right-wing
movements and arming military, paramilitary, and police forces.
Of course, the very idea that the US could be losing Latin America implies
that the region is Washington's to lose in the first place: explicit in the
Monroe Doctrine, which says that the US will never allow a rival power to
challenge its hegemony in Latin America, is a paternalistic disbelief that
Latin America might have the ability to run its own affairs-in Shannon's
term, to occupy its own space. And this is the most crucial point in
understanding the "losing Latin America" debate: even within the fairly
reasonable framework of the CFR task force report, which argues that "Latin
America's fate is largely in Latin America's hands," the inherent challenge being
put forth is how to reoccupy that space-how to bolster the United States'
rapidly diminishing sphere of influence. But in more and more cases
across the region, the Latin American people have risen to defend their
own space through powerful social movements and through electing
leaders as diverse as Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando
Lugo of Paraguay, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner of Argentina, Michelle Bachelet of
Chile, Lula Da Silva in Brazil, and, yes, Hugo Chvez of Venezuela. Despite their
differences, these leaders have all made independence from the United
States part of their agenda in an assertion of economic and political
sovereignty, regardless of Washington's interests. As Latin Americans
seek not just formal representation but social and economic justice from
their democracies, there is less and less space for the imposition of the

Eurocentrism K
upwardly redistributive neoliberal policies that have defined Washington's
interests since the 1970s. It is imperative that, as activists in the United States, we
take notice of this trend-solidarity today means defending this right to
sovereignty.
With the Empire in disarray after the disastrous failures in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and with a change of administration looming here in the United
States, it should not be surprising that Washington is suddenly turning to
Latin America, once again, to assert itself in the world. From the
announcement of the Mrida Initiative to the redeployment of the Navy's
Fourth Fleet, from the publication of the CFR task force report to Obama's recent
speech at the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation-it is clear
that the foreign policy establishment, from center to right, intends to
rejuvenate an ailing Monroe Doctrine (or perhaps more appropriately,
rejuvenate the Roosevelt Corollary to that doctrine, which asserts the right of the
United States to intervene when Latin American nations become too unruly) and
reclaim the backyard. After Russia invaded Georgian territory in August, President
Bush sternly rebuked Russia, saying that the "days of ... spheres of influence
are behind us." Behind us, that is, unless you've got some "social justice"
for sale.

Eurocentrism K
Hegemony
Hegemonic discourse obscures otherization and human rights
violations the only answer is to challenge the foundational
logic of hegemony
Miguel, U of Glasgow Masters in Human Rights and
International Politics, 10
(Vinicius Valentin Raduan, Masters in Human Rights and International Politics,

University of Glasgow, 2010, World Forum for Alternatives, THE UNIVERSAL
JURISDICTION OF THE FEAR: ORIENTALISM, IMPERIALISM AND INTERNATIONAL LAW,
http://www.forumdesalternatives.org/en/the-universal-jurisdiction-of-the-fearorientalism-imperialism-and-international-law, Accessed 7/5/13, IGM)
Lastly, the other is coached as immeasurable human rights violator, facing our fury,
the privileged caste of those who do no wrong. For these operations
international law showed conveniently malleable, framing the hegemonic
discourse in its sophisticated vocabulary to obediently serve legal forms
of criminalizing the other and (a) absolving the imperial gnocidaire ambitions
at the same time as (b) deny the illegality of colonial practices. Guantanamo
detentions, Abu Ghraib tortures and the bombing of Baghdad or Gaza City would be
a terror campaign only if perpetrated against us. The hegemonic discourse
effaces the real peoples of those failed states and deadly focuses on their
institutionalized leaderships to justify a generalized aggression impacting
indiscriminately on their populations. Asymmetric wars have costlier
consequences to civilians populations than to military apparatuses, as is well
known. However, deaths of civilians belonging to the other army are described as
perfectly proportional. Also damages able to permanently destroy the
colonized economy are unexpected although justifiable collateral
impacts. For those impacts, according to the imperial speeches, in spite of being
justifiable, the colonial army has not dolus and therefore cannot be held
accountable. Arab and, generally, savage civilians killed are part of the game.
Occasionally, their non-combatant legal status can be disputed by the loose
wording of international humanitarian law. Somehow, savages deaths can be
a posteriori reasonable. Perhaps, the existing civilians sacrifice would be a
necessary price to be paid in order to overthrow their brutal regime and persistent
aggression against us. It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
Hegemony has leads to cultural homogenization and genocide

Dussel, UAM ethics professor, 2
(Enrique, is professor of ethics at the Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana in
Mexico City.
World-System and Trans-Modernity, Pg. 235-236, Nepantla: Views from South,
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2002, muse, JB)
If it is true that EuropeanNorth American modernity has had economic

and military hegemony over other cultures (Chinese, Southeast Asian,
Hindustani, Islamic, Bantu, Latin American [mestizo, Aymara, Quechua, Maya], etc.)

Eurocentrism K
for only the last two hundred yearsand over Africa for only a little more than one
hundred years, since 1885then this is not [End Page 235] enough time to
penetrate the ethico-mythical nucleus (to borrow Paul Ricoeur's term) of the
intentional cultural millenary structures. It is therefore no miracle that the
consciousness of these ignored and excluded cultures is on the rise, along
with the discovery of their disparaged identities. The same thing is
happening with the regional cultures dominated and silenced by European
modernity, such as the Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Andalusian cultures in
Spain; the diverse regions and cultural nations in Italy (especially the Mezzogiorno),
Germany (especially Bavaria and the five Lnder of the East), France, and even the
United Kingdom (where the Scottish, Irish, and other groups, like the Qubcois in
Canada, struggle for the recognition of their identities); and the minorities in the
United States (especially Afro-Americans and Hispanics). All of this outlines a
multipolar twenty-first century world, where cultural difference is
increasingly affirmed, beyond the homogenizing pretensions of the
present capitalist globalization and its supposedly universal culture, and
even beyond the postmodern affirmation of difference that finds it difficult to
imagine cultural universalities from a millenary tradition outside of Europe and the
United States. This trans-modernity should adopt the best that the modern
technological revolution has to offerdiscarding antiecological and exclusively
Western aspectsand put it at the service of differentiated valorized worlds, ancient
and actualized, with their own traditions and ignored creativity. This will allow the
emergence of the enormous cultural and human richness that the
transnational capitalist market now attempts to suppress under the
empire of universal commodities that materially subsume food (one of the
most difficult things to universalize) into capital. The future trans-modernity
will be multicultural, versatile, hybrid, postcolonial, pluralist, tolerant, and
democratic (but beyond the modern liberal democracy of the European state). It
will have splendid millenary traditions25 and be respectful of exteriority and
heterogeneous identities. The majority of humanity retains, reorganizes (renovating
and including elements of globality),26 and creatively develops cultures in its
everyday, enlightened horizon. The cultures of this majority deepen the valorative
common sense of their participants' real and particular existences, countering the
exclusionary process of globalization, which precisely because of this process
inadvertently pushes toward a trans-modernity. It is a return to the
consciousness of the great majorities of humanity, of their excluded
historical unconscious!
Samuel Huntington, an ideologue of U.S. hegemony, sees as a clash, as a war
between civilizations,27 what is simply and positively [End Page 236] the
irreversible uprising of universal cultures excluded by modernity (and
postmodernity). These cultures, in their full creative potential and together with a
redefined Western culture (European and North American culture without its
reductive claim to universality), constitute a more human and complex
world, more passionate and diverse, a manifestation of the fecundity that
the human species has shown for millennia, a trans-modern world. A
humanity that only spoke in English and that could only refer to its past
as an Occidental past would testify to the extinction of the majority of

Eurocentrism K
historical human cultural creativity. It would be the greatest castration
imaginable and irreversible in humanity's world history!

Eurocentrism K
Realism/Hegemony
American Realism and Liberalism are empirically racist
western interventionist policies rooted in a Eurocentric
model of international relations
Hobson, University of Sheffield politics and international
relations professor, 12
John M. Hobson Professor of Politics and International Relations University of

Sheffield, Cambridge University Press, Published March 29 2012, The Eurocentric
Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-2010, Pg. 258-9,
JB)
The Western-liberal wing of mainstream international theory relies on a
paternalist Eurocentrism that sings the world into existence with the
idiom that 'things can only get better' , and that through paternalist
interventionism the East can be culturally converted along Western
civilizational lines in order to make the world a better place for all peoples (as I
explain in the next chapter). This optimistic and 'progressive' vision is
countered by Western-realism which sings the world into existence with
the idiom that 'things can only get bitter such that the West's only
option is to imperially contain the 'new barbaric threat' to civilization and
world order. This approach is fuelled and galvanized by a pronounced degree of
Western angst and relative degrees of pessimism concerning the challenges
allegedly confronting Western civilization. This sensibility is characterized by Samuel
Huntington: that 'this new world is a fearful world and Americans have no
choice but to live with fear if not in fear* (Huntington 2004: 341). Moreover,
the title of a significant piece by Daniel Pipes relayed this angst into the Western
imagination: The Muslims are Coming! The Muslins are Coming!' (Pipes 1990).2
These statements and many others like them reflect the politics of Western anxiety
and insecurity that underpin 'offensive Eurocentric' and 'defensive Eurocentric'
international theory.
Nevertheless, that Western-realism and Western-liberalism often share
much in common is revealed by the interstitial category of'Western-liberal
realism', which is represented most famously by American neoConservatism, as well as 'Western realist-liberalism that is represented
by the likes of Robert Cooper, John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter.
Echoing the Western-liberals, the liberal-realists interpret the end of the
Soviet Union as offering up a grand opportunity for the progressive
universalization of Western, and especially, American values (Kagan and
Kristol 2000). More specifically, liberal-realism displays a conditional
optimism, such that when the United States embraces the neo-imperial
mandate its proponents revert to singing 'things can only get better, while
in its absence they rue that 'things can only get bitter. Ultimately their
theme song is that 'things could get better or bitter' (even if its not quite so
catchy!)
Interestingly, such a label dovetails with the notion of 'Wilsonian realism',
which signifies a commitment to Wilson's so-called liberal internationalist

Eurocentrism K
vision, albeit with coercive 'neo-imperialist' unilateral teeth." This is interesting in
the light of my argument made in Chapter 7, where I claimed that Wilson was not
an internationalist who advocated universal self-determination, but was a
racist liberal who denied sovereignty to Eastern societies and called for
the need to imperially convert them along
Western lines according to the provincial logic of other-determination. While neoConservatism rejects scientific racism, nevertheless my reading of Wilson dovetails
much more closely with post-1989 liberal-realism than even the label 'Wilsonian
realism' conveys at first sight. This is also interesting because Francis Eukuyama's
(2006) recent disenchantment with neoconservative 'Wilsonian realism', w hich led
him to embrace a so called'realistic Wilsonianism, turns out in the light of my
argument to comprise but a very minor variation on a common offensive/neoimperialist Eurocentric theme. At the same time, this overlap is rendered all the
more clear by what I am calling Western realist-liberalism. Thus in order to draw out
these similarities I shall also consider in this chapter the realist-liberal theory of US
hegemony which overlaps often indiscernibly with liberal-realism.

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Terror
Concepts of cultural heterogeneity and terror are inherently
Eurocentric
Shohat, Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University
and Stam, French University Professor at New York University,
97
(Ella, Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University, and has taught, lectured
and written extensively on issues having to do with Eurocentrism and Orientalism,
and Robert, Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University, where he
teaches about the French New Wave filmmakers. Stam has published widely on
French literature, comparative literature, and on film topics such as film history and
film theory, 1997, Routledge, Unthinking Eurocentrism,
http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDkQFjAB&url=http
%3A%2F%2Fwww.csus.edu%2Findiv%2Fo%2Fobriene%2Fart112%2Freadings
%2FUnthinkingEurocentrismIntroduction.rtf&ei=0v7VUcj6C8agigLbt4FI&usg=AFQjC
NGzs72xcKKnpIfpEkBPsIhMONn0eQ&sig2=6WnFAZPF8pes3AW7uuHLw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE, par. 3, Accessed: 7/4/13, LPS.)
Although neoconservatives caricature multiculturalism as calling for the violent
jettisoning of European classics and of "western civilization as an area of study,"2
multiculturalism is actually an assault not on Europe or Europeans but on
Eurocentrism - on the procrustean forcing of cultural heterogeneity into a
single paradigmatic perspective in which Europe is seen as the unique
source of meaning, as the world's center of gravity, as ontological "reality"
to the rest of the world's shadow. Eurocentric thinking attributes to the "West"
an almost providential sense of historical destiny. Eurocentrism, like Renaissance
perspectives in painting, envisions the world from a single privileged point. It maps
the world in a cartography that centralizes and augments Europe while literally
"belittling" Africa.3 The "East" is divided into "Near," "Middle," and "Far," making
Europe the arbiter of spatial evaluation, just as the establishment of
Greenwich Mean Time produces England as the regulating center of temporal
measurement. Eurocentrism bifurcates the world into the "West and the
Rest"4 and organizes everyday language into binaristic hierarchies
implicitly flattering to Europe: our "nations," their "tribes"; our "religions,"
their "superstitions"; our "culture," their "folklore"; our "art," their
"artifacts"; our "demonstrations," their "riots"; our "defense," their
"terrorism."

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Discourse links

Eurocentrism K
Calling US America
The term America has its roots in indigenous languages the
use of it reinforces imperialisms ability to homogenize culture
Forbes, late Professor Emeritus and Chair, Native American
Studies, UC Davis, 95
(Professor Jack D. Forbes, Powhatan-Delaware, What Do We Mean By America and
American, http://descendantofgods.tripod.com/id111.html, accessed 7/8/13)
Our hemisphere has for quite some time now been known as "America",
being subdivided into North America, Central America, South America, etcetera.
Indigenous peoples have a bit of a problem, however, in that: (1) the United
States and its dominant European-origin citizens have attempted to preempt the terms America and American; and (2) there has been a strong
tendency, especially since the 1780's, to deny to Indigenous Americans
the right to use the name of their own land. As a matter of fact there is a
strong tendency to also deny Native People the use of the name of any
land within America, such as being Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, and so
on, unless the term "Indian" is also attached, as in "Brazilian Indian"(as
"American Indian" is used instead of "American").
Some people believe that America as a name stems from the mountain
range known as Amerique located in Nicaragua. Others believe that it
stem from a word common to several American languages of the
Caribbean and South America, namely Maraca (pronounced marac, marca,
and maraca). This word, meaning rattle or gourd, is found as a place name in
Venezuela (Maracapana, Maracay, Maracaibo), Trinidad (Maracas), Puerto Rico
(Maracayu, etc.), Brazil (Maraca, Itamaraca) and elsewhere.
Many very early maps of the Caribbean region show an island located to the
northwest of Venezuela (where Nicaragua is actually located) called "Tamaraque"
which has been interpreted as T. amaraque standing for tierra or terra
(land) of Amaraque. All of this is before America first appeared as a name
on the mainland roughly in the area of Venezuela. Most of us have
probably been taught that America as a name is derived from that of
Amerigo Vespucci, a notorious liar and enslaver of Native people.
Strangely enough, Vespucci's first name is more often recorded as
Albrico rather than Amerigo. It may well be that the name America is not
derived from his name but we know for sure that it was first applied to
South America or Central America and not to the area of the United
States.
From the early 1500's until the mid-1700's the only people called
Americans were First Nations People. Similarly the people called Mexicans,
Canadians, Brazilians, Peruvians, etcetera, were all our own Native People.
In 1578, for example, George Best of Britain wrote about "those Americans
and Indians" by which he referred to our Native American ancestors as Americans
and the people off India and Indonesia as Indians. In 1650 a Dutch work referred to
the Algonkians of the Manhattan area as "the Americans or Natives" In 1771 a
Dutch dictionary noted that "the Americans are red in their skins" and so on. As late

Eurocentrism K
as 1845 another Dutch dictionary defined mestizos (metis) as being children of a
"European" and an "American" parent.
English usage is very little different. John Wesley in 1747 referred to First
Nations People of Georgia as "the Americans." The Quaker traveler William
Bartram, after a lengthy tour among the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choitaws in the
1770's refers to them as the "the Americans." Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1827
edition) has:" American [from America]. An aboriginal native of America; an
inhabitant of America." The dictionary then quotes Milton ("Such of late/Columbus
found the American/so girt/with feather'd ....."), and Addison from the Spectator
("The Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only men and women, but
brutes, vegetables, ... stones").
In 1875 Charles Maclaren in a British encyclopedia wrote of "the American
race", "the color of the Americans", "the American natives" and "the Americans" by
which he meant "the Americans of indigenous races." More recently (1986),
the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that "Scientists Find Evidence of Earliest
Americans" in northeastern Brazil (32,000 years old). Clearly these "earliest
Americans" were not United Statesians!
Nonetheless, beginning in the 1740's-1780's British newspapers also began
to refer to their British subjects on the Atlantic seaboard as Americans in
the sense of Britons living in America. After the United States became
independent in the 1780's its new citizens began to refer to themselves as
Americans, trying to identify with Tammany and the Native People.
It is simply nonsense to refer to the United States as America. It is "of
America", and that's different. California was part of America before it
became part of the United States, and everything from Canada to Chile is
still American! First Nations Peoples clearly have prior claim on the name,
whether they stem from Quebec or Mexico!

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Latin America
The history of the term Latin America is one grounded in
European imperialism and subordination of indigenous
peoples.
Mignolo, Duke Professor of English, 6
(Walter D., 2006, The Idea of Latin America, pg. 57-59, accessed 7/3/13, JZ)
Emancipation belonged to the rise of a new social class (the bourgeoisie) whose
members were mostly White, educated in Christian cosmology and in the curriculum
of the Renaissance university, soon to be transformed with the advent of the
Kantian- Humboldtian university of the Enlightenment. One of the consequences
of such ideas of emancipation was that while celebrating the economic
and political emancipation of a secular bourgeoisie from the tutelage both
of the monarchy and of the church (particularly in France, where the separation
of the church and the state was greater than in Germany and England), that same
bourgeoisie and its intelligentsia appointed themselves to take into their
hands the emancipation of non-European people in the rest of the
world. In general, these new directions worked in two different manners:
colonialism and imperialism, direct or indirect . The emergence of
Latinidad and of Latin America, then, is to be understood in relation
to a European history of growing imperialism grounded in a capitalist
economy and the desire to determine the shape of emancipation in the
non-European world.
Latinidad: From the Colonial Creole Baroque Ethos to the National Creole Latin
American Ethos
Latin America is actually a hyphenated concept with the hyphen hidden
under the magic effect of the ontology of a subcontinent. By the midnineteenth century, the idea of America as a whole began to be divided, not
so much in accordance with the emergent nation-states as, rather, according to
their imperial histories, which placed an Anglo America in the North and a Latin
America in the South in the new configuration of the Western Hemisphere. At that
moment, Latin America was the name adopted to identify the restoration
of European Meridional, Catholic, and Latin civilization in South America
and, simultaneously, to reproduce absences (Indians and Afros) that had
already begun during the early colonial period. The history of Latin America
after independence is the variegated history of the local elite, willingly or
not, embracing modernity while Indigenous, Afro, and poor Mestizo/a
peoples get poorer and more marginalized. The idea of Latin America is
that sad one of the elites celebrating their dreams of becoming modern
while they slide deeper and deeper into the logic of coloniality.
The idea of Latin America that came into view in the second half of the nineteenth
century depended in varying degrees on an idea of Latinidad Latinity,
Latinite that was being advanced by France. Latinidad was precisely the
ideology under which the identity of the ex-Spanish and ex-Portuguese colonies was
located (by natives as well as by Europeans) in the new global, modern/ colonial

Eurocentrism K
world order. When the idea of Latinidad was launched it had a particular
purpose within European imperial conflicts and a particular function in
redrawing the imperial difference. In the sixteenth century, Las Casas
contributed to drawing the imperial difference by distinguishing Christians from the
Ottoman Empire. By the nineteenth century the imperial difference had moved
north, to distinguish between states that were all Christian and capitalist.
In the Iberian ex-colonies, the idea of Latin America emerged as a
consequence of conflicts between imperial nations; it was needed by
France to justify its civilizing mission in the South and its overt conflict
with the US for influence in that area. France, as a country that joined the
Reformation, could count itself in the same camp as England and Germany; but it
was, at the same time, predominantly Latin and, hence, in historical
contradistinction to the Anglo-Saxon.
In the late nineteenth century, France faced a British Empire that had just colonized
India and parts of Africa and was in the process of strengthening its control over the
commercial and financial markets in South America. Evidence of the competition
posed from Britain can still be seen today in the presence of remnants of its railroad
system in Latin American countries. The position officially assumed in France at that
moment has endured and it is still present in the conflicts, tensions, and
complicities within the European Union and in the European Parliament today. The
concept of Latinidad was used in France by intellectuals and state
officers to take the lead in Europe among the configuration of Latin
countries involved in the Americas (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France itself ),
and allowed it also to confront the United States continuing expansion
toward the South its purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon and its appropriation
of vast swaths of territory from Mexico. White Creole and Mestizo/a elites, in South
America and the Spanish Caribbean islands, after independence from Spain adopted
Latinidad to create their own postcolonial identity. Consequently, I am arguing
here, Latin America is not so much a subcontinent as it is the political
project of Creole-Mestizo/a elites. However, it ended up by being a doubleedged sword. On the one hand, it created the idea of a new (and the fifth)
continental unit (a fifth side to the continental tetragon that had been in place in
the sixteenth century). On the other hand, it lifted up the population of
European descent and erased the Indian and the Afro populations . Latin
America was not therefore a pre-existing entity where modernity arrived and
identity questions emerged. Rather, it was one of the consequences of the
remapping of the modern/colonial world prompted by the double and
interrelated processes of decolonization in the Americas and emancipation
in Europe.
The idea of Latin America assumes a region waiting to be

exploited by imperial states the voice of the indigenous
peoples are ignored in favor of the Western stereotype
Mignolo, Duke Professor of English, 6
(Walter D., 2006, The Idea of Latin America, pg. 96-97, accessed 7/3/13, JZ)
The global idea of Latin America being deployed by imperial states

today (the US and the imperial countries of the European Union) is of a

Eurocentrism K
vast territory and a resource of cheap labor, full natural resources, exotic
tourism, and fantastic Caribbean beaches waiting to be visited, invested
in, and exploited. These images developed during the Cold War when Latin
America became part of the Third World and a top destination for neoliberal projects, beginning in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet (1973) and
followed up by Juan Carlos Menem in Argentina (1989) and Snchez Gonzlo de
Losada (1993) in Bolivia. Thus, for example, today many of the major technological
corporations are shifting production to Argentina (post-crash) where they can hire
technicians for around ten thousand dollars a year while the US salary plus benefits,
for the same type of job, could be as high as fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year.
The section on Latin America in the CIAs report Global Trends 2015
relies on the same idea of Latin America, which originated in the imperial
designs of nineteenth-century French ideologues in complicity with Creole elites.
The CIA forecasts that:
by 2015, many Latin American countries will enjoy greater prosperity as a
result of expanding hemispheric and global economic links, the information
revolution, and lowered birthrates. Progress in building democratic institutions will
reinforce reforms and promote prosperity by enhancing investing confidence. Brazil
and Mexico will be increasingly confident and capable actors that will seek a greater
voice in hemispheric affairs. But the region will remain vulnerable to financial
crises because of its dependence on external finance and the continuing role of
single commodities in most economies. The weakest countries in the region,
especially in the Andean region, will fall further behind. Reversals of democracy
in some countries will be spurred by a failure to deal effectively with popular
demands, crime, corruption, drug trafficking, and insurgencies. Latin America
especially Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil will become an increasingly important oil
producer by 2015 and an important component of the emerging Atlantic Basin
energy system. Its proven oil reserves are second only to those located in the
Middle East.1
However, from the perspective of many who are being looked at and
spoken at (not to), things look a little bit different. The CIAs report cites
many experts on Latin America but not one person in Latin America who is critical of
the neo-liberal invasion to the South. For instance, the articles published by
Alai-Amlatina, written in Spanish in the independent news media, do not
exist for a world in which what exists is written in English. That is part
of the reality of the idea of Latin America. The story is never fully told
because developments projected from above are apparently sufficient to
pave the way toward the future. Expertise and the experience of being
trained as an expert overrule the living experience and the needs
of communities that might subsume technology to their ways of life, and
not transform those ways of life to accord with capitalist requirements,
using technology as a new colonizing tool. The blindness of the CIAs experts,
and their reluctance to work with people instead of strolling over expecting
everyone to act according to their script, have led a myriad of social movements to
respond a blatant example of the double-sided double-density of
modernity/coloniality. It is increasingly difficult for the CIA and other institutions
controlling and managing knowledge and information to silence them. The key issue
here is the emergence of a new kind of knowledge that responds to the needs of the
damns (the wretched of the earth, in the expression of Frantz Fanon). They are
the subjects who are formed by todays colonial wound, the dominant

Eurocentrism K
conception of life in which a growing sector of humanity become
commodities (like slaves in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) or, in the
worst possible conditions, expendable lives. The pain, humiliation, and anger
of the continuous reproduction of the colonial wound generate radical political
projects, new types of knowledge, and social movements.
The term Latin America is rooted in the history of AngloSaxon exploitation of indigenous people
Holloway, UC Davis history professor, 8
(Thomas, Ph.D., Latin American History, UW-Madison, 1974; MA, Ibero-American
Studies, UW-Madison, 1969; BA, Hispanic Civilization, UC Santa Barbara, 1968,
2008, Academia.edu, Latin America: Whats in a Name?,
http://academia.edu/202121/Latin_America_Whats_in_a_Name, accessed 7/4/13, JZ)
These considerations lead to a question central to the label itself: What is Latin
about Latin America? There are several historical and cultural issues that,
in fact, make the term quite problematic. The language of the Iberian groups
engaged in conquest and colonization was not Latin, despite the roots of the
Spanish and Portuguese languages in the Roman occupation of Iberia in ancient
times. While Latin remained the language of the Roman Catholic Church so central
to the Iberian colonization project, there is no apparent connection between
Church Latin and the label Latin America. Christopher Columbus himself,
mistakenly insisting until his death in 1506 that he had reached the eastern edge of
Asia, used the term Indias Occidentales, or the Indias to the West. That term lingers
today, after being perpetuated especially and perhaps ironically by British Colonials,
in the West Indies, the conventional English term for the islands of the Caribbean
Sea eventually colonized by Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
It is commonly known that the more general term America derives from the name
of Amerigo Vespucci (1451?-1512), another navigator of Italian origin who made
several voyages to the Caribbean region and along the coast of northern Brazil from
1497 to 1502. Unlike Columbus, Vespucci concluded that Europeans did not
previously know about the lands he visited in the west, and he thus referred to them
as the New World. In a 1507 map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller,
America appears for the first time with that name. While the protocol of European
exploration usually gives primacy to the first discoverer, there would seem to be
some justification for naming the newly known land mass after the navigator who
recognized it as separate from Asia (Amerigo Vespucci) rather than for the first
European to report its existence, but who subsequently insisted that he had
confirmed a new way to reach Asia (Christopher Columbus) (Arciniegas 1990).
In subsequent centuries, Europeans and their colonial descendants applied
the term America to the entire western hemisphere (which half of the globe is
called western and which is called eastern is itself a convention of European
origin). That usage continues today in Latin America, where it is commonly
taught that there is one continent in the western hemisphere: America.
The Liberator Simn Bolvar famously convened a conference in Panama in 1826 to
work toward a union of the American republics. He included all nations of the
hemisphere in the invitation, and it would not have occurred to him to add Latin to
the descriptors, because the term had not yet been invented. When in 1890 the
United States and its commercial and financial allies around Latin America
established the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics, which became the

Eurocentrism K
Panamerican Union in 1910 and the Organization of American States in 1948, no
terminological distinctions were made by culture or language. In the modern era
America has of course become the common shorthand name of the
nation that developed from the thirteen English colonies on the eastern
seaboard of North America. This apparent appropriation by one nation of
a label that traditionally refers to the entire western hemisphere has been
a recurring source of puzzlement and occasional resentment among Latin
Americans (Arciniegas 1966).
Historically, the first use of the term Latin America has been traced only as
far back as the 1850s. It did not originate within the region, but again
from outside, as part of a movement called pan-Latinism that emerged
in French intellectual circles, and more particularly in the writings of Michel
Chevalier (1806-79). A contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville who traveled in
Mexico and the United States during the late 1830s, Chevalier contrasted the
Latin peoples of the Americas with the Anglo-Saxon peoples (Phelan
1968; Ardao 1980, 1993). From those beginnings, by the time of Napoleon IIIs rise
to power in 1852 pan-Latinism had developed as a cultural project
extending to those nations whose culture supposedly derived from
neo-Latin language communities (commonly called Romance languages in
English). Starting as a term for historically derived Latin culture groups,
LAmerique Latine then became a place on the map. Napoleon III was particularly
interested in using the concept to help justify his intrusion into Mexican politics that
led to the imposition of Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, 1864-67. While
France had largely lost out in the global imperial rivalries of the previous two
centuries, it still retained considerable prestige in the world of culture, language,
and ideas (McGuinness 2003). Being included in the pan-Latin cultural sphere was
attractive to some intellectuals of Spanish America, and use of the label Latin
America began to spread haltingly around the region, where it competed as a term
with Spanish America (where Spanish is the dominant language), Ibero-America
(including Brazil but presumably not French-speaking areas), and other sub-regional
terms such as Andean America (which stretches geographically from Venezuela to
Chile, but which more usually is thought of as including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,
and Bolivia), or the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay) (Rojas
Mix 1991).
Not until the middle of the 20th century did the label Latin America achieve
widespread and largely unquestioned currency in public as well as academic and
intellectual discourse, both in the region (Marras 1992) and outside of it. With the
establishment of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA, later adding
Caribbean to become ECLAC) under United Nations auspices in 1948, the term
became consolidated in policy circles, with political overtones challenging
U.S. hegemony but largely devoid of the rivalries of culture, language, and
race of earlier times (Reid 1978). The 1960s saw the continent-wide Latin
American literary boom and the near-universal adoption of Latin American
Studies by English-language universities in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada.
This trend began with the establishment of the Conference on Latin American
History in 1927 and was consolidated with the organization of the interdisciplinary
Latin American Studies Association in 1967. Despite the widespread and largely
unproblematic use of the term in the main languages of the western hemisphere
since that era, regional variations remain: In Brazil Amrica Latina is commonly

Eurocentrism K
assumed to refer to what in the United States is called Spanish America, i.e., Latin
America minus Brazil.
While discussing the spontaneous creation of such collective labels, we need to
recognize that the terms Latino or Latina/o now widespread in the United States
have no basis in any specific nation or sub-region in Latin America. Like the latter
term, from which it is derived linguistically, Latina/o is an invented term of
conveniencea neologism built on a neologism (Oboler 1995; Gracia 1999;
Oboler & Gonzlez 2005; Dzidzienyo & Oboler, 2005). Whatever their origins, Latino
or Latina/o have largely replaced the older Hispanic or Hispanic American within
the United States, although that English-derived term, problematic on several
counts, lingers in library subject classifications.
But there are other questions that need to be posed, in the age of identity politics
and the assertion of alternative ethnicities and nationalisms. By its historical and
intellectual origins and the claims of pan-Latinism, the term Latin America
privileges those groups who descend from Latin peoples: Spain and
Portugal (but not, ironically enough, the French-speaking populations of
Canada or the Caribbean). By another set of criteria, what is now commonly
called Latin America might be subdivided into those regions where the
indigenous heritage is strong and native identity has reemerged to claim
political space, especially in Mesoamerica and the Andean region; Afro-Latin
America, especially the circum-Caribbean region and much of Brazil; and Euro-Latin
America, in which relatively massive immigration from 1870 to the Great Depression
of the 1930s transformed the demographic and cultural makeup of southern Brazil,
Uruguay, and Argentina (Rojas Mix 1991). In other words, Latin America as a
term ignores or claims dominance over other cultures in the region, which
have recently come to reassert their distinctive traditions, including a plethora of
languages spoken by tens of millions of indigenous peoplenone of which have any
relationship to Spanish or Portuguese (or Latin) beyond a scattering of loan words.
The current condition of peoples of indigenous and African heritage has a
historical relationship to conquest, colonialism, subjugation, forced
assimilation, exploitation, marginalization, and exclusion. Those are not
processes to celebrate and use as the basis for national or regional identity
challenging the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race, as was the thrust of panLatinism of yore. But they are basis for claiming cultural and political spaceas
well as territory and access to resourceswithin Latin America, today and into the
future.
The term Latin America denies indigenous identities their role

in the development of the continent; only through a critical
analysis of this from different perspectives can we hope to
change.
Tarver, Arkansas Tech Dean of the College of Arts and
Humanities, 4
(H. Micheal, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Professor of History,
Arkansas Tech, Fall 2004, World History Association, World History Bulletin,
http://www.thewha.org/bulletins/fall_2004.pdf, Accessed 7/8/13, NC)
Latin Americanism in the United States: the problem of representations

Eurocentrism K
The word Latin is one of the various terms used to categorize the
resident population in the United States whose cultural inheritance comes
from some country in Latin America. Another word is Hispanic, which was
chosen as the official ethnic label of the American governmental agencies since
the seventies.28 What is very interesting is that in the official forms in the
United States there is a particular classification of three groups: White,
Black, and Hispanic. According to the governments definition, this
denomination includes people whose origin or Spanish culture come from
Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central America or South America,
independently of their race.29 Hence, this includes Spaniards but excludes
Portuguese and Brazilians, and other people whose primary identification
is as a member of an indigenous culture from Central or South America.
In consequence, these terms acquire their meaning only in a wider context: in Latin
America no one would call himself Latin or Hispanic.30 Therefore, it is only by
looking at ourselves from the outside, in cross-cultural contexts, that we can
see how deeply enmeshed we are in a variety of cultural factors that
constitute our identity. As Garca Canclini has pointed out, Latin America is not
completely within its territory,31 it receives its image from disseminated mirrors.
Therefore, the meaning of Latin America cannot be found by only looking within a
demarcated territory. For example, most of the Latin-American cable television
channels are broadcasted from the United States; the number of experts in Latin
American literature is larger there than in our part of the continent. Therefore, Latin
America is also in the United States, not only in terms of the mass migrations, but
because it is from the United States where most of the images associated with it are
administrated. For that reason, as I said before, instead of puzzling ourselves
over our authentic identity, it is better to investigate the orders of
knowledge that make possible the very question of the Latin American
identity and the discourses that aim to solve it.32

Eurocentrism K
Indigenous replaced with Indians

Eurocentrism has led to the forced juxtaposition of numerous
identities into a forced other that is barbarian, primitive,
black and Indian
Lander, Central University of Venezuela Professor, 2k
(Edgardo, Sociologist, Venezuelan, professor at the Central University of Venezuela
and a Fellow of the Transnational Institute, 2000, Nepantla: Views from South,
Volume 1, Issue 3, Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social
Thought, pp. 519-523,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/summary/v001/1.3lander.html, Accessed
7/5/13, JB)
Political and social thought regarding Latin America has been historically
characterized by a tension between the search for its specific attributes
and an external view that has seen these lands from the narrow
perspective of European experience. There has also been an opposition
between the challenge of the rich potentialities of this New World and distress over
its difference, which stands in contrast with the ideal represented by European
culture and racial composition. Nonetheless, external colonial views and regrets
because of the difference have been widely hegemonic. A brief revision of
the texts of the first republican constitutions is enough to illustrate how liberals, in
their attempt to transplant and install a replica of their understanding of the
European or North American experience, almost completely ignore the specific
cultural and historical conditions of the societies about which they legislate. When
these conditions are considered, it is with the express purpose of doing away with
them. The affliction because of the differencethe awkwardness of living in a
continent that is not white, urban, cosmopolitan, and civilizedfinds its
best expression in positivism. Sharing the main assumptions and prejudices of
nineteenth-century European thought (scientific racism, patriarchy, the idea of
progress), positivism reaffirms the colonial discourse. The continent is
imagined from a single voice, with a single subject: white, masculine,
urban, cosmopolitan. The rest, the majority, is the other, [ End Page 519 ]
barbarian, primitive, black, Indian, who has nothing to contribute to the
future of these societies . It would be imperative to whiten, westernize, or
exterminate that majority.
The use of the word Indian recreates us/them binaries

that prevent an understanding of Indian cultures
Carson, Queens University Kingston, 06
(James Taylor, Queens University Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Published September 1

2006,American Historians and Indians, The Historical Journal, 49: 933. Accessed
July 3 2013. JB)
In her recent exploration of Indian intellectuals in the late nineteenth-century
United States, Citizen Indians (2005), Lucy Maddox remarked that white
intellectuals of that time relied on Indian as a generic category and

Eurocentrism K
stylistic commonplace. The same could be said for historians use of
Indian today. And what Maddox found, that the Indian of intellectual debate
and the thousands of Indians whose futures awaited the outcome of the
debate often had little in common, is as true today as it was then.37 No
other fields of study in the history of the Americas reveal as clearly the
origins of the western hemispheres modern nation-states and societies
than the ancient origins of American civilizations and their encounter with
the nations of Europe and Africa. But so long as scholars hold to the old
verities of white and Indian or, more bluntly, us and them, we run all
the risks of navigating by dead reckoning, of seeking Eden, and of never quite
understanding the actual people and places we find in either the
documents or the imaginations we use to reconstruct our past. A concept
like creolization, however, can take us out of Columbuss shadow into the full light of
day, afford a different way of viewing North Americas past and present, and enable
us to tell stories of creation rather than destruction.
The aff homogenizes Native American Tribes identities into a

single identity. This recreates the colonizing binaries.
Carson, Queens University Kingston, 06
(James Taylor, Queens University Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Published September 1
2006,American Historians and Indians, The Historical Journal, 49: 921933.
Accessed July 3 2013. JB)
The people he met posed a particular challenge. He called them indios, a term that
reflected his own erroneous assumption about where he was and who he was
seeing. But the meanings he attached to the term as he navigated the island seas
came to denote so much more than a people who inhabited the Indies. The edenic
qualities Columbus attributed to the islands he surveyed suggested that he
wondered whether or not the Fall or the Flood had ever happened there. If they
had not, the Indians were a people who had lived outside of time as he
understood it. And if they were innocent, their poverty, simplicity, and, ultimately,
degradation made them ideal candidates for redemption before the One True Faith
in vassalage to the Crowns of Castile and Aragn. As he reported to his
sovereigns, the Indians were fit to be ordered about and made to work,
plant, and do everything else that may be needed, and build towns and be
taught our customs, and, lastly, to go about clothed.6
The place that Columbus brought into being, however, was neither blank
nor empty, nor particularly new, for where he saw Muslim tents, medieval
monsters, and the Garden of Eden, the people who lived there held altogether
different conceptions of the land and of themselves. To limit the story of
colonization to the narrative of the fall of the Indian that so often follows
from Columbuss voyages predetermines the outcome of the story and
leaves unchallenged European notions of what the land and its possession meant.
While explorers charted spiritual, gendered, and commercial cartographies, their
encounters with other people and places unsettled the stability and veracity of the
maps and the ideas that guided them. Columbus, for one, saw a people who
lacked all conventional accoutrements of civilization, as he knew it, such
as towns, laws, clothing, and a work ethic. We do not know what
deficiencies his hosts saw in him. Probably a lack of generosity, a suite of bad
manners, too much hair, and an unwillingness to become a part of their world that

Eurocentrism K
galled them every bit as much as their alleged indolence appalled him. But in order
to contest the Eden and the Indians that the invaders imagined and the
very real processes that created the colonies, we need to know, in a
fundamental way, how the Columbian moment has transfixed our historical
gaze in one way while distracting us from other possible readings of the
American past.7
Columbus has cast a long shadow over the field of American history and scholars
still take refuge in his shade. Beginning with his diario and continuing through early
chronicles by scholars such as Gabriel de Oviedo, cosmographers like Andr Thevet,
and naturalists such as Thomas Hariot, each imperial power developed its own
language to describe the people they saw and sought to dispossess.8 Columbus
coined indio while the French preferred sauvage. The early records of the
English colony at Jamestown depicted salvages who lived rude lives in
the forest and infidels who did the devils bidding. Scholars, of course,
no longer write about savages or infidels, but among todays national
historiographies, scholars in the United States are almost alone in their
use of the term Indian. Why?
Canadians now write of aboriginals, first peoples, and first nations while Latin
American anthropologists and historians use various terms derived from indigene . It
is important, then, to ponder the meaning of the word Indian and the
ways in which this foundational category, and its opposite white, have
shaped the contours of United States historiography. Dichotomies are
oppositions, anthropologist Neil Whitehead has written, that seem to demand, and
permit, an answer but in fact are only methods of categorizing the processes of
human change and expression that we are trying to conceptualize.9 As such,
adversarial categories like Indian and white sustain a particular and
exclusive view of the past and obscure other creative ways of posing and
pondering questions about contact and colonization. We need a new
historiographical language to wend our way out of the Columbian binary
so that other possible pasts can rise to the horizon and lead us to new
questions and new ways of thinking about our shared pasts. 10

Eurocentrism K
Not putting an accent in Mxico

American conception of Latin American rhetoric and discourse
is inherently Eurocentric
Chung, Editor-in-chief at the 4th Media, 12
(Dr. Kiyul, Editor-in-chief at the 4th Media, is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua
University since 2009. He was a Visiting Professor at Chinese Academy of Social
Science as well from 2006 to 2009, NSNBC International, Americanization of the
World: Undeniable Reality? http://nsnbc.me/2012/01/22/americanization-of-theworld-undeniable-reality/m, Accessed: 7/3/13, LPS.)
Today Americanization of the world seemingly has become an undeniable

reality in many parts of the globe.
It is indeed quite surprising to realize again how deep and broad, cross national
borders, regions, cultures, religions, and languages, a large part of the world
seems to have been tainted with Americas soft, attractive, and smart
language , ideas and popular culture.
As we fully discussed before, Nyes case is indeed a distinctive example that
another Americas simplistic but very much sophisticated thereby deceptive
language seems to have become globalized.[56]
The case of Nyes Soft Power fanfare reminds us of Huntingtons Clash of
Civilization concept,[57] Americas another tactical language thats once
also fascinated the whole globe which later became globalized, regardless
whether the latters theory is logically persuasive, morally justified or not.
However, both Americas tactically deceptive languages, as many arguably
charge, seem to have anyway galvanized the globe for a couple of decades
now. That could be another undeniable reality, too!
For example, according to the Wikipedia, even Chinese President Hu Jintao also used
Nyes language of soft power in his 2007 address to the 17th Communist Party
Congress.
Hu said, China needs to increase its soft power.[58] Even if he might have meant
probably something quite different from Nyes original thought and tried to
encourage his 1.5 billion renmin (: people) to utilize Chinese cultures as
attractive national resources[59] in its international relations.
As this International Conference on Soft Power and Nation Branding suggests as
one of its four major topics to discuss, President Hu might have also meant for a
Chinese government project in terms of its nation branding by using that
Americas tactical language.
However, it is still symbolically a significant incident which first deserves an
attention. And it then seems also show how deep, far and thorough Americas soft
power resources in the forms of language, culture, and ideas might have
penetrated into hearts and minds of the people around the globe including
important Chinese figures!
I am quite sure it could be most probable Chinese top policymakers, strategists,
scholars and experts, too, might have already figured out, in suspicion or
skepticism, the tactical deceptiveness of Americas strategic language. I am
sure they are also well aware of the Wikipedia introductions of President Hus
statement together with that of Americas top Pentagon official.

Eurocentrism K
The Wikipedia introduces Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in regard to the use of
Nyes language: [Gates] spoke of the need to enhance American soft power by a
dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security
diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic
reconstruction and development.[60]
Its quite OK an American Secretary of Defense used the language of one of his
nations best military strategists. But I am not sure how the world would react to the
fact that even the sitting Chinese President also used that same American
language.
If some identifiably interpret this coincidence as Americas acculturation of China in
process, would that interpretation be too much of logical leap, exaggeration or
political paranoia?
At any rate, I wonder how worlds general public and readers of Wikipedia would
interpret this symbolic coincidence or what kinds of questions they might raise in
regards to Chinas future in term of, seemingly, its rapid Americanization process.
It would be very much helpful if Chinese scholars and experts could seriously
engage in for open dialogue to assess how much Chinese culture and society,
particularly their way of thinking, if its the case, might have been influenced by
American culture, language and ideas.
But, for sure today, it seems its by and large an undeniable reality that even the
Chinese national leadership is using the same language American Secretary of
Defense does.
It seems definite now Americas sophistication of tactical language, popular culture
and attractive ideas must have lured not only hearts and minds of the West but also
now that of the East, even Chinese.
Too apparently, China sits completely at the other end of Western hemisphere, cross
over the Pacific Ocean and vast Eurasian Continents. Their histories, cultures,
religions, languages and traditions are far from each other.
Most distinctively, their ideological and political systems yet have vast
differences. However, American language the English and its popular
culture seem to have successfully acculturated a large part of the world
including Americas former stern enemy states like China and Russia.
Among those American cultures, Hollywood films probably could be one of the most
influential (of course, not in positive ways!) and powerful means to acculturate,
assimilate, thereby indoctrinate a large number of global populations into
American way of thinking, in addition to Americas already globalized fast food
culture such as McDonalds, Coca Cola, KFC, and so on which, however, are not
necessarily healthy at all.[61]
In these ongoing processes of Americanization of the whole globe more
than a half century now, China and Russia seem no exception from Americas
strategic acculturation project (in other words, cultural indoctrination or cultural
imperialism[62]) by its profit-oriented culture, consumption-oriented society,
commercialism, individualism, materialism, language, publication, food, fashion,
more significantly by often biased, destructive and violent Hollywood movies, but
most seriously that American way of thinking.
Lately, Americanization seems also becoming prevalent even in the realms of mass
media both in China and Russia.
This is how Nye characterizes what his real intentions through his strategic
language of soft power are: The success of soft power heavily depends on the

Eurocentrism K
actors reputation within the international community, as well as the flow of
information between actors.
Thus, soft power is often associated with the rise of globalization and neoliberal
international relations theory. Popular culture and media is regularly identified as a
source of soft power, as is the spread of a national language, or a particular set of
normative structures; a nation with a large amount of soft power and the good will
that engenders it inspire others to acculturate, avoiding the need for expensive hard
power expenditures.[63]
Here in this very statement, Nye plainly explains how soft power can successfully
produce what America preferably wants.
Thus, if that American acculturation, for example, in China and Russia, might have
gone through so much already for two three decades now, it seems then no matter
how big in population, vast in territorial lands, rich in cash (China for the moment),
oil and gas (Russia), strong in military, and most advanced in military scientific
technologies are, lots of important things in these nations may not be easily worked
out. In many cases, its been very difficult to deal with and extremely challenging to
reverse those cultural assimilation or acculturation processes, meaning, ongoing
processes of Americanization in their own nations.
It seems Americanization, even during Americas one of the most serious economic
crises, is still in rapid processes among not small populations around the globe! It is
not, as many emphatically claim, anymore a question of if!
Therefore, unless those nations should try to do something very serious now (before
too late!) in order to properly deal with any of its negative, decaying and often
destructive impacts to their own nations, that could make them, too, some day, if
not at any moment soon, fall into the realms of Americas global hegemonic
domination like those distinctively negative cases of Japan, South Korea and the
likes around the globe.
Now it seems apparent Chinese media, academia and top think-tanks also use the
same American strategic languages in their public discourses including official
government statements.
I wonder if this particular cultural phenomenon in areas of academia and media is
the one that makes many Chinese scholars and experts genuinely concerned of
Americas rapid acculturation of Chinese society and what that would mean to their
nations future!
As well-known, the Roman Empire didnt fall by outsides military powers but moral
and cultural chaos and decay from inside.
As many around the globe including a number of American consciences warn, that
profit-oriented, commercialized, and consumption-oriented American culture may
not be necessarily a healthy antidote, prescription or roadmap for any nations
healthy futures.
Is Religion as Culture the Most Powerful Soft Power Resources?
Religion, considered as the most powerful and distinctive cultural resource, is the
one America and the West have employed throughout its centuries-old history of
colonization of the non-West. Needless to say, that Western religion is Christianity.
According to the History of Western Colonialism of the Americas, the Christianity
(both Catholic and Protestant) has become the most powerful cultural
method as soft power to Westernize or Colonize of that vast continent.[64]
One distinctive such example is the almost complete Christianization of
the majority populations, over 95%, of North, South, and Central American
continents. They are called Christians, both Catholics and Protestants.

Eurocentrism K
In addition to the religion, a conquerors language the Spanish became the official
language of both colonized South and Central America, except Brazil, where
Portuguese instead became the official language.
Of course, needless to say, both religion and language are cultures, therefore, in
Nyes term, soft power. Since religion and language are cultures, this cultural
legacy is often called cultural assimilation, acculturation or cultural
imperialism.[65]
Nye exhorts these soft power methods of cultural assimilation, religious
indoctrination and/or cultural imperialism as soft power should be further
employed than hard power means in order to effectively and even economically
more cheaply achieve what America strategically wants.
During heyday of colonial expansionism by the West, the following analogy <<On
the one hand [Christian] Bible (religion as culture: soft power) and the other hand
Guns (military hard power), they brought to our lands colonialism!>> has
become one of the most symbolic phrases to describe how Western hard powers
have applied their religion as soft power to further colonize or indoctrinate those
colonized or indoctrinated!

Eurocentrism K
K Affs

Eurocentrism K
Race
Eurocentric colonialism is the root cause of identity binaries
and Otherization
fields of post-colonial studies and critical theory 2000, Coloniality of Power,
What is termed globalization is the culmination of a process that began with the
constitution of America and colonial/modern Eurocentered capitalism as a
new global power. One of the fundamental axes of this model of power is
the social classification of the worlds population around the idea of race,
a mental construction that expresses the basic experience of colonial domination
and pervades the more important dimensions of global power, including its specific
rationality: Eurocentrism. The racial axis has a colonial origin and character, but it
has proven to be more durable and stable than the colonialism in whose matrix it
was established. Therefore, the model of power that is globally hegemonic
today presupposes an element of coloniality. In what follows, my primary
aim is to open up some of the theoretically necessary questions America
was constituted as the first space/time of a new model of power of global vocation,
and both in this way and by it became the first identity of modernity. Two historical
processes associated in the production of that space/time converged and
established the two fundamental axes of the new model of power. One was the
codification of the differences between conquerors and conquered in the
idea of race, a supposedly different biological structure that placed
some in a natural situation of inferiority to the others. The conquistadors
assumed this idea as the constitutive, founding element of the relations of
domination that the conquest imposed. On Nepantla: Views from South 1.3 Copyright
2000 by Duke University Press 533 534 Nepantla this basis, the population of
America, and later the world, was classified within the new model of power. The
other process was the constitution of a new structure of control of labor and its
resources and products. This new structure was an articulation of all
historically known previous structures of control of labor, slavery,
serfdom, small independent commodity production and reciprocity,
together around and upon the basis of capital and the world market. 3
Race: A Mental Category of Modernity The idea of race, in its modern meaning,
does not have a known history before the colonization of America.
Perhaps it originated in reference to the phenotypic differences between
conquerors and conquered. However, what matters is that soon it was
constructed to refer to the supposed differ- ential biological structures
between those groups. Social relations founded on the category of race
produced new historical social identities in AmericaIndians, blacks, and
mestizos and redefined others. Terms such as Spanish and Portuguese ,
and much later European , which until then indicated only geographic
origin or country of origin, acquired from then on a racial connotation in

Eurocentrism K
reference to the new identities. Insofar as the social relations that were
being configured were relations of domination, such identities were
considered constitutive of the hierarchies, places, and corresponding
social roles, and consequently of the model of colonial domination that
was being imposed. In other words, race and racial identity were established
as instruments of basic social classification. As time went by, the colonizers codified
the phenotypic trait of the colonized as color, and they assumed it as the
emblematic characteristic of racial category. That category was probably initially
established in the area of Anglo-America.

Eurocentrism K
Hybridization
Attempts to apply multi-culturism to the region lead to further
Americanization of culture through cross-pollination
Cueto, Professor in the School of Public Health at the
Universidad Peruana Cavetano, and Esguerra, Ph.D History
Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, 9
(Marcos, an historian and a professor in the School of Public Health at the
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Per. and Jorge Caizares, s the
Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin,
2009, History of Science Society, Latin America,
http://www.hssonline.org/publications/NonWesternPub/Latin_America.html,
Accessed: 7/3/13, LPS.)
As the first colonial outpost of the early-modern European world, Latin

America has long witnessed complex processes of cultural crosspollination, suppression, and adaptation. Beginning in the fifteenth century,
millenarian Amerindian civilizations, heirs to rich local "scientific" traditions,
seemingly gave way to European institutions of learning and to new
dominant forms of representing the natural world. What happened to the
earlier modes of learning? How do subordinate cultures resist and adapt
to new forms of knowledge? Latin America has long been a laboratory
where the "West" has sought to domesticate and civilize "non-Western"
forms of Amerindian and African knowledge. Given Latin America's rich
history of cultural adaptations, suppressions, and hybridizations, it cannot
be labeled non-Western without serious qualifications. From the fifteenth
century, Western modes and styles of apprehending the natural world
have influenced all learned elite institutions in the region. Latin America has
witnessed different periods of Western scientific dominance; Iberian, French, British,
German and USA scientific traditions and institutions have left indelible marks.

Eurocentrism K
Western Philosophy
Eurocentrism permeates much of Western philosophy
Wood, advisory editor of Solidarity.org 1
(Ellen Meiksins, an advisory editor of Against the Current, Solidarity.org, A new,
revised and substantially expanded edition of Wood's latest book, The Origin of
Capitalism, was be published by Verso in 2001, May-June, 2001, Solidarity,
Eurocentric Anti-Eurocentric, http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/993, Accessed:
7/5/13, LPS.)
THE QUESTION OF "Eurocentrism" is a vexing problem not only for academia
but for the left. In the broadest sense, Eurocentrism can be understood as
the implicit view that societies and cultures of European origin constitute
the "natural" norm for assessing what goes on in the rest of the world. Within this
vast area of debate, one particular subtopic has been an object of intense
scrutiny among scholars: the real-or-alleged centrality of Europe in
preparing the explosion of economic development, science and
technology, the Enlightenment and the expansion of the role of the
individual-as well as intensified exploitation and colonial conquest-that
heralded the modem world. All these things, taken together, are commonly taken
to be synonymous with capitalism. It is precisely this identification that is
challenged in this essay by Marxist historian Ellen Meiksins Wood, along with the
notion that ascribing European agrarian origins to capitalism entails a view of
Europe as a civilizing vanguard. Other writers, including the late J.M. Blaut, have
argued that Eurocentric assumptions have permeated the left's theorization
of the origins of modernity as thoroughly as they have dominated
conventional "modernization" theory. A wide range of scholars of color and
Third World writers have contributed to the discussion. The editors of Against the
Current hope that Ellen Wood's contribution will kick off an exchange taking up a
number of issues, relating particularly to the theoretical and historical debate on
capitalist origins-but also connecting this scholarly inquiry to some of the questions
for the left in today's global capitalist system. While this discussion is only one part
of developing a fuller understanding of the dynamics of liberation struggles and
anti-capitalist movements, historically and today, we believe it can be a worthwhile
one.

Eurocentrism K
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is Eurocentric irony, cynicism, and the
questioning of intrinsic value or reality all have no application
to all cultures attempts to construct them as a better
foundation obscures indigenous cultures
Munck, Dublin City University Sociology Professor and
OHearn, University of Wisconsin Sociology Professor, 99
(Ronaldo Munck and Denis O'Hearn, April 15, 1999, Critical Development Theory:
Contributions to a New Paradigm, pg. 44-45 accessed July 5, 2013, Google Books,
EK)
The real power of the West is not located in its economic muscle and technological
might. Rather, it resides in its power to define. The West defines what is, for
example, freedom, progress and civil behavior; law, tradition and
community; reason, mathematics and science; what is real and what it
means to be human. The non-Western civilizations have simply to accept
these definitions or be defined out of existence. To understand
Eurocentrism we thus have to deconstruct the definitional power of the
West. Eurocentrism is located wherever there is the defining influence of Europe, or
more appropriately, the generic form of Europe - 'the West'. Wherever there is the
West, there is Europe, and Eurocentrism is not usually that far behind. So, where is
the West?
As a civilization, the West is, of course, everywhere: the Western civilization is
not located in a geographical space but in these days of globalization it
envelops the globe with its desires, images, politics, and consumer and
cultural products. As a worldview, the West is the dominant outlook of the
planet. Thus, Eurocentrism is not simply out there - in the West It is also in here - in
the non-West. As a concept and a worldview, the West has colonized the
intellectuals in non-European societies. Eurocentrism is thus just as rampant and
deep in non-Western societies as in Europe and the USA: intellectuals,
academics, writers, thinkers, novelists, politicians and decision-makers in Asia,
Africa and Latin America use the West, almost instinctively, as the standard
for judgments and as the yardstick for measuring the social and political
progress of their own societies. The non-West thus promotes
Eurocentrism, both wittingly and unwittingly, and colludes in its own
victimization as well as in maintaining the global system of inequality.
But Eurocentrism is 'in here' in another way. And it is related to my second question:
when was the West? As a conceptual and instrumental category, the West is
located in the history of colonization, from Columbus's 'discovery' of the 'New
World' to the present day. Rampant Eurocentrism is easily recognizable in
colonial constructions of the 'lazy native', the licentious and barbaric Muslim,
the shifty, effeminate and untrustworthy Hindu and other representations of the
non-West in Orientalist fiction, travel literature and scholarly explorations. But the
time dimension of the West extends from colonialism to modernity,
modernity to postmodernism and to the future. Modernity's construction
of tradition as an impediment to advancement, of the non-West as
'developing societies' and 'Third World*, and of instrumental rationality as

Eurocentrism K
justification for progress are just as Eurocentric as the plainly racist
categorization of colonialism. This variety of Eurocentrism, like its colonial
counterpart, is now also widely recognized. What is not appreciated, however, is
the Eurocentric nature of postmodernism. This is largely due to the fact
that postmodernism emerged as a reaction against modernity and selfavowedly tried to shape itself in pluralistic terms. But the basic premises of
postmodernism are just as Eurocentric as modernity, if not even more so. For
example, postmodernism's overriding concern with the demolition of
grand narratives such as Religion, Tradition and History are detrimental to
the very existence of the non-West for it is these very narratives that
make the non-West what it is: not West. The insistence that everything is
meaningless and that nothing can give meaning and direction to our lives
is a distinctively Western view that finds no echo whatsoever in nonWestern cultures, societies and civilizations. Moreover, postmodernism's
obsession with irony, ridicule and cynicism becomes an instrument for
further marginalizing and hence writing off the non-West. A discourse that
seeks to give representation to the Other, to give a voice to the voiceless,
paradoxically seeks to absorb the non-West in bourgeoisie liberalism' and the
secular history of the West, it is not just that postmodernism continues the
Eurocentric journey of modernity and colonialism: we get higher, more sophisticated
forms of Eurocentrism as we move towards the future.
Rejection of their Eurocentric epistemology is key to solve. It

creates the potential for difference.
7/5/13, JB)
These debates create possibilities for new intellectual strategies to
address the challenges posed by the crisis of modernity for Latin American
critical theory. In view of the fact that we are at a point in our work where we
can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context of our studies (Said
1993,6),it is absolutely necessary to question whether postmodern theories offer an
adequate perspective from which to transgress the colonial limits of modern social
thought. Some of the main issues of postcolonial perspectives have been
formulated and taken anew at different times in the history of Latin American social
thought of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Mart 1987; Maritegui
1979; Fals-Borda 1970; 526 Nepantla Fernndez Retamar 1976). There have been
extraordinary developments associated with the revitalization of the
struggles of indigenous peoples in recent decades.5 Nonetheless, these
issues paradoxically have been of relatively marginal concern in the
academic world, outside anthropology and some areas of the humanities. Western
social sciences, which must be applied creatively to the study of the realities of
Latin America, are still assumed to be the best of universal thought. Due to
both institutional and communicational difficulties, as well as to the

Eurocentrism K
prevailing universalist orientations (intellectual colonialism? subordinate
cosmopolitanism?),6 today the Latin American academy has only limited
communication with the vigorous intellectual production to be found in Southeast
Asia, some regions of Africa, and in the work of academics of these regions working
in Europe or the United States. The most effective bridges between these
intellectual traditions are being offered today by Latin Americans who work in North
American universities (Escobar 1995; Mignolo 1996a,1996b; Coronil 1996, 1997).

Eurocentrism K
Agamben
Agamben participates in an unquestioned worship of
Eurocentric philosophy with disregard to the chattel slavery
that was required to make it possible
Chanter, State University of New York Professor, 11
(Tina, Professor, Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2011, Whose
Antigone?: The Tragic Marginalization of Slavery, Google Books, Page 121,
Accessed 7/8/13, NC)
Insofar as Agamben acquiesces to the unquestioned centrality of Europe
and of the critically unexamined version of ancient Athens that is taken to be its
precursor- as the originating matrix of conceptual and cultural meaning,
Agamben joins in the uncritical glorification of the philosophical
masterpieces of ancient Athens, construed as the crucible of European
culture, but fails to confront the significance of the system of chattel
slavery that afforded the philosophers and tragic poets the leisure to
create their philosophical treatises and theatrical masterpieces, which
nonetheless owe their existence to the sys tem of slavery. Agamben
thereby perpetuates a Eurocentric discourse of race, based on an
idealized version of ancient Greece that plays down the gendered
implications of his own intervention, even as his focus on race in the
modern state (albeit a Eurocentric account of race) provides a necessary
corrective to Irigaray's equally problematic and Eurocentric account of sexual
difference as foundational. At the same time, Irigaray's focus on sexual difference
serves as a corrective to Agamben's exclusive focus on race.

Eurocentrism K
Impacts

Eurocentrism K
Coloniality
Accepting a criticism of Eurocentrism that starts from the point
of race is pivotal as the stepping off point for discussions of
control over labor, sex, collective authority and intersubjectivity
Lugones, Binghamton U Comparative Lit and Philosophy
Associate Professor, 8
(Maria, Argentine scholar, philosopher, feminist, and an Associate Professor of
Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture and of
Philosophy and of Women's Studies at Binghamton University in New York, Spring
2008, The Coloniality of Gender, http://globalstudies.trinity.duke.edu/wpcontent/themes/cgsh/materials/WKO/v2d2_Lugones.pdf, Accessed, 7/7/13, NC)
The coloniality of power introduces the basic and universal social
classification of the population of the planet in terms of the idea of "race."
(Quijano, 2001-2, p.1) The invention of "race" is a pivotal turn as it replaces
the relations of superiority and inferiority established through
domination. It re-conceives humanity and human relations fictionally, in
biological terms. It is important that what Quijano provides is a historical theory of
social classification to replace what he terms the Eurocentric theories of social
classes. (Quijano, 2000b, 367) This move makes conceptual room for the coloniality
of power. It makes conceptual room for the centrality of the classification of the
worlds population in terms of races in the understanding of global
capitalism. It also makes conceptual room for understanding the historical
disputes over control of labor, sex, collective authority and intersubjectivity as developing in processes of long duration, rather than
understanding each of the elements as pre-existing the relations of power. The
elements that constitute the global, Eurocentered, capitalist model of
power do not stand in separation from each other and none of them is
prior to the processes that constitute the patterns. Indeed, the mythical
presentation of these elements as metaphysically prior is an important aspect of the
cognitive model of Eurocentered, global capitalism.
In constituting this social classification, coloniality permeates all aspects of
social existence and gives rise to new social and geocultural identities.
(Quijano, 2000b, 342) America and Europe are among the new
geocultural identities. European, Indian, African are among the
racial identities. This classification is "the deepest and most enduring
expression of colonial domination." (Quijano, 2001-2, p. 1) With the
expansion of European colonialism, the classification was imposed on the
population of the planet. Since then, it has permeated every area of social
existence and it constitutes the most effective form of material and inter-subjective
social domination. Thus, "coloniality" does not just refer to "racial"
classification. It is an encompassing phenomenon, since it is one of the
axes of the system of power and as such it permeates all control of sexual
access, collective authority, labor, subjectivity/inter-subjectivity and the
production of knowledge from within these inter-subjective relations. Or,
alternatively, all control over sex, subjectivity, authority and labor are articulated

Eurocentrism K
around it. As I understand the logic of structural axis in Quijanos usage, the
element that serves as an axis becomes constitutive of and constituted by
all the forms that relations of power take with respect to control over that
particular domain of human existence. Finally, Quijano also makes clear that,
though coloniality is related to colonialism, these are distinct as the latter does not
necessarily include racist relations of power. Coloniality's birth and its
prolonged and deep extension throughout the planet is tightly related to
colonianism (Quijano, 2000b, 381)

Eurocentrism K
Colonialism/Imperialism
Eurocentrism separates the world into West and the Rest in
which the world is literally constructed from the European lens
outward. Multiculturalism grew as a response to these
practical and linguistic binaristic hierarchies
Shohat, New York University Cultural Studies Professor, Stam,
New York University film theory and study Professor, 97
(Ella, Robert, Published by Routledge 1997, UNTHINKING EUROCENTRISM, Pg. 1-2,
JB)
Although neoconservatives caricature multiculturalism as calling for the
violent jettisoning of European classics and of "western civilization as an area
of study,"2 multiculturalism is actually an assault not on Europe or Europeans
but on Eurocentrism - on the procrustean forcing of cultural heterogeneity
into a single paradigmatic perspective in which Europe is seen as the
unique source of meaning, as the world's center of gravity, as ontological
"reality" to the rest of the world's shadow. Eurocentric thinking attributes to
the "West" an almost providential sense of historical destiny. Eurocentrism, like
Renaissance perspectives in painting, envisions the world from a single
privileged point. It maps the world in a cartography that centralizes and
augments Europe while literally "belittling" Africa.3 The "East" is divided
into "Near," "Middle," and "Far," making Europe the arbiter of spatial
evaluation, just as the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time produces England
as the regulating center of temporal measurement. Eurocentrism bifurcates the
world into the "West and the Rest "4 and organizes everyday language
into binaristic hierarchies implicitly flattering to Europe: our " nations," their
"tribes"; our "religions," their "superstitions"; our "culture," their
"folklore"; our "art," their "artifacts"; our "demonstrations," their "riots";
our "defense," their "terrorism."
Eurocentrism first emerged as a discursive rationale for colonialism, the
process by which the European powers reached positions of hegemony in
much of the world. Indeed, J.M. Blaut calls Eurocentrism "the colonizer's model of
the world."5 As an ideological substratum common to colonialist,
imperialist, and racist discourse, Eurocentrism is a form of vestigial
thinking which permeates and structures contemporary practices and
representations even after the formal end of colonialism. Although colonialist
discourse and Eurocentric discourse are intimately intertwined, the terms have a
distinct emphasis. While the former explicitly justifies colonialist practices, the latter
embeds, takes for granted, and "normalizes" the hierarchical power
relations generated by colonialism and imperialism, without necessarily even
thematizing those issues directly.

Eurocentrism K
The epistemological legitimization of Eurocentrism whitewashes history and legitimizes violence, imperialism,
colonialism and genocide
97
(Ella, and Robert, Unthinking Eurocentrism, http://www.google.com/url?

NGzs72xcKKnpIfpEkBPsIhMONn0eQ&sig2=6WnFAZPF8pes3AW7uuHLw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE, Accessed: 7/4/13, LPS.)
the world."5 As an ideological substratum common to colonialist,
imperialist, and racist discourse, Eurocentrism is a form of vestigial
thinking which permeates and structures contemporary practices and
representations even after the formal end of colonialism. Although
colonialist discourse and Eurocentric discourse are intimately intertwined, the
terms have a distinct emphasis. While the former explicitly justifies colonialist
practices, the latter embeds, takes for granted, and "normalizes" the
hierarchical power relations generated by colonialism and imperialism,
without necessarily even thematizing those issues directly. Although generated by
the colonizing process, Eurocentrism's links to that process are obscured in a
kind of buried epistemology. Eurocentric discourse is complex, contradictory,
historically unstable. But in a kind of composite portrait, Eurocentrism as a mode of
thought might be seen as engaging in a number of mutually reinforcing intellectual
tendencies or operations: 1. Eurocentric discourse projects a linear historical
trajectory leading from classical Greece (constructed as "pure," "Western," and
"democratic") to imperial Rome and then to the metropolitan capitals of Europe and
the US. It renders history as a sequence of empires: Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, Pax
Britannica. Pax Americana. In all cases, Europe, alone and unaided, is seen as the
"motor" for progressive historical change: it invents class society, feudalism,
capitalism, the industrial revolution. 2. Eurocentrism attributes to the "West"
an inherent progress toward democratic institutions (Torquemada, Mussolini,
and Hitler must be seen as aberrations within this logic of historical amnesia and
selective legitimation). 3. Eurocentrism elides non-European democratic
traditions, while obscuring the manipulations embedded in Western formal
democracy and masking the West's part in subverting democracies
abroad. Eurocentrism minimizes the West's oppressive practices by
regarding them as contingent, accidental, exceptional. Colonialism, slavetrading, and imperialism are not seen as fundamental catalysts of the
West's disproportionate power. Eurocentrism appropriates the cultural and
material production of non-Europeans while denying both their
achievements and its own appropriation, thus consolidating its sense of self
and glorifying its own cultural anthropophagy. The West, as Barbara KirshenblattGimblett puts it, "separates forms from their performers, converts those forms into

Eurocentrism K
influences, brings those influences into the center, leaves the living sources on the
margin, and pats itself on the back for being so cosmopolitan."6 In sum,
Eurocentrism sanitizes Western history while patronizing and even
demonizing the non-West; it thinks of itself in terms of its noblest
achievements - science, progress, humanism - but of the non-West in
terms of its deficiencies, real or imagined.
As a work of adversary scholarship, Unthinking Eurocentrism critiques the
universalization of Eurocentric norms, the idea that any race, in Aim Csaire's
words, "holds a monopoly on beauty, intelligence, and strength."
Their Bankrupt Eurocentric Epistemology is the root cause of

colonialism in Latin America leading to destruction of cultures,
the extermination of natives, slavery and unending cultural
subordination replicating bare life.
7/5/13, JB)
The evaluation systems currently used for academics and universities, which take
the Mexican experience as a model, are another limited but significative indicator of
these trends, with potentially menacing consequences for the possibility of more
autonomous outlooks. Universalist criteria underlie these systems, according to
which the production of the universities in Latin America should follow the scientific
production of central countries as models of excellence. An expression of this is the
privileged consideration that is given in these systems of evaluation to publishing in
foreign scientific journals. Under the mantle of objectivity, what has in fact been
established is that the intellectual creation of social scientists in Latin American
universities should be ruled by the disciplinary frontiers, truth systems,
methodologies, problems, and research agendas of metropolitan social sciences, as
these are expressed in the editorial policies of the most prestigious journals in each
discipline. These evaluation systems are thus designed to judge performance within
normal northern science. Strictly individualized evaluation systems based
on short-term productivity seem to be purposely designed to hinder both
the possibility of the collective efforts in the reflective, innovative longterm and the socially concerned (as opposed to market-oriented) research and
debatesfree from immediate constraints of time or financing pressuresthat
would be required in order to rethink epistemological assumptions, historical
interpretations, and present forms of institutionalization of historic and social
knowledge.3 [End Page 522] New generations of academics are being socialized
into a system that values scores, the accumulation of points in quantitative
evaluations, over original or critical thought. These perspectives do not fully
explore the immense potentialities of the recognition of the crisis of
modernity. Radically different ways of thinking about the world are
possible if we assume this historical period to [End Page 524] be the crisis

Eurocentrism K
of the hegemonic pretensions of Western civilization. Different consequences
would arise from an interpretation that recognizes that this is not the end of history,
but the end of the phantasmagorical universal history imagined by Hegel. The
implications for non-Western societies and for subaltern and excluded
subjects around the world would be quite different if colonialism,
imperialism, racism, and sexism were thought of not as regretful byproducts of modern Europe , but as part of the conditions that made the modern
West possible. We could assume a different perspective on the so-called
crisis of the subject if we were to conclude that the extermination natives,
transatlantic slavery, and the subordination and exclusion of the other
were nothing more than the other face, the necessary mirror of the self,
the indispensable contrasting condition for the construction of modern
identities.

Eurocentrism K
Root Cause Oppressions

Eurocentrism is the root cause of all other isms- our flawed
epistemology stems from a Eurocentric perspectivedecolonizing is the only way to solve
Baker, Professor of Education and Human Development,
(Michael, Professor at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human

Development, October 31 - November 4, 2012, American Educational Studies
Association, Annual Conference Seattle, Washington, Decolonial Education:
Meanings, Contexts, and Possibilities,
Decolonial thinking developed by this group, now calling itself
modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, is centered around a theory of
modern/colonial power/knowledge relations that aims to explain the
politics of our identities within a worldwide racial system of classification.
The foundation of this system of classification was the imperial idea of humanity, an
invention of early modern natural law theory allowing elite Europeans to interpret
themselves in relation non-Europeans and the uncivilized European masses. In the
debates over the humanity of the Amerindians at the School of Salamanca in
1542, a new conceptualization of the medieval concept of humanitas emerged that
became the basis for the modern epistemological framework. Humanitas was
conceived in the cognitive operation of creating the framework for
western knowledge production (Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012, p. 15). Rooted in
the sixteenth and seventeenth century reformulations of medieval natural law
theory and novel conceptions of the state of nature, the modern worldview was
constituted by cultural conceptions and theories of human nature, history,
and destiny that set the outer limits and the internal possibilities for
understanding the world, others, and oneself (Jahn, 2000, p. xv).
Based upon a rethinking of the biblical conceptualizations of the state of nature and
the nature of man that emerged from the Reformation and the theological debates
over the legal status of the Amerindians, Europeans came to understand
themselves as a distinct cultural group, separate from Christendom, within a
universal civilized-barbarian hierarchical classification system. Civilized humanity
was constituted in a double movement that detached Man from God and
distinguished European from non-Europeans (Mignolo, 2000). The Renaissance idea
of man was used as a point of reference to identify and invent the boundaries of
civilized humanity and to hierarchically classify people on the margins and
exteriority of these boundaries. Humanitas and anthropos are the two central
European constructs for human beings that emerged from this intellectual formation
that ranked and divided people around the world into knowing subjects and known
objects (Osamu, 2006). From its sixteenth century reformulation, humanitas refers
to the self-definition of the civilized ethno-class that controls knowledge through
which anthropos, the object of knowledge, can be constructed, known and
managed. It was during this transition from the medieval to early modern periods
that the world began to be hierarchically and racially conceived by a particular

Eurocentrism K
group of epistemic agents, supported by Christian theology, exploring, mapping,
and classifying the whole world for the first time within a newly emerging
epistemological framework that became the foundation of the conceptual/narrative
we now call modern civilization (Mignolo, 2007, p. 115). The self-understanding of
European elites that emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was
built upon a conceptual matrix of dual opposites where the barbarian, the woman,
the child, nature, the homosexual, etc., were incorporated into a complex hierarchy
tied to the changing divisions of labor in the modern capitalist system. This system
of classification allowed European civilized males to interpret themselves at the
apex of a universal hierarchy while providing a rationale for maintaining these
categories and divisions.
From this modern/colonial perspective, the link between Eurocentrism and
knowledge was rearticulated in linking coloniality with Eurocentrism
(Quijano, 1999). As a way of conceiving and organizing knowledge based upon a
universalized conception of humanitas, the colonial matrix of power enabled the
subjugation of populations to various binary identities and colonial/imperial forms of
self-understanding (Quijano, 2000). Differences related to ethnicity, race,
gender, class, sexuality, disability, nationalism, religion, etc., are
interrelated today within the modern/colonial system of power/knowledge
relations established by a particular ethno-racial group of elite, Christian,
heterosexual, men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These
various identities and differences were transformed into values within
multiple and interrelated hierarchies. As a consequence, the ways in which
both colonized and colonizing peoples have learned to interpret and understand
themselves, others, and the world are inventions of a European colonial/imperial
matrix of power and knowledge relations. This system of classification has
enabled modes of control of social life and economic and political
organizations that emerged in the European management of the colonies
in the Americas at the beginning of the sixteenth century and
subsequently became worldwide. Coloniality became a global model of power
and integration of all people and places on earth into the process of building and
expanding, both materially and intersubjectively, a new space/time called
modernity.

Eurocentrism K
Racism/Inequality in General
Eurocentrism frame social norms the normative function of
race, gender, sex and other types identity are reinforced by
Eurocentrism
Baker, University of Rochester, Graduate Student School of
Education and Human Development, 8
(Michael, Teaching and Learning About and Beyond Eurocentrism: A Proposal for
the Creation of an Other School, March 16, 2008,
http://academia.edu/1516858/Teaching_and_Learning_About_and_Beyond_Eurocentr
ism_A_Proposal_for_the_Creation_of_an_Other_School, accessed 7/12/13)
The Other School would be oriented around an alternative framework for knowledge
and understanding that we might call the decolonial paradigm, since its central aim
is to decolonize thinking and being, in part, through dialogue (not just the study of
cultures as objects of knowledge) with the diversity of ways of knowing and being
that have been devalued and eclipsed in Eurocentric education. The decolonial
paradigm of education would focus on concepts of culture and power. Culture is not
separate from politics and economics, contrary to the taken-for-granted disciplinary
divisions. .political and economic structures are not entities in
themselves, but are imagined, framed and enacted by individuals formed
in a certain type of subjectivity; a subjectivity that is also framed in the
dominant structure of knowledge (Mignolo, 2005, p. 112). The cultural
group (in the U.S. -- Anglo-American) with the most money and the most
political power is also the dominant culture reproduced in the school
curriculum. Most of us (particularly if we not white) recognize that a racial
hierarchy exists and is maintained by the dominant cultural group (for
example, see Huntington, 2004). Cultural diversity in multicultural
education is often more a way to manage or contain difference while
maintaining the racial hierarchy. Multiculturalism only became an issue and
concept in education during the unsettling 60s, when ethnic groups labeled racial
minorities raised their voices demanding that the promises of modernity be made
available to them as well as to whites. Racism is not simply the result of individual
prejudice and hateful expressions, but the consequence of the relations of power
that are historical and structural. The power side of culture can be
conveniently neutralized in the classroom as teachers and students learn
about diversity without examining how these differences have been
constructed, how they are reproduced in the curriculum, and how these
constructions continue to serve the white power elite. In English classes for
example, students read works that movingly depict personal struggles against
discrimination, without gaining any sense of how English literature was used to
teach people their distance from the center of civilization (Willinsky, 1989, p. ).
Multicultural education needs to include the study of how five centuries of
studying, classifying, and ordering humanity within an imperial context gave rise to
peculiar and powerful ideas of race, culture, and nation that were, in effect,
conceptual instruments that the West used both to divide up and to educate the
world (Willinsky, 1989, pp. 2-3). Race, in other words, is a mental category of
modernity (Quijano, 2000, p. 536), created along with European colonization of the

Eurocentrism K
Americas and the emergence of capitalism in the Atlantic commercial circuit in the
sixteenth century. Modernity/coloniality came together in the sixteenth
century during the emergence of the Atlantic commercial circuit that
propelled an incipient European capitalism and charted the racial
geopolitical map of the world. Racial classification and the divisions and
control of labor are historically intertwined the two parts of colonial
matrix of power (Quijano, 1999; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992). Types of work,
incomes earned, and geographical location among the worlds population
today profoundly reflect this racial capitalist hierarchy and domination
the coloniality of power. Coloniality of power has been since the sixteenth
century and is still today an epistemic principle for classifying the non-European
world in relation to Europe on the principle of skin color and brain capacity (i.e., race
and rationality). Ethnicities (local community identities based on shared
knowledge, faith, language, memories, tastes etc.) have been racialized within
this modern matrix of power (Sardar, Nandy & Wyn Davies1993).
Multicultural education therefore should be understood and consequently
taught within the colonial horizon of modernity, since the sixteenth
century. Racism is a symptom of the persistence of coloniality of power
and the colonial difference.
One of the achievements of imperial reason was to affirm European or
white, Christian, male, heterosexual, American, as a superior identity by
constructing inferior identities and expelling them to the outside of the
normative sphere of the real (Mignolo, 2006). Cultural differences then would
be recognized as part of the colonial difference in the 500-year history of control
and domination by the white, European, heterosexual, Christian, male through the
intersection of race, religion, gender, class, nationality and sexuality. The
coloniality of power is a European imposed racial classification system
that emerged 500 years ago and expanded along with (is constitutive of)
the modern/colonial world capitalist-system. Race, class, gender, and
sexuality and religion intersect as hierarchical elements within the
modern/colonial capitalist system of classification and power relations.
Eurocentrism has empirically lead to the associate of race with

conceptions of class, intelligence and personality- this is the
ultimate unethical epistemology and must be rejected.
Kellecioglu, International economist, 10
(Deniz, International economist, Real-World Economics Review, issue no. 52, Why
some countries are poor and some rich a non-Eurocentric view,
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue52/whole52.pdf, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
For the colonisers, skin colours were one of the most important signifiers
for the status of a person (Loomba 2006). This is most visible when
considering the perspectives the British held towards Asians on one hand
and Africans on the other. The British held Africans so low in value that
they transported Indians and other Orientals to Africa to build necessary
infrastructure for the production and transportation of goods. The
Africans where believed not intelligent enough for the task. According to a
compilation presented by Floyd Dotson (1975) the number of Orientals in Africa was

Eurocentrism K
nearly one million people at the end of the colonial period in 1950s, spread mostly
in the British controlled southern and eastern parts of Africa. Even today, there are
significant numbers of people with Indian ancestry in these regions.
These perceptions, together with xenophobia and related prejudice,
received practical imprints through centuries of societal constructions,
stigmatisations and mistreatment during the process of colonial rule
around the world, but also within countries in Europe and NeoEurope
during and after colonial times (there are of course numerous studies on this
subject, perhaps the most assessable one is Fredrichson 2002 and 2003). Together
these forces created and augmented ethnic related rifts in socioeconomic
standards around the world.
This is the point in which everything that isnt white, male,

European, and human is permanently devalued to always be
inferior.
Parallel to the historical relations between capital and precapital, a similar set of
ideas was elaborated around the spatial relations between Europe and non-Europe.
As I have already mentioned, the foundational myth of the Eurocentric
version of modernity is the idea of the state of nature as the point of
departure for the civilized course of history whose culmination is
European or Western civilization. From this myth originated the specifically
Eurocentric evolutionist perspective of linear and unidirectional movement and
changes in human history. Interestingly enough, this myth was associated with
the racial and spatial classification of the worlds population. This
association produced the paradoxical amalgam of evolution and dualism, a
vision that becomes meaningful only as an expression of the exacerbated
ethnocentrism of the recently constituted Europe; by its central and dominant place
in global, colonial/modern capitalism; by the new validity of the mystified ideas of
humanity and progress, dear products of the Enlightenment; and by the validity of
the idea of race as the basic criterion for a universal social classification of the
worlds population. The historical process is, however, very different. To start with,
in the moment that the Iberians conquered, named, and colonized America
(whose northern region, North America, would be colonized by the British
a century later), they found a great number of different peoples, each with
its own history, language, discoveries and cultural products, memory and
identity. The most developed and sophisticated of them were the Aztecs,
Mayas, Chimus, Aymaras, Incas, Chibchas, and so on. Three hundred years
later, all of them had become merged into a single identity: Indians. This
new identity was racial, colonial, and negative . The same happened with

Eurocentrism K
the peoples forcefully brought from Africa as slaves: Ashantis, Yorubas, [End
Page 551] Zulus, Congos, Bacongos, and others. In the span of three hundred
years, all of them were Negroes or blacks. This resultant from the history
of colonial power had, in terms of the colonial perception, two decisive
implications. The first is obvious: peoples were dispossessed of their own
and singular historical identities. The second is perhaps less obvious, but no
less decisive: their new racial identity, colonial and negative, involved the
plundering of their place in the history of the cultural production of
humanity. From then on, there were inferior races, capable only of
producing inferior cultures. The new identity also involved their relocation in the
historical time constituted with America first and with Europe later: from then on
they were the past. In other words, the model of power based on coloniality
also involved a cognitive model, a new perspective of knowledge within
which non-Europe was the past, and because of that inferior, if not always
primitive.

Eurocentrism K
Reject Racism
The endpoint of racism is dehumanization, endless military
aggression and environmental destruction, it impacts us all,
but by rejecting every instance of it we can begin to
systemically break it down
Barndt, Author and Co-director of Crossroads, 91
(Joseph R., Author and Pastor in the Bronx in New York City and co-director of
Crossroads, a ministry working to dismantle racism and build a multicultural church
and society, 1991, Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White
America, Google Books, Pages 155-156, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints
and limitations, ghettos and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all ,
people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as
the victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from
each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human
potential that God intends for us. The limitations imposed on people of color
by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and
unjust ; the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed, which are the
marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also
seen that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to
an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom. Brick
by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and
cultural racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the
efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of
racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever
more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest
and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of
overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point
of no return. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population
derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of
color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
American influence means our racism is globally modeledrejection is key to stop global racism
Robinson, Lawyer, Author and Activist, 2k
(Randall Robinson, African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the
founder of TransAfrica, 2000, The Debt: What America owes to Blacks,
http://libgen.info/view.php?id=448737, Page 123, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
To many, the story may initially seem out of place because it is foreign. This is
hardly the case. The U nited S tates is so unprecedentedly powerful that it
can be best understood ( even in its domestic race relations ) when

Eurocentrism K
observed from without. Those who run America and benefit materially
from its global hegemony regard the world as one place. So, then, must
those around the globe who are subject to Americas overwhelming social
and economic influence. American racism is not merely a domestic social
contaminant but a principal American export as well. The very notion of
the nation-state has become little more than a convenient legal fiction
or hiding place for anonymous and rapacious interests.

Eurocentrism K
Racism Dehumanizing
Racism is the ultimate form of dehumanization and denial of
personal freedom
Feagin, U.S. Sociologist and Social Theorist, 2k
(Joe, U.S. sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on
racial and gender issues, especially in regard to the United States., 2000, Racist
America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, Google books, Page 20,
Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
The alienation of oppression extends to other areas. In the case of black
Americans, that which should most be their owncontrol over life and workis
that which is most taken away from them by the system of racism. There is a
parallel here to the alienation described by analysts of class and gender
oppression. In Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism, the workers' labor, that which is
most their own, is that which is most taken away from their control by the capitalist
employer. The worker is separated from control over, and thus alienated
from, his or her work. In addition, feminist theorists have shown that at the
heart of a sexist society is an alienating reality of dehumanized sexuality.
Women are separated by sexism from control over how their own sexuality is
defined.is To lose significant control over one's own life choices, body definition,
future, and even self is what subordination imposes. Thus, racial oppression
forces a lifelong struggle by black Americans, as a group and as
individuals, to attain their inalienable human rights. Dehumanization is
systemic racism's psychological dynamic, and racialized roles are its
social masks. Recurring exploitation, discrimination, and inequality
constitute its structure, and patterns such as residential segregation are
its spatial manifestations.

Eurocentrism K
No Solvency
Eurocentric mirror that distorts the lens in which we view the
world means should be suspect of all aff claims
Furthermore, the new radical dualism was amalgamated in the eighteenth

century with the new mystified ideas of progress and of the state of
nature in the human trajectory: the foundational myths of the Eurocentric version of modernity. The peculiar dualist/evolutionist historical
perspective was linked to the foundational myths. Thus, all non-Europeans could be
considered as pre-European and at the same time displaced on a certain historical
chain from the primitive to the civilized, from the rational
totheirrational,fromthetraditionaltothemodern,fromthemagic-mythic to the scientific.
In other words, from the non-European/pre-European to something that in time will
be Europeanized or modernized. Without considering the entire experience of
colonialism and coloniality, this intellectual trademark, as well as the long-lasting
global hegemon yof Eurocentrism, would hardly be explicable. The necessities of
capital as such alone do not exhaust, could not exhaust, the explanation of the
character and trajectory of this perspective of knowledge. Eurocentrism and
Historical Experience in Latin America The Eurocentric perspective of
knowledge operates as a mirror that distorts what it reflects, as we can
see in the Latin American historical experience. That is to say, what we
Latin Americans find in that mirror is not completely chimerical, since we
possess so many and such important historically European traits in many
material and intersubjective aspects. But at the same time we are
profoundly different. Consequently, when we look in our Eurocentric
mirror, the image that we see is not just composite, but also necessarily
partial and distorted. Here the tragedy is that we have all been led, knowingly or
not, wanting it or not, to see and accept that image as our own and as belonging to
us alone. In this way, we continue being what we are not. And as a result we can
never identify our true problems, much less resolve them, except in a partial and
distorted way.
Only a rejection of Eurocentric epistemologies will create

change in Latin America. It is the only barrier to resolving
structural problems.

Eurocentrism K
The Eurocentric perspective of knowledge operates as a mirror that
distorts what it reflects, as we can see in the Latin American historical
experience. That is to say, what we Latin Americans find in that mirror is not
completely chimerical, since we possess so many and such important
historically European traits in many material and inter subjective aspects.
But at the same time we are profoundly different. Consequently, when we look in
our Eurocentric mirror, the image that we see is not just composite, but
also necessarily partial and distorted. Here the tragedy is that we have all
been led, knowingly or not, wanting it or not, to see and accept that image
as our own and as belonging to us alone. In this way, we continue being
what we are not. And as a result we can never identify our true problems,
much less resolve them, except in a partial and distorted way.

Eurocentrism K
No Solvency Economic Development

Policies which support development fail addressing
Eurocentric hierarchies is key to effective decision calculus
Rhodd, Florida Atlantic University Economics Professor, 96
(Rupert G. Rhodd, April 7, 2013, Westernizing the Third World: The Eurocentricity of
Economic Development Theories Review, Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 63, No.
2, pg. 548, JSTOR, Accessed 7-4-13, EK)
The study revolves around three ideas: 1) mainstream economics has
produced flawed theories of economic development for Third World
countries 2) flawed theories that are imported from the West lack fit and
are biased and as such tend to distort Third World development and 3)
western theorists have ignored the basic flaws in their theories by
insisting on models involving perfect competition and rational (western)
behavior.
Throughout the book the author tries to show that the Eurocentricity of economic
theories and economic development based on these theories is nothing
more than an effort to westernize Third World countries. In chapter 1 the
author defines the westernizing problem as arising from the culture-bias of
mainstream economics which favors capital and capita-rich countries. In
chapter 2 he dismisses Ricardo's theory as being objective, claiming instead that
Ricardo's theory along with theories by Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith were
designed to expand the wealth of England. In chapter 3 the author recounts the
process of westernization through "western educated Third World
leaders," whom he describes as "admirers of the mystique of the West,"
and he also dismisses Arthur Lewis's model as being beneficial to Third World
countries because it depended on capital imported from the West. In chapters 4
through 6 the author looks at the postwar period and identifies macroeconomic
models as developed from experience and realities in the West to solve western
problems. The author claims that attempts by the New International Economic Order
to bring about economic development were unsuccessful because there was a lack
of unity among countries in the South. In general, the author felt that because
economic development in the Third World is based on a European centered
world-view, the interest of Europeans is often pursued at the expense of
the population in Third World countries.

Eurocentrism K
No Solvency - Economy Advantages

Eurocentrism locks in economic inequities
Miguel, Universidad Federal de Rondonia International
relations Professor, 9
(Vinicius Valentin Raduan Miguel, August 4, 2009, Political Affairs, Colonialism and
Underdevelopment in Latin America, http://www.politicalaffairs.net/colonialism-andunderdevelopment-in-latin-america/, accessed July 4, 2013, EK)
Generally speaking, Latin America has shown economic growth, although the social
structure imposed colonialism has been perpetuated. The region is extremely
unequal, with one of the worst income distributions of the world.
The explanation for this is that the initial degree of inequality, initiated with the
long process of fragmentation of local pre-capitalist and autonomous societies,
followed by the enslavement of traditional indigenous populations, the
transference of African slaves to the continent and, finally, the hyperexploitation of the free (or recently liberated) working class is still affecting
the actual development.
The legacy of the colonial times - the concentration of power, wealth and
land - led to a stratified society with an extreme inequality. The
discrimination and oppression present in those hierarchical societies are
the main inheritance of the former colonies and are a persistent tragedy,
being part of the unsolved questions of the recent past.
Conclusions
The argument that colonialism as an external imposition is the only
determinant for the actual socioeconomic situation in former colonies is
certainly not convincing: we have to take in account the role of local elites
who have benefited from those exploitative relations.
Colonialism is part of the historical process and formation of these countries. The
contemporary economies are debilitated for the following main reasons:
a) The agro-export oriented economies gave the general contours to the
colonized production, forestalling attempts at industrialization and import
substitution;
b) The agrarian structure excluded a majority from the access to the land
and privileged a non-intensive production;
c) Concentration of income, poverty and inequality impeded the creation
of internal consumption; d) the internal dynamics of the ruling classes
haven't facilitated savings, (re)investments and innovation in the national
economy.
Finally, the geography (or how it was appropriated by the colonial powers)
gave an incentive for easy exploitation of natural resources (a necessary
input to production), shaping the patterns of occupation and depopulation of the colony.
The actual development policy of Latin American countries has focused on
the exportation of agricultural products, repeating old economic patterns.
The monoculture is mystified under the label of diversification of products.
The impacts are more environmental destruction and (re)concentration of land in
favor of big and old landowners. Low cost labor is once more a comparative

Eurocentrism K
advantage in international trade, now called "competitive" costs in the
globalized world.

Eurocentrism K
Turns Case - Instability

Even if the Aff wins 100% of the truth claims of their impacts
we will still win root cause, the only instability in Latin America
stems from racial homogenization justified by Eurocentrism.
The process of the racial homogenization of a societys members,
imagined from a Eurocentric perspective as one characteristic and condition of
modern nation-states, was carried out in the countries of the Southern Cone
not by means of the decolonization of social and political relations among
the diverse sectors of the population, but through a massive elimination
of some of them (Indians) and the exclusion of others (blacks and564
Nepantla mestizos). Homogenization was achieved not by means of the
fundamental democratization of social and political relations, but by the
exclusion of a significant part of the population, one that since the sixteenth
century had been racially classified and marginalized from citizenship and
democracy. Given these original conditions, democracy and the nation-state
could not be stable and firmly constituted. The political history of these
countries, especially from the end of the 1960s until today, cannot be explained
at the margins of these determinations.30

Eurocentrism K
AT: US Not Imperialist

Every Empire claims distinction, but relies on same colonial
patterns of Otherization and violence
3
Without a well-organized sense that these people over there were not like
"us" and didnt appreciate "our" valuesthe very core of traditional
Orientalist dogmathere would have been no war. So from the very same
directorate of paid professional scholars enlisted by the Dutch conquerors
of Malaysia and Indonesia, the British armies of India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, West
Africa, the French armies of Indochina and North Africa, came the American
advisers to the Pentagon and the White House, using the same clichs,
the same demeaning stereotypes, the same justifications for power and
violence (after all, runs the chorus, power is the only language they understand) in
this case as in the earlier ones. These people have now been joined in Iraq by a
whole army of private contractors and eager entrepreneurs to whom shall be
confided every thing from the writing of textbooks and the constitution to the
refashioning of Iraqi political life and its oil industry. Every single empire in its
official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its
circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring
order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still,
there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign
or altruistic empires. Twenty-five years after my books publication Orientalism once
again raises the question of whether modern imperialism ever ended, or whether it
has continued in the Orient since Napoleons entry into Egypt two centuries ago.
Arabs and Muslims have been told that victimology and dwelling on the
depredations of empire is only a way of evading responsibility in the present. You
have failed, you have gone wrong, says the modern Orientalist. This of course is
also V.S. Naipauls contribution to literature, that the victims of empire wail on while
their country goes to the dogs. But what a shallow calculation of the imperial
intrusion that is, how little it wishes to face the long succession of years through
which empire continues to work its way in the lives say of Palestinians or Congolese
or Algerians or Iraqis. Think of the line that starts with Napoleon, continues with the
rise of Oriental studies and the takeover of North Africa, and goes on in similar
undertakings in Vietnam, in Egypt, in Palestine and, during the entire twentieth
century in the struggle over oil and strategic control in the Gulf, in Iraq, Syria,
Palestine, and Afghanistan. Then think of the rise of anti-colonial nationalism,
through the short period of liberal independence, the era of military
coups, of insurgency, civil war, religious fanaticism, irrational struggle and
uncompromising brutality against the latest bunch of "natives." Each of
these phases and eras produces its own distorted knowledge of the other,
each its own reductive images, its own disputatious polemics.

Eurocentrism K
Alts

Eurocentrism K
Rejection Key
Must reject the Aff - Eurocentrism sweeps these impacts under
the rug. Their world becomes self-contained leading to the
forced subjugation of entire populations.
7/5/13, JB)
Spivak argues that once the version of a self-contained Western world is
assumed, its production by the imperialist project is ignored (86). Through
these visions, the crisis of European historyassumed as universal
becomes the crisis of all history. The crisis of the metanarratives of the
philosophy of history, of the certainty of its laws, becomes the crisis of the future as
such. The crisis of the subjects of that history turns into the dissolution of all
subjects. The disenchantment of a Marxist generation that experienced in its own
flesh the political and theoretical collapse of Marxism and socialism and lived
through the existential trauma of the recognition of the gulag evolves into universal
skepticism and the end of collective projects and politics. This justifies a cool
attitude of noninvolvement, where all ethical indignation in the face of
injustice is absent. In reaction to structuralism, economism, and
determinism, the discursive processes and the construction of meanings
are unilaterally emphasized. Economic relations and all notions of
exploitation disappear from the cognitive map. The crisis of the political
and epistemological totalizing models leads to a withdrawal toward the
partial and local, rendering the role of centralized political, military, and
economic powers opaque. The Gulf War thus becomes no more than a grand
show, a televised superproduction. For these perspectives, the crisis is not of
modernity as such, but of one of its constitutive dimensions: historical reason
(Quijano 1990). Its other dimension, instrumental reason (scientific and
technological development, limitless progress, and the universal logic of the
market), finds neither criticism nor resistance. History continues to exist only in
a limited sense: the underdeveloped countries still have some way to go
before reaching the finish line where the winners of the great universal
competition toward progress await them. It seems a matter of little
importance that the majority of the worlds inhabitants may never reach
that goal, due to the fact that the consumer patterns and the levels of
material well-being of the central countries are possible only as a
consequence of an absolutely lopsided use of the resources and the
planets carrying capacity.

Eurocentrism K
Paradigm Shift Key

Alternative epistemologies need to shift from a narrative of
fixing Latin America to one of critical analysis. We cannot just
attribute the problems that we face in Latin America to buzz
words of colonialism and imperialism, but rather we need to
challenge the way we tie it to the history of Europe.
Shifting from narratives that emphasize progress toward ones that
emphasize cross-cultural interactions opens many possibilities; not only
does it decenter Europe, but it also moves beyond narratives that
measure significance by traditional standards of influence and
acknowledges the agency (and not just the victimization) of Latin American
societies and peoples. It is not that the traditional themesconquest and
colonization, slavery, racism, wars of independence, nation building,
imperialism and neocolonialism, economic development and dependency, and
twentieth-century revolutions and social movements are misguided. Rather,
the challenge is to rethink how we discuss these themes in ways that
include Latin America as more than a mere appendage of Europe (and later,
the United States) and as more than the hapless victim of conquest and
exploitation. Although the spread of European power was profoundly
disruptive and violent, it was never simply imposed from outside; rather, it
always involved complex negotiations with and among local elites and populations,
who pursued their own agendas and formulated their own visions in their
engagement with European actors and culture. The story of Latin Americas
integration into the global sphere is the story of gradual absorption and
contestation of Western power into the fabric of local, daily life. Conversely,
as the work of Anthony Pagden and others has demonstrated, the New World left a
deep and lasting imprint on European culture.6

Eurocentrism K
Unthinking Solvency
Only unthinking Eurocentrism can solve
97
Mingling discursive history with textual analysis, speculative theoretical essay with
critical survey, Unthinking Eurocentrism addresses diverse disciplinary
constituencies. While recognizing the specificity of film/media, we also grant
ourselves a "cultural studies"-style freedom to wander among diverse disciplines,
texts, and discourses, ancient and contemporary, low and high. As a disciplinary
hybrid, the book develops a syncretic, even cannibalistic methodology. Its
overall architectonics move from past to future, from didacticism to
speculation, from hegemony to resistance, and from critique to
affirmation. (Within "critique," we would add, there is also "celebration," just as
within "celebration" there is buried a "critique.") Our purpose is not globally to
endorse, or globally condemn, any specific body of texts; the point is only
to become more historically informed and artistically nuanced readers of
cultural practices. Unthinking Eurocentrism is therefore not structured as
an inexorable linear movement toward a prescriptive conclusion. The
overall "argument" concerning Eurocentrism is not stated baldly and explicitly, but
worked out slowly, over the course of the book. Diverse leitmotifs are woven into
the various chapters, creating a kind of musical echo effect whereby the same
theme emerges in different contexts. If "The Imperial Imaginary" (chapter 3)
stresses the colonialist writing of history, "The Third Worldist Film" (chapter 7)
stresses the "writing back" performed by the ex-colonized. Such themes as the
critique of Eurocentric paradigms, the elaboration of a relational methodology, the
search for alternative esthetics, and the interrogation of the diverse "posts,"
meanwhile, structure the text throughout. Some themes that appear first in a
colonialist register - hybridity, syncretism, mestizaje, cannibalism, magic later reappear in a liberatory, anticolonialist register, so that the diverse
sections reverberate together thematically.
Only unthinking Eurocentrism solves- thats key to solve other

forms and methods of exclusion
97

Eurocentrism K
Our title, Unthinking Eurocentrism, has a double thrust that structures the
book as a whole. On the one hand, we aim to expose the unthinking,
taken-for-granted quality of Eurocentrism as an unacknowledged current,
a kind of bad epistemic habit, both in mass-mediated culture and in
intellectual reflection on that culture. In this sense, we want to clear
Eurocentric rubble from the collective brain. On the other, we want to "unthink"
Eurocentric discourse, to move beyond it toward a relational theory and
practice. Rather than striving for "balance," we hope to "right the
balance." Eurocentric criticism, we will argue, is not only politically
retrograde but also esthetically stale, flat, and unprofitable. There are
many cognitive, political, and esthetic alternatives to Eurocentrism; our
hope is to define and illuminate them. Unthinking Eurocentrism is not a
politically correct book. The very word, "correctness," in our view, comes with a bad
odor. On the one (right) hand, it smells of Crusoe's ledger book, of manuals of
etiquette and table manners, and even of the bookkeeping of the Inquisition and the
Holocaust. On the other (left) hand, it has the odor of Stalinist purism, now
transferred to a largely verbal register. The phrase "political correctness" (PC)
evokes not only the neoconservative caricature of socialist, feminist, gay,
lesbian, and multiculturalist politics but also a real tendency within the
left - whence its effectiveness. Amplifying the preexisting association of
the left with moralistic self-righteousness and puritanical antisensuality,
the right wing has portrayed all politicized critique as the neurotic
effluvium of whiny malcontents, the product of an uptight subculture of morbid
guilt-tripping. But if "political correctness" evokes a preachy, humorless austerity,
the phrase "popular culture" evokes a sense of pleasure. Thus an underlying
question in Unthinking Eurocentrism is the following: given the eclipse of
revolutionary metanarratives in the postmodern era, how do we critique the
dominant Eurocentric media while harnessing its undeniable pleasures? For our
part, we are not interested in impeccably correct texts produced by irreproachable
revolutionary subjects. Indeed, a deep quasi-religious substratum underlies the
search for perfectly correct political texts. In this sense, we would worry less about
incorrectness (a word suggesting a positivist updating of "sin"), stop searching for
perfectly correct texts (patterned after the model of the Janonical sacred word), stop
looking for perfect characters (modeled on impeccable divinities and infallible
popes), and assume instead imperfection and contradiction. Congruent with our
double thrust, we will deploy a double operation of critique and celebration, of
dismantling and rebuilding, of critiquing Eurocentric tendencies within dominant
discourse while celebrating the transgressive utopianism of multicultural texts and
practices. We do not mean "utopia" in the sense of scientistic "blueprint" Utopias or
totalizing metanarratives of progress, but rather in the sense of "critical Utopias"
which seek what Tom Moylan calls "seditious repression of social change" carried on
in a "permanently open process of envisioning what is not yet."15 Rather than
constructing a purist notion of correct texts or immaculate sites of resistance, we

Eurocentrism K
would propose a positively predatory attitude which seizes esthetic and pedagogic
potentialities in a wide variety of cultural practices, finding in them germs of
subversion that can "sprout" in an altered context. Rather than engaging in a
moralistic, hectoring critique, our hope is to point to the exuberant possibilities
opened up by critical and polycentric multiculturalism.

Eurocentrism K
Decolonizing Knowledge
Decolonial knowledge production is key to solve
Baker, Professor of Education and Human Development at the
(Michael, October 31 - November 4, , American Educational Studies Association,

Annual Conference Seattle, Washington, Decolonial Education: Meanings, Contexts,
and Possibilities,
What do decoloniality and decolonial education mean? Where does this
movement come from? What are the key ideas that underlie and comprise
decolonial education? What does decolonial education look like in practice?
My presentation will introduce a decolonial perspective on modernity and sketch the
implications of this perspective for rethinking modern education beyond the
epistemological boundaries of modernity. The overall argument can be seen as
an attempt to reveal, critique, and change the modern geopolitics of
knowledge, within which modern western education first emerged and
remains largely concealed. Decoloniality involves the geopolitical
reconceptualization of knowledge. In order to build a universal conception
of knowledge, western epistemology (from Christian theology to secular
philosophy and science) has pretended that knowledge is independent of the
geohistorical (Christian Europe) and biographical conditions (Christian white
men living in Christian Europe) in which it is produced. As a result, Europe
became the locus of epistemic enunciation, and the rest of the world
became the object to be described and studied from the European
perspective. The modern geopolitics of knowledge was grounded in the
suppression of sensing and the body, and of its geo-historical location. The
foundations of knowledge were and remain territorial and imperial. The
claims to universality both legitimate and conceal the colonial/imperial relations of
modernity (Mignolo, 2011). Decolonial education is an expression of the
changing geopolitics of knowledge whereby the modern epistemological
framework for knowing and understanding the world is no longer
interpreted as universal and unbound by geohistorical and bio-graphical
contexts. I think therefore I am becomes I am where I think in the body- and
geo-politics of the modern world system (Mignolo, 2011). The idea that
knowledge and the rules of knowledge production exist within sociohistorical relationships between political power and geographical space
(geopolitics) shifts attention from knowledge itself to who, when, why, and
where knowledge is produced (Mignolo, 2011). The universal assumptions
about knowledge production are being displaced, as knowledge is no longer coming
from one regional center, but is distributed globally. From this recognition of the
geo and body politics of knowledge, education, including the various
knowledge disciplines that comprise education and knowledge of
education, can be analyzed and critiqued with questions such as: who is the
subject of knowledge, and what is his/her material apparatus of enunciation?; what
kind of knowledge/understanding is he/she engaged in generating, and why?; who is

Eurocentrism K
benefiting or taking advantage of particular knowledge or understanding?; what
institutions (universities, media, foundations, corporations) are supporting and
encouraging particular knowledge and understanding? (Mignolo, 2011, p. 189).
Decolonial thinking and writing first emerged in the initial formations of modernity
from the experiences of and responses to European colonization in the Andean
regions during the sixteenth century. The colonial context created a betweeness of
cosmologies for the colonized. This consciousness of being between cultures within
a dominant culture is the central feature of decolonial thought -- thinking from the
borders created by a totalizing cosmology associated with European modernity. For
example, the sixteenth century writings of Waman Puma de Ayala focused on ways
to preserve Aymara and Kechua knowledge cultures and co-exist within the new
world order (Mignolo, 2005). Today, decolonization is used among indigenous
intellectuals around the world, where a variety of models of decolonial education
have emerged. Decolonial thinking about education is rooted in the violent
occlusion of ways of knowing and being among indigenous civilizations in
the Americas within the imposition of a new world order. The conquest of
the Americas meant the demolition of indigenous education and economic systems.
European Renaissance universities, for example, were soon transplanted across the
Atlantic that had no relation to the languages and histories of the native peoples.
Decoloniality solves- its the best way to break down other

negative form of exclusionary knowledge production- means
we control root cause
Baker, Professor of of Education and Human Development at
the University of Rochester, 12
The decolonial idea developed further during the Cold War from the
experiences of political decolonization and in the works of Afro and AfroCaribbean intellectuals and activists (Mignolo, 2011, p. 55). During the 1950s
and 1960s, a decolonial movement emerged among leaders and
intellectuals from the global south opposing the reformulation of modern
colonialism/imperialism within the capitalist-communist power struggle.
The global political economy was analyzed as an asymmetrical system of
dependency, where the rising standards of living among the developed countries
were the result of resources and surplus extracted from the underdeveloped
countries. These insightful critiques of an interconnected political economic
system of poverty and wealth surfaced with the Bandung Conference of
1955, in which 29 countries from Asia and Africa came together to find a common
ground and vision beyond the capitalist-communist binary. Bandung was followed
by Belgrade where the conference of the Non-Aligned countries brought
several Latin American countries together with Asian and African
countries in 1961, the same year Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth was
published. The experience of political decolonization during the Cold War, along

Eurocentrism K
with the publication of seminal decolonial texts by the 1960s, led to the
realization that decolonization had to include the critique of the modern
western system of knowledge and understanding. In addition, the impact of
decolonization struggles in Asia and Africa, the emergence of dictatorial regimes in
South America, and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. all contributed to a major
transformation of the scholarly fields of study by the 1970s (Mignolo, 2011). In the
global south, the concern was the geopolitics of knowledge and decolonizing
imperial knowledge. In the U.S., the concern was the body-politics of
knowledge, as a new organization of knowledge and understanding came
into being, i.e., womens studies, ethnic studies, Chicano/Latino/a studies,
Native-American studies, African-American studies, Queer and AsianAmerican studies, etc. Body-politics refers to the individual and collective
biographical grounds of understanding and thinking (Tlostanova, 2010). Both
of these movements for decolonizing knowledge, emerging from different locations
and concerns, brought to the surface the recognition and critique of the geopolitics
of the modern knowledge regime. The relationship between geopolitics and
epistemology was the central theme that emerged in the decolonial
movements of the global south, while in the U.S., the questions centered on the
relationship between identity and epistemology (Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012, pp.
193-194).
Latin America is the starting point of Eurocentric knowledge

production

As a consequence of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., new spheres of
knowledge (e.g., ethnic studies, etc.) emerged which incorporated the
knower into the known (the collective memory of communities), and brought the
perspectives of the marginalized and dispossessed into the social sphere of
knowledge. These various new studies also introduced an alternative justification
of knowledge education for liberation from subjective and epistemic colonization
(Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012, pp. 193-194). Today, the massive migration occurring
in the U.S. has begun to connect with decolonial thinking processes that emerged
within these new spheres of knowledge. All of these various studies, combined
with an array of new conceptual tools no longer controlled by the
disciplines, provide the seeds for the decolonization of the humanities,
still firmly implanted within Eurocentric knowledge cultures (Tlostanova &
Mignolo, 2012, p. 34) From a decolonial perspective, Eurocentrism can be
understood as the ways the world has been interpreted and understood
(and taken for granted) through a structure of knowledge and system of
power relations that emerged with the colonization of the Americas and

Eurocentrism K
the formation of Europe as a geocultural identity distinct from Christendom.
The naming and mapping of the worlds continents for example, were
imperial/colonial inventions of Christian European thought that are now interpreted
as ontological realities. Eurocentrism is another name for the modern worldview
within which modern western education emerged and effectively reproduced since
the end of the Renaissance to the present. From this perspective, modernity is
interpreted as a regional narrative of a Eurocentric worldview (captured in term
Occidentalism) that was imposed upon the world under the guise of its universal,
rational, and beneficial nature (Coronil, 1997). Eurocentric modernity is a
thoroughly naturalized conceptual/narrative background horizon through
which the world continues to be known and lived today (Dirlik, 1999). The
call to decolonize knowledge and education is situated in the larger
framework of this critique of Eurocentrism. In the early 1990s, new
contributions to decolonial thinking converged among a group of Latin
American intellectuals with roots in some of the earlier intellectual
movements described above. Critically appropriating the modern worldsystem framework initiated by Immanuel Wallerstein in U.S. historical sociology,
the modern/colonial world system perspective developed a critique of the
civilizational model of modernity understood as a Eurocentric predatory project.
This decolonial critique of the modern world system is derived from
Latin American experiences of living under the hegemony of European
and North American thought and control over the past five hundred years.
According to this perspective, the modern world we are living in is a consequence of
the emergence and global expansion of a colonial/imperial project we have
mythically conceived as modernity or modern western civilization (Dussel, 1995).
Instead of viewing the emergence of European modernity as an endogenous
development that expanded outward, this post-Occidental perspective interprets
European identity and the invention of Occidental civilization as a consequence of
the complex interrelations between Europeans and the rest of the world in the initial
formation of the first worldwide system. Self-ascribed civilized European males from
within their newly sovereign territorial states became the managing centers and allknowing agents of this new system that connected the world together for the first
time and made human life dispensable. Contrary to our western educated,
helenocentric, Enlightenment oriented historical horizon, European modernity
emerged in part with the violent joining together of capitalism and colonialism in
the Atlantic commercial circuit along with the invention of a legitimating monocultural epistemological framework during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Decolonial thinking is the only way to solve

From this perspective, modern epistemology and the modern knowledge disciplines
and school subjects (modern western educational institutions overall) are

Eurocentrism K
interpreted as participating in a geocultural project of subjugation and control
oriented towards maintaining racialized hierarchical structures linked to the
capitalist system (Baker, 2012). Education in European cultural knowledge under
the guise that it is universal or the most advanced is pedagogical domination.
Despite decades and varieties of multiculturalism in education, modern schooling
continues to involve particular forms of cultural assimilation and intellectual
subjugation within a Eurocentric knowledge culture. Multiculturalism is based on
cultural diversity controlled by a mono-cultural epistemology. The occlusion of
non-western knowledge traditions in the standardized curriculum make
education an epistemically racist institution. Racism here is not a
classification of human beings according the color of their skin but rather a
classification according to a certain standard of humanity that originated in modern
natural law theory. The relevant argument for education is that the European
patterns of knowing and structures for organizing and learning about the world,
which began to develop during the sixteenth and seventeenth century inventions of
humanity, made the world unknowable beyond this Eurocentric horizon for knowing
and being. The modern versus traditional dichotomy for example is still commonly
used in education as well as the social sciences and humanities. Knowledge of
human beings is contained within a unilateral and oppressive structure that cannot
be adequately understood from within its own conceptual/narrative of the modern
Eurocentric intellectual tradition (Osamu, 2006, p. 270). The control of knowledge
and subjectivity through Eurocentric education and the traditionalizing of nonEuropean knowledges made both imperial territorial state formation within Europe
as well as European colonial domination possible. This critique of modernity as
mutually constituted with coloniality calls for the epistemic delinking from
modernity along with the inclusion of non-western knowledges in the
socialization of subjectivities -- a shift from universal to pluriversal forms
of knowledge and education. Decolonial education therefore involves
opening up the possibilities of teaching and learning subaltern
knowledges positioned on the margins or borders of modernity.
Decoloniality is an epistemic, ethical, political and pedagogical project
that involves both the denaturalization of the modern civilizational
cosmology and the inclusion of non-modern systems and principles of
knowledge and categories of thought. Decolonial education aims to
demythologize the two principle founding myths of modernity that history of
human civilization is a trajectory that departed from the state of nature and
culminated in Europe, and that differences between Europe and non-Europe are
natural (racial) differences and not consequences of power (Quijano, 2000).
Decolonial education involves learning to unlearn in order to relearn (Tlostanova &
Mignolo, 2012).
Decoloniality is the only way to solve


Eurocentrism K
Two interrelated projects for decoloniality are the re-embodiment and relocation of
thought in order to unmask the limited situation of modern knowledges and their
links to coloniality (Mignolo, 2012, p. 19). A second project involves an-other
thinking that calls for plurality and intercultural dialogue in the building of
decolonial futures. The ultimate aim of this pluriversal movement is the creation of
a transmodern world where many different worlds can coexist without an imposed
assimilation ethos into a dominant culture. A pluriversal education is an
alternative to the current educational system of
assimilation/marginalization into a universalized cultural project .
Decoloniality is an epistemic revolution that seeks to change the
foundational concepts and priorities of the modern western episteme and
its main institutions such as education . A central theme in decolonial
education is the equal recognition and democratic and pragmatic inclusion
of the epistemological diversity of the world. Social justice necessarily
requires cognitive justice, while cognitive justice requires dialogue. Genuine
dialogue can only begin with a rearticulated relation with modernitys Other.
Starting from the silenced histories and experiences of the colonized, decolonial
thinking involves both the colonized and colonizers, and the working out of new
kinds of interrelationships that involve dialogue and the creation of symmetrical
power/knowledge relations. Deimperialization and decolonization are two
interrelated sides of the educational processes of transforming the dominant forms
of self-other understanding within modernity (Chen, 2010). The task for
imperializing countries is to examine the conduct, motives, and consequences of
imperialist history that has formed their own self-understandings (Chen, 2010, p. 4).
Deimperialization involves a radical questioning of the mode of living and knowing
implicated in the very idea of European or American. Unlearning imperial privilege
involves authentic dialogue with the subaltern. Authentic dialogue calls for the
recognition that our identities and differences are not ontological categories but
relational constructions within the colonial matrix of power. Decolonial education
raises and attempts to address questions of transformation, such as, how
can education at the cultural and psychological levels contribute to the
processes of deimperialization and decolonization? How can teachers learn
to teach beyond the distorted cultural/historical imaginary and
impoverished subjectivity of the modern horizon of thought where
everything is hierarchically ranked according to Eurocentric concepts,
standards, and assumptions? What kinds of worldviews could schools
promote along with what kinds of epistemologies? How can different and
incompatible knowledge traditions be joined together in the classroom for
learning about the world, oneself, and others? All of these questions and more
involve forms of interpretation where the plurality of perspectives and diversity of
forms of self-understanding are recognized, adequately translated, understood, and
included in open and non-hierarchical dialogical relations. Academic subjects would
be taught geo-historically and bio-graphically, (where, when, who, why), in order to
understand the links between knowledge, culture, and geohistorical locations the
geopolitics of knowledge. A course in modern science and knowledges of nature for
example might be organized around the history of energy from the 19th century to

Eurocentrism K
the present. Teachers and students would learn to recognize the power
relations intertwined with modern knowledge, or how school subjects and
knowledge disciplines are embedded within the body and geo-politics of
the modern world order. Modernity/(de)coloniality is an alternative
macro-narrative to Eurocentric modernity that can orient an intercultural
curriculum within a pluriversal ethos grounded in historical experiences.
Modernity/(de)coloniality is an epistemic and macro-narrative shift in the modern
interpretive horizon that includes the experiences and knowledge of those who have
been marginalized within modernity. This is not a new abstract universality, but an
opening up to and learning from the pluri-versality eclipsed by the projections of
Euro-American universality over the past five hundred years. Differences in ways of
knowing and being are universal or world-wide, and education, if it claims to be
about learning and understanding the real world, should not be contained by one
dominant cultural projection that delimits learning about ourselves and the world for
violent instrumental global designs (Jensen, 2006).

Eurocentrism K
Latin America Alternative Term

The history behind the term Latin America should not be
forgotten, it homogenizes the identities of everyone home to
and now living there. We endorse the phrase Afro-indoiberoamrica as an inclusive and historically conscious term.
Humanities, 4
Only fifteen years after the discovery (or its conventional date) the term
America makes its appearance. In this moment it emerges next to words as
Europe, Asia, and Africa. Walter Mignolo underlines a central aspect in this process:
America, contrary to Asia and Africa, did not constitute the obvious otherness that
in the Christian map was associated to the three sons of Noah (Sem, Cam, and
Japheth). Instead, it was an extension of Japheth, the extreme west.23 That was its
place among the prevailing world conceptions. Once the denomination of
America became associated almost exclusively with the United States, we
find the appellatives of Ibero-America and Hispano-America. The first is a
geographical and cultural term: it alludes to the countries that were colonized by
Spain or Portugal. The second is a linguistic and cultural concept that refers to the
set of countries where Spanish is spoken and that were colonized by Spain.
Then we have Latin America, a name that can be traced to the nineteenth
century. Its consolidation cannot be understood outside the political and diplomatic
practices of mid-century France.24 This concept has to be seen as part of a
French project towards America that planned to counteract the United
States sphere of influence, and was articulated with the French invasion of
Mexico from 1861 to 1867: Napoleon the Third appealed to the Latinity of its
colonies in America as a way to stop the advances of the United States over the
Caribbean. The uses of the term underlined the racial as a way to fixate
the latin character of this part of America. They constantly claimed that the
Latin race had to stand together facing the Saxon race.25
Finally, it is interesting to recall an episode that took place in a Conference
of History in Madrid around a debate over the name of our continent: Saying
that the name Latin America was a French artifice; the Peruvian
delegates objected the name because it excluded the Indians, so Spaniards
accepted that it was fairer to call the region Indo-iberoamerica. Then, another
delegation pointed out that such a denomination seemed to exclude the
African population. Again, Spaniards recognized that, in fact, a better name
would be Afro-indo-iberoamerica. When the Haitian delegate raised his hand
to make another proposition to the Spanish commission, it was proclaimed that
Latin America was an unreal concept, but one that turned out extremely useful
and the discussion stopped.26
In brief, the name Latin America has become a cultural concept loaded not
only with history, but with conflicts, differences, homogenizations,
similarities, that speak about the complexity of a historical configuration

Eurocentrism K
that cannot be diluted in its thoughtless use as an analytical category or
just an intellectual tool. As Nestor Garca Canclini has shown, Latin America has
always been a hybrid construction, in which contributions from European
Mediterranean countries, Indigenous peoples, and African migrations have met.27
And this constitutive fusion enlarges with the English-speaking world. This is
demonstrated by the huge presence of immigrants and Latin cultural products in the
United States and the rest of the world.

Eurocentrism K
Perm Debate

Eurocentrism K
AT: Perm Do Both

Cannot simply add other knowledges, only the alt alone can
effectively challenge the foundations of colonial systems of
domination
Thought, jstor, accessed 7/7/13, sbl, p. 528-29)
It is not the same to assume that the historical patrimony of the social sciences is
merely parochial as to conclude that it is also colonial. The implications arc
drastically different. If our social-science heritage were just parochial,
knowledge related to Western societies would not need any questioning. It
would be enough to expand the reach of the experiences and realities to
be studied in other parts of the world. We could complete theories and methods of
knowledge which thus far have been adequate for some determined places and
times, but less adequate for others. The problem is a different one when we
conclude that our knowledge has a colonial character and is based upon
assumptions that imply and "naturalize" a systematic process of exclusion
and subordination of people based on criteria of class, gender, race,
ethnicity, and culture. This perspective introduces crude distortions not
only in knowing others, but also in the self-understanding of European and
northern societies.
To recognize the colonial character of the hegemonic forms of knowledge
in the contemporary world would imply more difficult and complex
challenges than those identified in The Gtdbenlfian Report. This knowledge is
intertwined in complex and inseparable manners in the articulations of
power of contemporary societies. Only a timid and partial dialogue with
other subjects and cultures would be achieved by incorporating into the
social sciences representatives of those subjects and cultures that were
once excluded. As is acknowledged in the report, this requires long learning and
socializing processes in certain truth-systems, at the end of which one could well
expect that only internal criticisms of the discipline would be likely. Given, for
example, the current demarcations of economics, there are limited possibilities for
the formulation, from within that discipline, of radically different alternatives to
mainstream liberal economics. Liberal cosmology (a conception of human nature, of
wealth, of the relationship of man to nature, of progress) is incorporated as a
fundamental metatheoretical premise in the disciplinary constitution of that field of
knowledge.
The achievement of effective intercultural, horizontal democratic
communications, noncolonial and thus free of domination, subordination,
and exclusion, requires a debate beyond the limits of the official
disciplines of modern sciences, open to dialogues with other cultures and other
forms of knowledge. Apart from epistemological rigidities and the
overwhelming burden of institutional and academic inertia, the main
obstacles are political. The possibilities for democratic communications

Eurocentrism K
are severely limited by the profound differences of power that exist today
between different cultures and between different peoples.
Perm fails normalizing the function of liberal society makes

any counterrevolution fail
Lander, Latin American Social Science Council, 2 (Edgardo,
Eurocentrism, Modern Knowledges, and the Natural Order of Global Capital
Nepantla: Views from South Volume 3, Issue 2, 2002, pg. 247
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nep/summary/v003/3.2lander.html, date accessed
7/4/13 IGM)
Third, by ignoring the colonial/imperial relationships between peoples and
culturesones that made the modern world-system possible Eurocentric
knowledge understands modernity to be an internal product of European
genius, owing nothing to the rest of the world (Coronil 1997, 2000). Similarly,
the current condition of the other peoples of the planet is seen as having
no connection to the colonial/imperial experience. Their present status of
backwardness and poverty is the result, rather, of insufficient capitalist
development. Instead of being seen as the products of modern experience,
such conditions are interpreted as being symptoms of the absence of
modernity. We are therefore dealing with a history that dehistoricizes and
conceals the constitutive relationships of the modern colonial worldsystem (Coronil 1997, 2000; Mignolo 2000a, 2000b; Quijano 2000).
Fourth, proceeding from the basic assumptions of Eurocentrism, liberal
society is assumed as the natural order of things. Once former primitive
or backward historical phases are overcome, the particular historical
experience of liberal capitalist society and the liberal worldview are
ontologized as the normal state of society. In this way, possessive
individualism (Macpherson 1970), the separation of the fields of collective life
(political, social, cultural, economic), and a conception of wealth and the good
life unilaterally associated with the accumulation of material goods
characteristic of liberal society are transformed into a universal standard
for judging the deficiencies, backwardness, or poverty of the rest of the
peoples and cultures of the planet.
It follows from the hegemony of this articulated body of assumptions that
the main transformational practices of the contemporary world including
the globalization of markets and of financial movement, the politics of
deregulation and opening, as well as structural adjustment and the dismantling
of state social policiesare simply adaptations to technological
transformations, or new conditions created for globalization. These
conditions are understood to be a new stage of modern or postmodern society.
Given the common sense established by the hegemony of liberal thought,
these practices are inevitably assumed to represent the course of natural
history. In the analyses and debates surrounding these practices, the players,
along with their interests, strategies, contradictions, and oppositions, disappear.
The most powerful effect of the naturalization of social practices is its
effectiveness in clouding the power relationships underlying the
hegemonic tendencies of globalization.

Eurocentrism K
Perm fails each policy towards the region serves to reinforce

Eurocentrism as dominant
Recent world history textbooks have been beefed up with additional pages
about peripheral regions in general, and Latin America in particular, but this
has not automatically rescued these areas from irrelevance. Even Peter
Stearns, who includes a lengthy chapter on twentieth-century Latin America in his
2002 edition of World History in Brief, concludes that the region has always
occupied a somewhat ambiguous place in world history. First, it does not
fit neatly into either Western or non-Western societies, but is better
seen as a syncretic civilization. Second, although Stearns judges that
continuing dependency makes Latin America a full participant in the world
economy, it participates not always influentially. Latin Americans have
generated neither dramatic cultural forms nor catastrophic military upheavals of
international impact. Nationalism and literary preoccupation with issues of
Latin American identity follows from a sense of being ignored and
misunderstood in the wider world.2 Somewhat apologetically, Stearns predicts
that the region will have an increasing international impact in the twenty-first
century thanks to its growing population, economic advances, and new cultural selfconsciousness. Indeed, in the United States (where the Hispanic population
has recently surpassed the African American population and continues to grow
rapidly), it is easy to make a case for expanded coverage of Latin America
in world history textbooks on the grounds of academic inclusion. Increasing
numbers of Hispanic students will demand to learn more about their
heritage, and other citizens of the United States will benefit from an awareness of
the culture of minority populations with whom they live and work. These are
important, but insufficient, reasons for increased coverage of the region in world
history courses. New chapters that make up for past omissions
compensatory history will accomplish little. Such additions are unlikely
to convince either skeptical instructors or overburdened students that the
new material is significant and thus worthy of much (or any) attention in
a crowded semester. Like new sections about women pasted into old
androcentric textbooks, such additions do not provoke a
reconceptualization of the story; thus, they do nothing to overcome the
marginalization of the history of Latin America in the field of world history.
Bringing back any previous method for studies of Latin

America will fail. Only completely rejecting these frameworks
allows for a new and fair assessment of how we view Latin
America

Eurocentrism K
Finally, it should go almost without saying that theoretical notions retrieved
from the attic of ideas and based on older, simpler understandings of
Latin America have no place in the new agenda. Outstanding theoretical
challenges can not be resolved by treating theory as fashion that can be
periodically recycled to dress up or to package research findings but as
otherwise irrelevant. The revival of frameworks that were rejected in the
past for sound reasons will merely postpone the process of theoretical
reconstruction while a new round of exorcism takes place. If theoretical
inspiration is to be sought outside of the contemporary Latin American context,
scholars would do well to expand their comparative horizons and consider the
extensive body of literature on modern European democracy. This literature
directs attention towards extant democratic realities as distinct from
future authoritarian possibilities, structural and institutional forces as
distinct from contingent leadership choices, comparative as distinct from
country-specific patterns of political change and stability, and theoretical
issues that call for rigorous empirical research rather than abstract
theorizing and intuition. Latin America deserves no less. It may even be the
case that the politics of the region resemble European politics more than they
resemble the politics portrayed in older theories about Latin America. The study of
Latin American politics will remain more backward than the realities it attempts to
describe and explain unless and until the theoretical rigor and methodological tools
expected of social science research elsewhere are applied to questions of political
change and stability.
The plague of Eurocentric knowledge implicates the entirety of

our knowledge base by constructing false binaries, this means
the Alt comes before all other action and you dont get the
perm
Alcoff, CUNY Philosopher, 7
(Linda Martn, Philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in
epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism,She is currently the
president of the APA, Eastern Division, 2007, Mignolos Epistemology of
Coloniality, http://waltermignolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Alcoff-Mignolo7.3.alcoff.pdf, Pages 86-87, Accessed 7/10/13, NC)
The fact that language, space, time, and history have all been colonized
through the colonization of knowledge must give us pause before we
borrow the founding concepts of Eurocentric thought, such as
center/periphery, tradition/modernity, and primitive/civilized, or the very
evaluative binary structure that grounds these. Mignolo develops Quijanos
concept of the coloniality of power, then, as a way to name that set of framing
and organizing assumptions that justify hierarchies and make it almost

Eurocentrism K
impossible to evaluate alternative claims. Why was it said that there were no
pre-Colombian books or forms of writing, when it was known that the codices had
been raided and burned in heaps? How could the claim that modernity represented
an expansion of freedom not be challenged by its development within the context of
colonialism? Why do we continue to conceptualize rationality as separate from and
properly in dominion over the realm of affect, a distinctly Greek and nonindigenous
notion, as Mariategui showed many decades ago? Why is it considered
sufficient, even exemplary, to have one Latin Americanist in a university
history department in the United States, when 5 or 10 or even 15
Europeanists are required? And in philosophy departments, it is not
necessary to have a single one.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Perm Do Both (Decolonizing Knowledge Alt)

Simply talking about colonialism or adding more scholars to
the discussion isnt enough. Debating about decolonization at
the level of knowledge production is key leads to academic
spill over
Foneseca and Jerrems, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
graduate students, 12
Melody, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, Ari, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid,
June 2012, Why Decolonise International Relations Theory?, Pg. 3-4,
http://academia.edu/1631024/Why_Decolonise_IR_theory, JB)
These scholars insist on the need to open a real debate about the
imperial, colonial and racist origins and legacies of the discipline. This
means decolonising any consensus regarding time, knowledge, and being
via a thorough confrontation with these issues. Shilliam in 'The perilous but
unavoidable terrain of the non-West"s affirms that modernity as a debate in IR is
"naturalized" by certain issues such as: the problem of continuity and change -that
is assigning different temporalities to non-Western societies-; the question of
secularism -starting with the idea that certain kinds of religiosities have disappeared
with modernity-; and the topic of race -that the aim to homogenize cultures led
to the creation of "meta-racialized identities". Sankaran Krishna identifies
what is the crux of the problem when she argues that IR theory is quintessential
white, "not because race disappears [but because it] serves as the crucial
epistemic silence around which the discipline is written and coheres."5 in
Decolonizing International Relations the main suggestion is that "to decolonize IR
theory is [...] to decolonize all the topics, since the discipline itself is
reproducing a "modern imperial ideology".' As Julian Saurin argues, "the
central historiographical battle is a political battle over ownership of the
means of production of memory and the definition of progress".5 it is
necessary to question not only the "neutrality" of history, but the
selection of events, characters, epochs, what is memorable and what is
not. The control over what is to be remembered is suppressed by what Krishna calls
the abstraction of the discipline "presented as the desire of the discipline to engage
on theory building rather than on descriptive or historical analysis, is a screen that
simultaneously rationalizes and elides the details of these encounters."9 To go
beyond that abstraction IR theory not only needs to deconstruct itself as a
reproducer of Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism, but also as a
discipline that continues to insist that '"the rest of the world" has
benefited [...] from the spread of the Wests civilizing values and
institutions [...]""' This natural acceptance of "Wests civilizing values and
institutions" and the "socialization of international norms" is the focus of intense
criticism. Addressing Kathryn Sikkin and Martha Finnemore's International
Organization, Robert Vitalis argues that the "acceptance" of international norms had
to hide that within an IR framework, white supremacy is constitutive of a set of
racist practices undertaken by states and individuals"."1 To counter this he
proposes Du Bois' color line as an initial approach to the study of racism as an
international institution. Vitalis understands that "his views on the 'race concepf

Eurocentrism K
expressed, over time, a growing understanding of what we now mean when we say
that the idea of race itself is a social construction".12
In summary, the decolonisation of IR may not simply be achieved by
including the histories of others or by adding certain scholars to the
mainstream. It must critique the Western canon's point of enunciation in
order to open a space for understandings from different comprehensions,
temporalities, spaces, concepts of governance, human rights and
democracy. On one hand, it must challenge modern international structures, while,
on the other hand, claim the means to produce knowledge, to dialogue about that
which has been excluded. Decolonial Thinking offers a number of valuable
tools to build on this critique. Here we will focus on one key elements; the
coloniality of power. We will address coloniality via three guiding questions. Firstly
(I), we will discuss coloniality and ask if the involvement of the whole world in
International Relations after decolonisation led to the decolonisation of power
relations. Secondly (II), we will analyse whether decolonisation has radically
changed the objectives of IR theory. Finally (III), to conclude, we will briefly discuss
how coloniality is still found in power relations in the Post-Cold War era.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Perm Doublebind

Inclusion of the plan disrupts the alternative, must refuse the
Aff as act is rupturing Eurocentric colonialism
Miguel, U of Glasgow Masters in Human Rights and
International Politics, 9
(Vinicius Valentin Raduan, Masters in Human Rights and International Politics,
University of Glasgow, 2009, Political Affairs, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in
Latin America, http://www.politicalaffairs.net/colonialism-and-underdevelopment-inlatin-america/, Accessed 7/5/13, IGM)
The argument that colonialism as an external imposition is the only determinant for
the actual socioeconomic situation in former colonies is certainly not convincing: we
have to take in account the role of local elites who have benefited from those
exploitative relations. Colonialism is part of the historical process and
formation of these countries. The contemporary economies are debilitated
for the following main reasons: a) The agro-export oriented economies gave
the general contours to the colonized production, forestalling attempts at
industrialization and import substitution; b) The agrarian structure excluded a
majority from the access to the land and privileged a non-intensive production; c)
Concentration of income, poverty and inequality impeded the creation of
internal consumption; d) the internal dynamics of the ruling classes
haven't facilitated savings, (re)investments and innovation in the national
economy. Finally, the geography (or how it was appropriated by the colonial
powers) gave an incentive for easy exploitation of natural resources (a
necessary input to production), shaping the patterns of occupation and depopulation of the colony. The actual development policy of Latin American
countries has focused on the exportation of agricultural products, repeating old
economic patterns. The monoculture is mystified under the label of diversification of
products. The impacts are more environmental destruction and
(re)concentration of land in favor of big and old landowners. Low cost
labor is once more a comparative advantage in international trade, now
called "competitive" costs in the globalized world. Years of development
studies demonstrated that there is not a model or "recipe" for progress and
modernization. A diversity of development policies are needed in order to face these
structural problems. The developmentalists in Latin America are ignoring a very
basic premise: any real attempt of development must focus on the rupture
of the old colonial legacy. Otherwise, social change will purely constitute
a perpetuation of actual unequal conditions .

Eurocentrism K
AT: Perm Universalism DA

The permutation is merely another form of Western
Universalism. This is a desire to destroy singularities. The
impact is racism and bare life.
7/5/13, JB)
Neoliberalism and postmodernism are two of the prevailing theoretical influences in
contemporary Latin American social sciences. From the point of view of the tensions
referred to earlier, neoliberalism has an unequivocal content. It is a
dogmatic reaffirmation of lineal conceptions of universal progress and the
imaginary of development. It assumes the central countries as models toward
which all must inexorably turn. Neoliberalism reaffirms a colonial perspective
in which the only significant subjects are those with roles in the
modernizing project: entrepreneurs, technocrats, middle-class neighborhood
associations, and other members of a mythological civil society. The indifference
toward others who cannot find a place in this utopia of market and liberal
democracy suggests the presence of vestiges of the fundamental racism
characteristic of all colonial thought. The most deplorable assumptions on the
sociology of modernization have been taken up with renewed devotion. From the
perspective of the imaginary of modernity, all differences are redefined as obstacles
to be overcome. On the other hand, such modern values as equity and autonomy
become archaic, obsolete. In this radicalization of Western universalism, all
historical singularity disappears. International financial experts can jump from
country to country and indistinctly advise Russia, Poland, or Bolivia on the virtues of
the market. Economics is a science; the places, people, and customs with which it
operates are accidents of minor importance compared to the universality of its
objective laws.

Eurocentrism K
Reform DA
The affirmative and the alternative are mutually exclusive. The
attempt of trying to combine reformation with American
intervention leads to serial social failure, oppression,
exploitation, and brutalization of populations
Trainer, U of New South Wales Conjoint Lecturer, 9
(Ted, Dr. Ted Trainer is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences,
University of New South Wales, 2009, Social Work, University of NSW, THE SIMPLER
WAY: WORKING FOR TRANSITION FROM CONSUMER SOCIETY TO A SIMPLER, MORE
COOPERATIVE, JUST AND ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY
http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/OUREMPIRE.htm, Accessed 7/5/13, JB)
Most importantly, revolutions can only be made by oppressed people.
Anyone who has the slightest understanding of social movements in
general and revolution in particular realises how extremely difficult it is to
get a revolution going. It was absurd for the Reagan administration to suggest
that Russian or Cuban agents could come into a Central American country and stir
up a revolution. It is amazing what oppressed, exploited and brutalised
people will continue to endure without attempting to hit back. In much of
Latin America people have put up with decades, even centuries, of the most
appalling treatment from exploitative and vicious ruling classes, without mounting
any significant threat to those regimes. Many attempts to initiate revolution
among people who have the most clear-cut reasons for hitting back have
failed to win significant support from the oppressed classes. If there is any
move whatsoever towards popular rebellion, let alone a successful people's
revolution, you can be sure that there has been a long history of enormous suffering
at the hands of a brutal and predatory ruling class. As Blasier (1983) says,
American leaders have not understood the fundamental causes of the
revolutions . . . Their most serious misperception has been that the U.S.S.R., acting
throughout the Communist parties or conspiratorial activities, actually caused social
revolution in Latin America. Chomsky and many others would argue that American
leaders understand the situation only too well. The weakness in Blasier's account is
its failure to recognise that these and other aspects of US foreign policy are not
mistakes, but deliberate and essential elements in the defence of the empire. It is
possible for subversive agents to enter a Third World country and organise a coup
without involving the people in general. The USA and the USSR have often been
involved in activities of this sort. But this is entirely different from a popular revolt.
As Blazier says, (p. 153), Governments cannot export revolution. The groups
who made most mileage out of the communist threat were the ruling classes of
the Third World, especially in Latin America. At the slightest hint of a call for social
justice or change that might impinge upon their interests they immediately cried
communists! Dissent of any kind was branded as communist subversion. This was
a marvellous mechanism for destroying challenges to their privileges, especially as
it usually guaranteed immediate and generous US support. Herman sums the
situation up neatly: Among Latin American elites, a peasant asking for a higher
wage or a priest helping organise a peasant cooperative is a communist. And
someone going so far as to suggest land reform or a more equitable tax system is a

Eurocentrism K
communist fanatic. Hence ... peasants trying to improve themselves, priests with
the slightest humanistic proclivities, and naturally anyone trying to change the
status quo, are communist ... evil, a threat to "security", and must be treated
accordingly. (Herman, 1982, p. l56.) As Chomsky (1986) says, The military
juntas adopt a free enterprise - blind growth model. ... Since free
enterprise-growth-profits-USA are good, anybody challenging these
concepts of their consequences is ipso facto a Communist-subversiveenemy. Hence ... any resistance to business power and privilege in the
interests of equity ... is a National Security and police problem ... From the
standpoint of the multinationals and latifundists, this is superb doctrine: reform is
equated with subversion. In the words of the Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Toriello,
any Latin American government that exerts itself to bring about a truly national
program which affects the interests of the powerful foreign companies, in whose
hands the wealth and the basic resources in large part repose in Latin America,
will be pointed out as Communist . . . and so will be threatened with
foreign intervention.

Eurocentrism K
Answers to:

Eurocentrism K
AT: Case Outweighs

Aff claims are not objectively true but rather incomplete,
self-serving claims within the closed loop of Eurocentric
knowledge
Thought, pg. 527-228
, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/summary/v001/1.3lander.html, Accessed
7/5/13, JB)
As the report points out, modern social sciences were developed in England, France,
Italy ,Germany ,and the United States and were meant to deal with the social reality
of those countries (Wallerstein 1996,23).From the fact that the rest of the world was
segregated to be studied by other disciplinesanthropology and orientalism (23
28)it is not possible, however, to conclude that those other territories, cultures,
and peoples were not present as an implicit reference in all the disciplines. The
separation between the studies of the modern European North Americans
and the rest is made on the basis of assumptions in relation to others,
assumptions that define them as essentially different. The superiority of
modern industrial societies is defined in contrast with the inferiority of the nonmodern.
The problem with Eurocentrism in the social sciences is not only that its
fundamental categories were created for a particular time and place and
later used in a more or less creative or rigid manner to study other
realities. The problem lies in the colonial imaginary from which Western
social sciences constructed its interpretation of the world. This imaginary
has permeated the social sciences of the whole world, making a great part
of the social knowledge of the peripheral world equally Eurocentric.7 In
those disciplines, the experience of European societies is naturalized: Its
economic organizationthe capitalist marketis the natural form of
organizing production. It corresponds to an individual universal
psychology (Wallerstein 1996,20). Its political organizationthe modern
European nation state is the natural form of political existence. The
different peoples of the planet are organized according to a notion of
progress: on one hand the more advanced, superior ,modern societies; on
the other, backward, traditional, nonmodern societies. In this sense,
sociology, political theory, and economics have not been any less colonial or less
liberal than anthropology or orientalism, disciplines where these assumptions have
been more readily acknowledged. This is the basis of the cognitive and
institutional network of development and of structural adjustment politics
promoted by The Washington consensus.8
It is a colonial system of knowledge that expresses and legitimizes the
modern colonial world-system. Europes dominating position in the world
structure of colonialism established a monopoly of the locus of
enunciation of objective, scientific knowledge about the modern world

Eurocentrism K
(Mignolo1995,329). It is a perspective with only one subject (white, European, with
the exclusion of every other subject and every other form or style of knowledge).
This leads to the naturalization of this power structure, which comes to be
explained as resulting from hierarchical differences in race, culture, or
other classifying systems, which always envision the modern West as the
maximum expression of human development. Any difference between the
cultural patterns of the hegemonic powers and the rest of the world is
seen as the expression of the intrinsic inferiority of all others, or as
hindrances to be supplanted (forcefully if necessary) through the European-led
civilizing or modernizing process. This system of knowledge has proved to
be long lasting and has outlived colonialism as a foundation of todays
worldwide hegemonic structure of power (Quijano 2000).

Eurocentrism K
AT: We Have Latin American Authors

The problem isnt about incorporating other authors, its about
allowing for other forms of knowledge production
7/5/13, JB)
The evaluation systems currently used for academics and universities, which take
the Mexican experience as a model, are another limited but significative indicator of
these trends, with potentially menacing consequences for the possibility of more
autonomous outlooks. Universalist criteria underlie these systems, according to
which the production of the universities in Latin America should follow the scientific
production of central countries as models of excellence. An expression of this is the
privileged consideration that is given in these systems of evaluation to publishing in
foreign scientific journals. Under the mantle of objectivity, what has in fact
been established is that the intellectual creation of social scientists in
Latin American universities should be ruled by the disciplinary frontiers,
truth systems, methodologies, problems, and research agendas of
metropolitan social sciences, as these are expressed in the editorial
policies of the most prestigious journals in each discipline. These
evaluation systems are thus designed to judge performance within
normal northern science. Strictly individualized evaluation systems
based on short-term productivity seem to be purposely designed to hinder
both the possibility of the collective efforts in the reflective, innovative
long-term and the socially concerned (as opposed to market-oriented)
research and debatesfree from immediate constraints of time or
financing pressuresthat would be required in order to rethink
epistemological assumptions, historical interpretations, and present forms
of institutionalization of historic and social knowledge.3 [End Page 522] New
generations of academics are being socialized into a system that values scores, the
accumulation of points in quantitative evaluations, over original or critical thought.
These perspectives do not fully explore the immense potentialities of the
recognition of the crisis of modernity. Radically different ways of thinking
about the world are possible if we assume this historical period to [End
Page 524] be the crisis of the hegemonic pretensions of Western
civilization. Different consequences would arise from an interpretation that
recognizes that this is not the end of history, but the end of the phantasmagorical
universal history imagined by Hegel. The implications for non-Western
societies and for subaltern and excluded subjects around the world would
be quite different if colonialism, imperialism, racism, and sexism were
thought of not as regretful by-products of modern Europe, but as part of
the conditions that made the modern West possible. We could assume a
different perspective on the so-called crisis of the subject if we were to

Eurocentrism K
conclude that the extermination natives, transatlantic slavery, and the
subordination and exclusion of the other were nothing more than the
other face, the necessary mirror of the self, the indispensable contrasting
condition for the construction of modern identities.

Eurocentrism K
AT: You said Latin America

We recognized that Latin America is a generalizing term
there is no easy alternative and our use is contextualized by
out criticism
Mabry, Professor of History Mississippi State University, 2
(Donald J., Published 2002, Colonial Latin America, p. iv v,
http://historicaltextarchive.com/latin/colonial.pdf, sbl)
Colonial Latin America, which lasted for about 300 years for most of the region,
was extraordinarily complex and rich in texture. There are enormous
differences between Mexico, on the one hand, and Brazil on the other. The
term "Latin America" is not only shorthand but also a bit of a misnomer,
for much of it was not Latin. It was Indian or mestizo or African, often with
little more than a veneer of Iberian culture. The degree to which it was any of
these are Spanish. Portuguese, African, Indian, or some combination thereof varies
according to place and time.
We have trouble deciding what to call other humans. Some terms are
inaccurate; some are invented to satisfy the politics of the day. Some are
acceptable in one era and unacceptable in another, hi modem parlance, the
earlier immigrants are often called "Native Americans term as inaccurate as the
term "Indian" or idnio as the Iberians called them. They immigrated just like
everyone else but not all at the same time. Nor have we wanted to see the
coming of the Europeans and Africans to the Western Hemisphere as just
another episode in the many thousand years of its immigration history.
One is at a loss to decide what terminology would be accurate and
inoffensive. Equally serious, is that most people, even scholars, ignore the DNA
evidence and the reasonable conclusions that are drawn from it. We do not
want to think of all human beings as cousins, which they are, because it
forces us to reconsider all kinds of cherished beliefs. We prefer to be
inaccurate because it is easier and feels better. Similarly, we refer to some
people as Spaniards when, in 1500, there was no Spain. Some Latin Americans
today point out that it is politically incorrect for citizens of the United
States to expropriate the name "American" for themselves. They see it as
sheer arrogance, which it is. On the other hand, we see the Mexican
people called Aztecs when, in fact, only a fraction were in 1519; that they are
called thusly is imperialism on the pait of those who rule Mexico. We do not have to
look very hard in this pait of the world to find other examples.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Positivism
Positivism isnt neutral. Their attempts at engaging Latin
America are merely one point in a long line of destructive
economics plagued by Eurocentric thought.
7/5/13, JB)
Political and social thought regarding Latin America has been historically
characterized by a tension between the search for its specific attributes
and an external view that has seen these lands from the narrow
perspective of European experience. There has also been an opposition
between the challenge of the rich potentialities of this New World and distress over
its difference, which stands in contrast with the ideal represented by European
culture and racial composition. Nonetheless, external colonial views and regrets
because of the difference have been widely hegemonic. A brief revision of
the texts of the first republican constitutions is enough to illustrate how liberals, in
their attempt to transplant and install a replica of their understanding of the
European or North American experience, almost completely ignore the specific
cultural and historical conditions of the societies about which they legislate. When
these conditions are considered, it is with the express purpose of doing away with
them. The affliction because of the differencethe awkwardness of living in a
continent that is not white, urban, cosmopolitan, and civilizedfinds its
best expression in positivism. Sharing the main assumptions and
prejudices of nineteenth-century European thought (scientific racism,
patriarchy, the idea of progress), positivism reaffirms the colonial
discourse. The continent is imagined from a single voice, with a single
subject: white, masculine, urban, cosmopolitan. The rest, the majority, is
the other, [End Page 519] barbarian, primitive, black, Indian, who has
nothing to contribute to the future of these societies. It would be
imperative to whiten, westernize, or exterminate that majority.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Realism
Decolonization is key to discussion about IR. Centering our
discussion around Eurocentric policies makes things like
racism, imperialism and colonialism inevitable while
magnifying the West and the Rest mindset
Foneseca and Jerrems, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
graduate students, 12
Melody, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, Ari, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid,
June 2012, Why Decolonise International Relations Theory?, Pg. 2-3,
http://academia.edu/1631024/Why_Decolonise_IR_theory, JB)
In this paper we propose that the coloniality of power, a concept developed
by Decolonial Thinking, provides a useful tool for theorizing International
Relations (IR).Decolonial Thinking is a perspective that was conceived by a group
of (mainly) Latin American academics involved in the modernidad/colonialidad
group Despite receiving little attention in IR, we argue that this approach
aids critical academics by connecting with recent literature discussing the
foundational role of colonialism. Here we will firstly recap on the body of work
that has been emerging in the discipline before exploring how the coloniality of
power allows us to conceptualize the material and ideational residues of
colonialism. We will pay particular attention to the coloniality of historical and
contemporary IR theory. Through this analysis we high light that despite the end of
official colonization there has been a continuation of coloniality.
Since the mid-1980s numerous critical voices have challenged traditional IR
theory by drawing on Feminist, Neo-Marxist, Poststructuralist, Postcolonial and
Frankfurt School theories. These theorisations have gained greater influence after
the end of the Cold War. Decolonial Thinking is of most relevance to these
approaches and to the growing number of theorists who, over the last decade,
have focused on the coloniality problem. These scholars have analysed how
the Eurocentric origins of the discipline have led, not only to the exclusion
of knowledge from the non-Western world, but also, a general amnesia
and ignorance about imperialism, colonialism, and racism.
Critical researchers have sought to unearth a wide range of issues that
have been silenced. As Branwen G. Jones has pointed out, how is it possible
that IR has paid so little attention to race, colonialism, and imperialism, to
the intertwined nature of the histories of the West and the rest? Authors
underline the importance of being able to find a way of engaging with rather than
ignoring non-Western political thought in a manner that is not beholden to colonial
ideologies that drain the non-Western world of all significant content for the study of
a modernity that is now, and perhaps was always, integrally global. This is
particularly relevant if, as we suggest, the knowledge and imaginaries
produced in the discipline are reflected in global politics: from
securitization to governability or local reproductions of violence. Scholars
have also begun to question who the subjects of IR are. Meera Sabaratnam has
argued, [t]he notion of dialogue[] requires that we ask questions about
their identities, horizons and interests, and indeed how these are situated

Eurocentrism K
within the world of practice and action, rather than presuming
homogeneity of interest and a common purpose to inquiry.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Bruckner
Bruckner misunderstands the criticism, it is an indictment of
the centrality of Eurocentrism, not that Europe is source of all
evils
97
(Ella, , and Robert, Unthinking Eurocentrism, http://www.google.com/url?
Our critique of Eurocentrism is addressed not to Europeans as individuals
but rather to dominant Europes historically oppressive relation to its
internal and external "others." We are in no way suggesting, obviously,
that non-European people are somehow better than Europeans, or that
Third World and minoritarian cultures are inherently superior. There is no
inborn tendency among Europeans to commit genocide, as some "ice people"
theorists would suggest - such theories merely colonialist demonizations - nor are
indigenous or Third World peoples innately noble and generous. Nor do we
believe in the inverted European narcissism that posits Europe as the source of
all social evils in the world. Such an approach remains Eurocentric ("Europe
exhibiting its own unacceptability in front of an anti-ethnocentric mirror," in
Derrida's words) and also exempts Third world patriarchal elites from all
responsibility.7 Such "victimology" reduces non-European life to a
pathological response to Western penetration. It merely turns colonilialist
claims upside down. Rather than saying that "we" (that is, the West) have
brought "them" civilization, it claims instead that everywhere "we" have
brought diabolical evil, and everywhere "their" enfeebled societies have
succumbed to "our" insidious influence. The vision remains Promethean, but
here Prometheus has brought not fire but the Holocaust, reproducing what Barbara
Christian calls the "West's outlandish claim to have invented everything, including
Evil."8 Our focus here, in any case, is less on intentions than on institutional
discourses, less on "goodness" and "badness" than on historically
configured relations of power. The question, as Talal Asad puts it, is not "how
far Europeans have been guilty and Third World inhabitants innocent but,
rather, how far the criteria by which guilt and innocence are determined
have been historically constituted."9 The word "Eurocentric" sometimes
provokes apoplectic reactions because it is taken as a synonym for "racist." But
although Eurocentrism and racism are historically intertwined - for example, the
erasure of Africa as historical subject reinforces racism against African-Americans they are in no way equatable, for the simple reason that Eurocentrism is the
"normal" consensus view of history that most First Worlders and even many Third
Worlders learn at school and imbibe from the media. As a result of this normalizing
operation, it is quite possible to be antiracist at both a conscious and a practical

Eurocentrism K
level, and still be Eurocentric. Eurocentrism is an implicit positioning rather
than a conscious political stance; people do not announce themselves as
Eurocentric any more than sexist men go around saying: "Hi. I'm Joe. I'm a
phallocrat." This point is often misunderstood, as in David Rieff s breathless claim
that "there is no business establishment any more that is committed ... to notions of
European superiority."10 But corporate executives are the last people who need
consciously to worry about European superiority; it is enough that they inherit the
structures and perspectives bequeathed by centuries of European domination.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Eurocentrism good

Democracy/Science/Progress
Eurocentrism has hid behind terms like democracy science
and progress, but this is nothing more than a historical
contradiction hiding behind cultural genocide
JB)
Although generated by the colonizing process, Eurocentrism's links to that process
are obscured in a kind of buried epistemology.
Eurocentric discourse is complex, contradictory, historically unstable. But
in a kind of composite portrait, Eurocentrism as a mode of thought might be seen as
engaging in a number of mutually reinforcing intellectual tendencies or operations:
1. Eurocentric discourse projects a linear historical trajectory leading from
classical Greece (constructed as "pure," "Western," and "democratic") to
imperial Rome and then to the metropolitan capitals of Europe and the US. It
renders history as a sequence of empires: Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, Pax
Britannica. Pax Americana. In all cases, Europe, alone and unaided, is seen as the
"motor" for progressive historical change: it invents class society,
feudalism, capitalism, the industrial revolution.
2. Eurocentrism attributes to the "West" an inherent progress toward
democratic institutions (Torquemada, Mussolini, and Hitler must be seen as
aberrations within this logic of historical amnesia and selective legitimation).
3. Eurocentrism elides non-European democratic traditions, while
obscuring the manipulations embedded in Western formal democracy and
masking the West's part in subverting democracies abroad.
Eurocentrism minimizes the West's oppressive practices by regarding
them as contingent, accidental, exceptional. Colonialism, slave-trading,
and imperialism are not seen as fundamental catalysts of the West's
disproportionate power.
Eurocentrism appropriates the cultural and material production of nonEuropeans while denying both their achievements and its own
appropriation, thus consolidating its sense of self and glorifying its own
cultural anthropophagy. The West, as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett puts it,
"separates forms from their performers, converts those forms into influences, brings
those influences into the center, leaves the living sources on the margin, and pats
itself on the back for being so cosmopolitan."6
In sum, Eurocentrism sanitizes Western history while patronizing and even
achievements - science, progress, humanism - but of the non-West in terms
of its deficiencies, real or imagined.

Eurocentrism K
The knowledge production and discourse of the 1AC by

affirming things like hegemony globalization and empire
is one plagued colonial oversight whose end point is the
eradication of supposedly different epistemologies
Guardiola-Rivera, U of London Senior Law Lecturer, 2
(Oscar, Senior lecturer in law at Birkbeck, University of London, 2002, Nepantla:
Views from South 3.1, In State of Grace: Ideology, Capitalism, and the Geopolitics
of Knowledge http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/v003/3.1guardiola-rivera.pdf,
pages 15-38, Accessed 7/5/13, JB)
To sum up, the discourse termed here literacy as state-of-grace links the appeal to
final causalism 6/23/13 Oscar Guardiola-Rivera - In State of Grace: Ideology,
Capitalism, and the Geopolitics of Knowledge - Nepantla: Views from South 3:1
muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/v003/3.1guardiola-rivera.html#authbio 4/19 as a
philosophy of history to the urgencies of colonization. Indeed, the argument
underlying this essay is that the belief in the purposive character of human
action and the operation of final causes in history lends legitimacy to the
colonizing enterprisethe wholesale (com)modification, overcoming,
and/or eradication of existing social structures and their replacement with
rational (Western) new onesby [End Page 18] making progress internal
to and a necessary effect of a particular arrangement of knowledge and
power. A further clarification is in order. Terms such as globalization,
hegemony, or empire correspond to a vocabulary that is central to partial
attempts at explaining the phenomena I have just described. They are partial
insofar as they seem unable to connect the transcendental philosophy of
history and human action, which underlies the promise of progress
through knowledge, to the vast ideological and material operations, often
plain coercion, involved in the process of global colonization. In this article I
move toward making such a connection. In doing so I join the efforts of a group of
Latin American scholars trying to better our understanding of current world trends.
Their aim is to construct a notion of totality that would allow us to explain
contemporary subjectivity in relation to the transformations linking the market, the
system of knowledge production, technology, the rising forms of extractive
neocolonialism, and the social agents responding (by adaptation or resistance) to
such transformations.
Their evidence doesnt assume all parts of history

Eurocentrism has allowed for racism, inequalities and
continued cultural homogenization
97

Eurocentrism K
Rather than attacking Europe per se, an anti-Eurocentric multiculturalism,
in our view, relativizes Europe, seeing it as a geographical fiction that
flattens the cultural diversity even of Europe itself. Europe has always had
its own peripheralized regions and stigmatized communities (Jews, Irish,
Gypsies, Huguenots, Muslims, peasants, women, gays/lesbians). Nor do we
endorse a Europhobic attitude; our own text invokes European thinkers and
concepts. That we emphasize the "underside" of European history does not
mean we do not recognize an "overside" of scientific, artistic, and political
achievement. And since Eurocentrism is a historically situated discourse
and not a genetic inheritance, Europeans can be anti-Eurocentric, just as
non-Europeans can be Eurocentric. Europe has always spawned its own critics
of empire. Some of the European cultural figures most revered by today's
neoconservatives, ironically, themselves condemned colonialism. Samuel Johnson,
the very archetype of the neoclassical conservative, wrote in 1759 that "Europeans
have scarcely visited any coast but to gratify avarice, and extend corruption; to
arrogate dominion without right and practice cruelty without incentive."11 Even
Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, wrote in his Wealth of Nations
(1776) that for the natives of the East and West Indies, all the commercial
benefits resulting from the discovery of America "have been sunk and lost
in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned."12 Yet when
contemporary multiculturalists make the same points, they are accused of "Europebashing."13 Or the critiques are acknowledged, but then turned into a compliment
to Europe, in a kind of "fallback position" for Euro-narcissism: "Yes, Europe did all
those cruel things, but then, only Europe has the virtue of being self-critical."
Eurocentric thinking, in our view, is fundamentally unrepresentative of a world
which has long been multicultural. At times, even multiculturalists glimpse the
issues through a narrowly national and exceptionalist grid, as when well-meaning
curriculum committees call for courses about the "contributions" of the world's
diverse cultures to the "development of American society," unaware of the
nationalistic teleology underlying such a formulation. "Multiculturedness" is not a
"United Statesian" monopoly, nor is multiculturalism the "handmaiden" of US
identity politics.14 Virtually all countries and regions are multicultural in a
purely descriptive sense. Egypt melds Pharaonic, Arab, Muslim, Jewish,
Christian/Coptic, and Mediterranean influences; India is riotously plural in
language and religion; and Mexico's "cosmic race" mingles at least three
major constellations of cultures. Nor is North American multiculturalism of
recent date. "America" began as polyglot and multicultural, speaking a myriad of
languages: European, and Native American.

Eurocentrism K
AT: West is Best

The view of Latin America as irrational and instable stems from
the Eurocentric view of Europe as the Supreme Being and the
East as inferior, Latin America isnt labeled as the East or
European, but rather is painted as primitive and basic. Vote
Neg to reject this ethnocentric perspective in favor of a new
epistemological view.
The success of Western Europe in becoming the center of the modern

world-system, according to Wallersteins suitable formulation, developed within
the Europeans a trait common to all colonial dominators and imperialists,
ethnocentrism. But in the case of Western Europe, that trait had a peculiar
formulation and justification: the racial classification of the world population
after the colonization of America. The association of colonial ethnocentrism
and universal racial classification helps to explain why Europeans came to
feel not only superior to all the other peoples of the world, but, in particular,
naturally superior. This historical instance is expressed through a mental
operation of fundamental importance for the entire model of global power, but
above all with respect to the inter subjective relations that were hegemonic, and
especially for its perspective on knowledge: the Europeans generated a new
temporal perspective of history and relocated the colonized population,
along with their respective histories and cultures, in the past of a historical
trajectory whose culmination was Europe (Mignolo 1995; Blaut 1993; Lander 1997).
Notably, however, they were not in the same line of continuity as the Europeans, but
in another, naturally different category. The colonized peoples were inferior
races and in that manner were the past vis--vis the Europeans. That perspective
imagined modernity and rationality as exclusively European products and
experiences. From this point of view, inter subjective and cultural relations
between Western Europe and the rest of the world were codified in a
strong play of new categories: East-West, primitive civilized,
magic/mythic-scientific, irrational-rational, traditional-modern Europe
and not Europe. Even so, the only category with the honor of being
recognized as the other of Europe and the West was Orientnot the
Indians of America and not the blacks of Africa, who were simply
primitive. For underneath that codification of relations between Europeans and
non-Europeans, race is, without doubt, the basic category.12 This binary, dualist
perspective on knowledge, particular to Eurocentrism, was imposed as
globally hegemonic in the same course as the expansion of European
colonial dominance over the world. It would not be possible to explain the
elaboration of Eurocentrism as the hegemonic perspective of knowledge otherwise.
The Eurocentric version is based on two principal founding myths: first, the

Eurocentrism K
idea of the history of human civilization as a trajectory that departed from a
state of nature and culminated in Europe; second, a view of the
differences between Europe and non-Europe as natural(racial) differences
and not consequences of a history of power. Both myths can be unequivocally
recognized in the foundations of evolutionism and dualism, two of the nuclear
elements of Eurocentrism.

Eurocentrism K
AT: West is Best Science Impacts

Eurocentrism creates false binaries and divorces forms of
knowledge production in order to truly stray from a
Eurocentric epistemological frame we must reorganize our
systems of knowledge production and epistemology
reproduction structure
Wallerstein, is an American sociologist, historical social
scientist, and world-systems analyst, 97
(Immanuel, an American sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems

analyst. His bimonthly commentaries on world affairs are syndicated, 1997,
Binghamton.edu "Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science,"
http://www2.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/iweuroc.htm, Accessed: 7/6/13, LPS.)
I think we have to find sounder bases for being against Eurocentrism in social
science, and sounder ways of pursuing this objective. For the third form of criticism that whatever Europe did has been analyzed incorrectly and subjected to
inappropriate extrapolations, which have had dangerous consequences for both
science and the political world - is indeed true. I think we have to start with
questioning the assumption that what Europe did was a positive achievement. I
think we have to engage ourselves in making a careful balance-sheet of what has
been accomplished by capitalist civilization during its historical life, and assess
whether the pluses are indeed greater than the minuses. This is something I tried
once, and I encourage others to do the same (see Wallerstein, 1992b). My own
balance-sheet is negative overall, and therefore I do not consider the capitalist
system to have been evidence of human progress. Rather, I consider it to have been
the consequence of a breakdown in the historic barriers against this particular
version of an exploitative system. I consider that the fact that China, India, the Arab
world and other regions did not go forward to capitalism evidence that they were
better immunized against the toxin, and to their historic credit. To turn their credit
into something which they must explain away is to me the quintessential form of
Eurocentrism. I would prefer to reconsider what is not universalist in the universalist
doctrines that have emerged from the historical system that is capitalist, our
modern world-system. The modern world-system has developed structures of
knowledge that are significantly different from previous structures of
knowledge. It is often said that what is different is the development of
scientific thought. But it seems clear that this is not true, however
splendid modern scientific advances are. Scientific thought long antedates
the modern world, and is present in all major civilizational zones. This has
been magistrally demonstrated for China in the corpus of work that Joseph
Needham launched (Needham, 1954- ). What is specific to the structures of
knowledge in the modern world-system is the concept of the "two cultures." No
other historical system has instituted a fundamental divorce between
science and philosophy/humanities, or what I think would be better
characterized as the separation of the quest for the true and the quest for
the good and the beautiful. Indeed, it was not all that easy to enshrine this
divorce within the geoculture of the modern world-system. It took three centuries
before the split was institutionalized. Today, however, it is fundamental to the

Eurocentrism K
geoculture, and forms the basis of our university systems. This conceptual split has
enabled the modern world to put forward the bizarre concept of the value-neutral
specialist, whose objective assessments of reality could form the basis not merely of
engineering decisions (in the broadest sense of the term) but of socio-political
choices as well. Shielding the scientists from collective assessment, and in effect
merging them into the technocrats, did liberate scientists from the dead hand of
intellectually irrelevant authority. But simultaneously, it removed from the major
underlying social decisions we have been taking for the last 500 years from
substantive (as opposed to technical) scientific debate. The idea that science is over
here and socio-political decisions are over there is the core concept that sustains
Eurocentrism, since the only universalist propositions that have been acceptable are
those which are Eurocentric. Any argument that reinforces this separation of
the two cultures thus sustains Eurocentrism. If one denies the specificity
of the modern world, one has no plausie way of arguing for the
reconstruction of knowledge structures, and therefore no plausible way of
arriving at intelligent and substantively rational alternatives to the
existing world-system. In the last twenty years or so, the legitimacy of this
divorce has been challenged for the first time in a significant way. This is the
meaning of the ecology movement, for example. And this is the underlying central
issue in the public attack on Eurocentrism. The challenges have resulted in so-called
"science wars" and "culture wars," which have themselves often been obscurantist
and obfuscating. If we are to emerge with a reunited, and thereby nonEurocentric, structure of knowledge, it is absolutely essential that we not
be diverted into sidepaths that avoid this central issue. If we are to construct
an alternative world-system to the one that is today in grievous crisis, we must treat
simultaneously and inextricably the issues of the true and the good. And if we are
to do that we have to recognize that somethin special was indeed done by Europe in
the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that did indeed transform the world, but in a
direction whose negative consequences are upon us today. We must cease trying to
deprive Europe of its specificity on the deluded premise that we are thereby
depriving it of an illegitimate credit. Quite the contrary. We must fully
acknowledge the particularity of Europe's reconstruction of the world
because only then will it be possible to transcend it, and to arrive hopefully
at a more inclusively universalist vision of human possibility, one that avoids none
of the difficult and imbricated problems of pursuing the true and the good in
tandem.
Eurocentric Discourse is inherently bad- it washes away

cultures and paints the non-west as the villains. Using the
alternative to reshape the focus is key
Shohat, New York University Professor of Cultural Studies and
Stam New York Professor of French Filmmaking, 97 (Ella, Robert,
1997, Routledge, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, page 60,
, http://www.google.com/url?
NGzs72xcKKnpIfpEkBPsIhMONn0eQ&sig2=6WnFAZPF8pes3AW7uuHLw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE, accessed 7-7-13 KR)

Eurocentrism K
the world."5 As an ideological substratum common to colonialist, imperialist, and
racist discourse, Eurocentrism is a form of vestigial thinking which
permeates and structures contemporary practices and representations
even after the formal end of colonialism. Although colonialist discourse
and Eurocentric discourse are intimately intertwined, the terms have a
distinct emphasis. While the former explicitly justifies colonialist practices, the
latter embeds, takes for granted, and "normalizes" the hierarchical power relations
generated by colonialism and imperialism, without necessarily even thematizing
those issues directly.
Although generated by the colonizing process, Eurocentrism's links to that process
are obscured in a kind of buried epistemology.
Eurocentric discourse is complex, contradictory, historically unstable. But
in a kind of composite portrait, Eurocentrism as a mode of thought might
be seen as engaging in a number of mutually reinforcing intellectual
tendencies or operations:
1. Eurocentric discourse projects a linear historical trajectory leading from
classical Greece (constructed as "pure," "Western," and "democratic") to imperial
Rome and then to the metropolitan capitals of Europe and the US. It renders
history as a sequence of empires: Pax Romana, Pax Hispanica, Pax Britannica.
Pax Americana. In all cases, Europe, alone and unaided, is seen as the
"motor" for progressive historical change: it invents class society,
feudalism, capitalism, the industrial revolution.
2. Eurocentrism attributes to the "West" an inherent progress toward
democratic institutions (Torquemada, Mussolini, and Hitler must be seen as
aberrations within this logic of historical amnesia and selective legitimation).
3. Eurocentrism elides non-European democratic traditions, while
obscuring the manipulations embedded in Western formal democracy and
masking the West's part in subverting democracies abroad.
Eurocentrism minimizes the West's oppressive practices by regarding
them as contingent, accidental, exceptional. Colonialism, slave-trading,
and imperialism are not seen as fundamental catalysts of the West's
disproportionate power.
Eurocentrism appropriates the cultural and material production of nonEuropeans while denying both their achievements and its own
appropriation, thus consolidating its sense of self and glorifying its own
cultural anthropophagy. The West, as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett puts it,
"separates forms from their performers, converts those forms into influences, brings
those influences into the center, leaves the living sources on the margin, and pats
itself on the back for being so cosmopolitan."6
In sum, Eurocentrism sanitizes Western history while patronizing and even
achievements - science, progress, humanism - but of the non-West in
terms of its deficiencies, real or imagined.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Euro-narcissism
Even if there is a level of self-reflection in their Eurocentric
epistemology they are still ignorant to the pervasiveness of
their methodology as well as what truly constitutes
multiculturalism
(Ella, Robert, Published by Routledge 1997, UNTHINKING EUROCENTRISM, Pg. 4,
JB)
Rather than attacking Europe per se, an anti-Eurocentric multiculturalism, in
our view, relativizes Europe, seeing it as a geographical fiction that flattens the
cultural diversity even of Europe itself. Europe has always had its own
peripheralized regions and stigmatized communities (Jews, Irish, Gypsies,
Huguenots, Muslims, peasants, women, gays/lesbians). Nor do we endorse a
Europhobic attitude; our own text invokes European thinkers and concepts. That we
emphasize the "underside" of European history does not mean we do not recognize
an "overside" of scientific, artistic, and political achievement. And since
Eurocentrism is a historically situated discourse and not a genetic inheritance,
Europeans can be anti-Eurocentric, just as non-Europeans can be Eurocentric.
Europe has always spawned its own critics of empire. Some of the European
cultural figures most revered by today's neoconservatives, ironically,
themselves condemned colonialism. Samuel Johnson, the very archetype of the
neoclassical conservative, wrote in 1759 that "Europeans have scarcely visited any
coast but to gratify avarice, and extend corruption; to arrogate dominion without
right and practice cruelty without incentive."11 Even Adam Smith, the patron
saint of capitalism, wrote in his Wealth of Nations (1776) that for the natives of
the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits resulting from the
discovery of America "have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes
which they have occasioned."12 Yet when contemporary multiculturalists
make the same points, they are accused of "Europe-bashing."13 Or the
critiques are acknowledged, but then turned into a compliment to Europe,
in a kind of "fallback position" for Euro-narcissism: "Yes, Europe did all
those cruel things, but then, only Europe has the virtue of being selfcritical."
Eurocentric thinking, in our view, is fundamentally unrepresentative of a
world which has long been multicultural. At times, even multiculturalists
glimpse the issues through a narrowly national and exceptionalist grid, as when
well-meaning curriculum committees call for courses about the "contributions"
of the world's diverse cultures to the "development of American society,"
unaware of the nationalistic teleology underlying such a formulation.
"Multiculturedness" is not a "United Statesian" monopoly, nor is
multiculturalism the "handmaiden" of US identity politics.14 Virtually all
countries and regions are multicultural in a purely descriptive sense. Egypt melds
Pharaonic, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Christian/Coptic, and Mediterranean influences;
India is riotously plural in language and religion; and Mexico's "cosmic race" mingles
at least three major constellations of cultures. Nor is North American

Eurocentrism K
multiculturalism of recent date. "America" began as polyglot and multicultural,
speaking a myriad of languages: European, and Native American.
This isnt a critique of Europeans, but a critique of Europes

historical dominance of the world. The solution to
Eurocentrism isnt violent revolt but an act of multicultural
becoming in which we all recognize that our cultures exist on
an equal plane acknowledgement that no race is right is to
key overcoming violence in the status quo

JB)
As a work of adversary scholarship, Unthinking Eurocentrism critiques the
universalization of Eurocentric norms, the idea that any race, in Aim
Csaire's words, "holds a monopoly on beauty, intelligence, and strength."
Our critique of Eurocentrism is addressed not to Europeans as individuals
but rather to dominant Europes historically oppressive relation to its internal
and external "others." We are in no way suggesting, obviously, that nonEuropean people are somehow better than Europeans, or that Third World and
minoritarian cultures are inherently superior. There is no inborn tendency
among Europeans to commit genocide, as some "ice people" theorists would
suggest - such theories merely colonialist demonizations - nor are indigenous or
Third World peoples innately noble and generous. Nor do we believe in the
inverted European narcissism that posits Europe as the source of all social evils
in the world. Such an approach remains Eurocentric ("Europe exhibiting its
own unacceptability in front of an anti-ethnocentric mirror," in Derrida's words) and
also exempts Third world patriarchal elites from all responsibility.7 Such
"victimology" reduces non-European life to a pathological response to
Western penetration. It merely turns colonilialist claims upside down. Rather than
saying that "we" (that is, the West) have brought "them" civilization, it claims
instead that everywhere "we" have brought diabolical evil, and everywhere "their"
enfeebled societies have succumbed to "our" insidious influence. The vision remains
Promethean, but here Prometheus has brought not fire but the Holocaust,
reproducing what Barbara Christian calls the "West's outlandish claim to have
invented everything, including Evil."8 Our focus here, in any case, is less on
intentions than on institutional discourses, less on "goodness" and "badness" than
on historically configured relations of power. The question, as Talal Asad
puts it, is not "how far Europeans have been guilty and Third World inhabitants
innocent but, rather, how far the criteria by which guilt and innocence are
determined have been historically constituted."9
The word "Eurocentric" sometimes provokes apoplectic reactions because it is taken
as a synonym for "racist." But although Eurocentrism and racism are
historically intertwined - for example, the erasure of Africa as historical subject
reinforces racism against African-Americans - they are in no way equatable, for
the simple reason that Eurocentrism is the "normal" consensus view of history that
most First Worlders and even many Third Worlders learn at school and imbibe from

Eurocentrism K
the media. As a result of this normalizing operation, it is quite possible to be
antiracist at both a conscious and a practical level, and still be
Eurocentric. Eurocentrism is an implicit positioning rather than a
conscious political stance; people do not announce themselves as Eurocentric
any more than sexist men go around saying: "Hi. I'm Joe. I'm a phallocrat." This
point is often misunderstood, as in David Rieff s breathless claim that "there is no
business establishment any more that is committed ... to notions of European
superiority."10 But corporate executives are the last people who need consciously to
worry about European superiority; it is enough that they inherit the structures and
perspectives bequeathed by centuries of European domination.
Rather than attacking Europe per se, an anti-Eurocentric multiculturalism,
in our view, relativizes Europe, seeing it as a geographical fiction that
flattens the cultural diversity even of Europe itself. Europe has always had
its own peripheralized regions and stigmatized communities (Jews, Irish,
Gypsies, Huguenots, Muslims, peasants, women, gays/lesbians). Nor do we
endorse a Europhobic attitude; our own text invokes European thinkers and
concepts. That we emphasize the "underside" of European history does not mean
we do not recognize an "overside" of scientific, artistic, and political achievement.
And since Eurocentrism is a historically situated discourse and not a
genetic inheritance, Europeans can be anti-Eurocentric, just as nonEuropeans can be Eurocentric. Europe has always spawned its own critics of empire.
Some of the European cultural figures most revered by today's
neoconservatives, ironically, themselves condemned colonialism. Samuel
Johnson, the very archetype of the neoclassical conservative, wrote in 1759 that
"Europeans have scarcely visited any coast but to gratify avarice, and extend
corruption; to arrogate dominion without right and practice cruelty without
incentive."11 Even Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, wrote in his
Wealth of Nations (1776) that for the natives of the East and West Indies, all
the commercial benefits resulting from the discovery of America "have
been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have
occasioned."12 Yet when contemporary multiculturalists make the same points,
they are accused of "Europe-bashing."13 Or the critiques are acknowledged, but
then turned into a compliment to Europe, in a kind of "fallback position" for Euronarcissism: "Yes, Europe did all those cruel things, but then, only Europe has the
virtue of being self-critical."

Eurocentrism K
AT: Zizek the leftist plea for Eurocentrism

Zizeks cannot avoid globalization its ignorant of nonWestern parts of history
Mignolo, Duke University professor of Literature and Romance
Studies, 2
(Walter, Argentine semiotician and professor at Duke University, Published Winter
2002, The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference, Pg. 87-90, The
South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 101, Number 1, Winter 2002, Accessed July 10
2013, JB)
However, this is not the point I want to stress, although it was necessary to make it
in order to get to the main thread of my argument. Since Zizek sees in
multiculturalism and racism the end of the political, he looks for an
argument that would point out the path for a return to the political. His
argument cannot avoid globalization, and he makes a move to distinguish
globalization from universality. This is precisely where the leftist
appropriation of the European legacy takes place. Zizek alerts us to avoid two
interconnected traps brought about by the process of globalization. First, "the
commonplace according to which today's main antagonism is between global [End
Page 87] liberal capitalism and different forms of ethnic/religious fundamentalism";
second, "the hasty identification of globalization (the contemporary transnational
functioning of capital) with universalization." Zizek insists that the true opposition
today is "rather between globalization (the emerging global market, new world
order) and uni versalism (the properly political domain of universalizing one's
particular fate as representative of global injustice)." He adds that "this difference
between globalization and universalism becomes more and more palpable today,
when capital, in the name of penetrating new markets, quickly renounces requests
for democracy in order not to lose access to new trade partners." 84 One must
agree with Zizek on this point. The problem lies in the projects that we embark on to
resist and to propose alternatives to capitalist universalism. Zizek has one
particular proposal, which is preceded by a lengthy analogy between the
United States today and the Roman Empire. Allow me to summarize this
analogy, since it is a crucial part of Zizek's argument.
Zizek describes the opposition between universalism and globalization, focusing on
the historical reversal of France and the United States in the modern/colonial worldsystem (although of course, Zizek does not refer to world-system theory). French
republican ideology, Zizek states, is the "epitome of modernist universalism: of
democracy based on a universal notion of citizenship. In clear contrast to it, the
United States is a global society, a society in which the global market and legal
system serve as the container (rather than the proverbial melting pot) for the
endless proliferation of group identities." Zizek points out the historical paradox in
the role reversal of the two countries. While France is being perceived as an
increasingly particular phenomenon threatened by the process of globalization, the
United States increasingly emerges as the universal model. At this point Zizek
compares the United States with the Roman Empire and Christianity: "The first
centuries of our era saw the opposition of the global multicultural' Roman empire
and Christianity, which posed such a threat to the empire precisely on account of its

Eurocentrism K
universal appeal." There is another perspective from the past that could be taken:
France, an imperial European country, and the United States, a decolonized country
that takes a leading role in a new process of colonization. This perspective
emphasizes the spatial order of the modern/colonial world-system instead of the
linear narrative that Zizek invokes by going back to the Roman Empire and locating
it in "the first century of our era." To whose era is he referring? This is not an era
that can be [End Page 88] claimed without hesitation by Wallerstein, Quijano, or
Dussel, for example, not to mention American Indian and African American
intellectuals. However, what matters here is that in Zizek's argument, what is really
being threatened by globalization is "universality itself, in its eminently political
dimension." The consequences, manifested in several contradictory arguments and
actions, are countered by Zizek with a strong claim for sustaining the political
(struggle) in place of the depoliticization that is the challenge globalization poses to
universality. Here is Zizek's triumphal claim of the "true European legacy": "Against
this end-of-ideology politics, one should insist on the potential of democratic
politicization as the true European legacy from ancient Greece onwards. Will we be
able to invent a new mode of repoliticization questioning the undisputed reign of
global capital? Only such a repoliticization of OUR predicament can break the
vicious cycle of liberal globalization destined to engender the most regressive forms
of fundamentalist hatred." 85 Zizek here identifies the "true European legacy," and
a few pages earlier he refers to "the fundamental European legacy." However, at the
end of the paragraph just quoted, he alludes to "forms of fundamentalist hatred" as
if the "fundamental European legacy" were excused and excluded from any form of
"fundamentalism." Zizek's plea totally ignores the colonial difference and blindly
reproduces the belief that whatever happened in Greece belongs to a European
legacy that was built during and after the Renaissancethat is, at the inception of
the Atlantic commercial circuit and the modern/colonial world. In fact, all the
examples Zizek quotes in his arguments are consequences of the emergence,
transformation, and consolidation of the modern/colonial world (the formation and
transformation of capitalism and occidentalism as the modern/colonial world
imaginary). 86 However, Zizek reproduces the macronarrative of Western
civilization (from ancient Greece to the current North Atlantic) and casts out the
macronarrative of the modern/colonial world in which the conflict between
globalization and universality emerged. Since he does not see beyond the
linear narrative of Western civilization, he also cannot see that "diversality" rather
than universality is the future alternative to globalization.
Let me explain. I see two problematic issues in Zizek's proposal. One is that
Greece is only a European legacy, not a planetary one. If we agree that
solutions for contemporary dilemmas could be found in Greek moral and political
philosophy, we cannot naturally assume that "from Greece onwards" is
linked only to the European legacy. The first issue here would be [End Page 89]
to de-link the Greek contribution to human civilization from the modern (from the
Renaissance on, from the inception of the modern/colonial world) contribution. Thus
the Greek legacy could be reappropriated by the Arabic/Islamic world,
which introduced Greece to Europe, and also by other legaciesChinese,
Indian, sub-Saharan African, or American Indian and Creole in Latin
America and the Caribbeanthat do not exist as a European legacy but as
a discontinuity of the classical tradition. 87 One of the consequences of this
perspective would be "diversality," that is, diversity as a universal project, rather
than the reinscription of a "new abstract universal project" such as Zizek

Eurocentrism K
proposes. I no longer feel like enrolling (or requesting membership) in a new
abstract universal project that claims a fundamental European legacy. I assume
that there are several good alternatives to the increasing threat of
globalization, and of course the fundamental European legacy is one of them. I am
not talking about relativism, of course. I am talking about diversality, a project
that is an alternative to universality and offers the possibilities of a
network of planetary confrontations with globalization in the name of
justice, equity, human rights, and epistemic diversality. The geopolitics of
knowledge shows us the limits of any abstract universal, even from the left, be it
the planetarization of the social sciences or a new planetarization of a European
fundamental legacy in the name of democracy and repoliticization.

Eurocentrism K
Framework

Eurocentrism K
Framework is Eurocentric
The alt is key to deconstruct Eurocentric frameworks
academia is a key starting point
Ucelli, founder, New York Marxist School and ONeil, regular
contributor to Forward Motion, 92 (Juliet and Dennis, Challenging
Eurocentrism http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=19345, date accessed
7/4/13 IGM)
Ongoing battles over the content of social studies classes in public schools
and the canon in liberal arts education are thrusting the term
eurocentrism toward the mainstream of political discourse in the United
States. It is a concept which has been fairly easy for those of us on the left to
become comfortable with, but that sense of ease could actually pose a problem of
complacency for revolutionary socialists. The fact is that the critique of
eurocentrism is still in its early stages, and that the extraordinarily
pervasive hold this framework has on the thinking of everyone raised in
Western societies is not fully appreciated. And the problem of what kind of
worldview it is to be replaced with has barely been considered.
The point, then, is that eurocentrism will not be understood, neutralized or
superseded without considerable effort and, as shown by the current
counterattack waged by the bourgeoisie against political correctness,
without fierce struggle.
A good starting point in thinking about eurocentrism is the recent spate of books
produced by African, North American and European academics. They have thrown
down the gauntlet inside classics, comparative linguistics, economic history,
sociology and other academic disciplines. This recent scholarship builds on the
pioneering work of African American scholars like C.L.R. James and W.E.B. Dubois,
whose work was marginalized by white supremacist academia, yet studied
continuously over the past fifty years by organic intellectuals of color and some
white leftists. Another foundation is the insistence on the centrality of culture,
psychology and the internalization of oppression coming from African thinkers like
Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Cheikh Anta Diop.
To some extent, a critique of eurocentrism is implicit in the opposition to
imperialism which (however flawed) has characterized the revolutionary
wing of the socialist movement since the time of Lenin. However, at least
until Maos writings became an influence, European socialists generally grasped
more easily the concepts of the super-exploitation and victimization of nonEuropean peoples and had more difficulty recognizing their scientific achievements
and cultural contributions. The concept of eurocentrism as currently used
pays more attention to precisely this aspect: the distortion of the
consciousness and self- knowledge of humanity by the insistence of
people of European descent that all valid, universal scientific
knowledge, economic progress, political structures and works of art flow
only from their ancestors. Or, in its more subtle form, eurocentrism
acknowledges contributions from non-European cultures but says that if theyre
important enough, theyll be subsumed within the Western legacy; that the current

Eurocentrism K
global cultural marketplace will automatically absorb and disseminate any new
cultural products of universal validity.

Eurocentrism K
Questioning Colonialism is A Priori

Rigorously questioning a colonial epistemology is key to make
room for non-colonialist activity
3
My idea in Orientalism is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields
of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to
replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so
imprison us. I have called what I try to do "humanism," a word I continue to use
stubbornly despite the scornful dismissal of the term by sophisticated post-modern
critics. By humanism I mean first of all attempting to dissolve Blakes mind-forgd
manacles so as to be able to use ones mind historically and rationally for the
purposes of reflective understanding. Moreover humanism is sustained by a sense
of community with other interpreters and other societies and periods: strictly
speaking therefore, there is no such thing as an isolated humanist. This it is to say
that every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes
on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence.
We need to speak about issues of injustice and suffering within a context
that is amply situated in history, culture, and socio-economic reality. Our
role is to widen the field of discussion. I have spent a great deal of my life
during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national
self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the
reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by way of persecution and
genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel
should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further
suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern
anti-Semitism have common roots. Therefore it would seem to be a vital
necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative
models to the simplifying and confining ones based on mutual hostility
that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.

Eurocentrism K
Latin American Critical Analysis Key

Widening debates to talk about the perspectives from other
countries is key to devising a new knowledge base, even when
talking from the perspective of privilege targeted change is
possible.
Humanities, 4
Concluding Thoughts
Based on what has been said up until now, the phrase by Carmen Bernard
referring to Latin America as a laboratory for the West,38 does not seem
exaggerated. Once we have understood modernity in terms of a world process,
the point is not only to integrate Latin America but to acknowledge its
constitutive role in modern world history.
The problem of Latin Americas heterogeneity and the coexistence and
tensions between what unites us Latin Americans and what separates us
is not new, and world history is not necessarily the only way to approach
it. But what can be said is that it offers a very fertile space to think about this. The
field could open new possibilities to rethink the character of the region not only in
comparative terms with other great areas, but in terms of the interactions within it,
between common areas that transcend national borderlines and the types
of representations that circulate about what falls under the name of
Latin America.
Therefore, to turn Latin America into a solid unit, a block that interacts as
such with others such as Europe or Africa, is naf and insufficient, specially
given the fact that it is always necessary to remember that analytical categories are
not simply intellectual tools, but constitute a certain and complex type of social
representation that gives meaning and organizes our interpretation of reality. 39
Finally, it is necessary to underline the fact that the debate over world
history seems to take place in a privileged way among American
historians. But this is not problematic in itself. What we have to
acknowledge is that epistemology is historically and geographically
located. For that reason, it is fundamental to problematize the differentiated
character of a world history written in the United States and one written in
China, India, or Colombia. However, instead of posing counterfactual scenarios
about a world history made from the Third World, or referring to the
subrepresentation of Latin America, thematically or in terms of the number of
academics in the field, it is better to see things from another angle. Even if
World History finds as one of its conditions of existence the development of area
studies, its problem is not simply to accumulate layers of knowledge about different
and new parts of the world. It is necessary to have schemes that allow
locating regional histories in larger establishments. And this implies
necessarily revisiting certain conceptual devices, widening the debate to other

Eurocentrism K
countries and by means of that being more reflexive about the
implications of the tools used to make world history possible.

Eurocentrism K
AT: USFG Focus Good

Must rethink state monopolization of politics & power
Park, University of Oklahoma and Wilkins, Univerity of Texas, 5
(Jane, Univ. of Oklahoma, Karin, Univ of Texas @ Austin, Global Media Journal, Reorienting the Orientalist Gaze, http://lass.purduecal.edu/cca/gmj/sp05/gmj-sp05park-wilkins.htm, Accessed 7/5/13, IGM)
By implication, the north/south and west/east divisions conventionally understood
as the way to organize national settings within a global system are now less
relevant. A dominant geometry of development (Shah & Wilkins, 2004),
divides countries along political (communism in east vs. democracy in west),
economic (industrialized north vs. agricultural south), cultural (modern vs.
traditional), and hierarchical (first =west; second =east, and third=south) lines.
However, the validity of these regional distinctions should be questioned. This
model has been critiqued for its ethnocentric and arrogant vision,
collapsing diverse communities with a wide range of cultural histories into
monolithic groups. More often than not, the interests of domestic elites in poorer
countries are identical to the interests of the elite in the wealthier countries. These
categorizations, such as West/East, are problematic, given rapidly shifting politicaleconomic contexts involving changing patterns of political and economic dominance
among national actors, the strengthening of regional institutions and identities, the
globalization of economic and communication systems, and the privatization of
industries (Hagopian, 2000; Schuurman, 2000). New global categorizations may
need to focus on access to resources, whether economic, political, social
or cultural, within and across geopolitical territories. Inequity in terms of
access to resources then becomes the overarching concern (Schuurman, 2000).
Although we need to foreground tangible issues related to basic human needs, the
broader concern with access to resources addresses the intangible as well, touching
on social, cultural, political and spiritual resources (Steeves, 2002). Access to
resources builds from ones position within a socio-political network. This vision
offers a more nuanced framework of power, in which networks offer the
possibility for some to reach certain goals, such as employment, education,
media production, policy making, and more. Power is not only activated within
state and corporate institutions, but also within social groups, though
these networks tightly intersect. While issues of territory are still relevant,
particularly when clearly many groups, such as Palestinians, are struggling for a
sovereignty rooted in place, and nation-states are still critical actors in the global
sphere (Morris & Waisbord, 2001), we need to rethink relationships of power
as partly connected with spatial arrangements (Escobar, 2000; Escobar et al.,
2002), and not just in terms of place. And when we do consider place, we
may need to attend to the critical role of regional actors and not just the
US.

Eurocentrism K

Eurocentrism K
AFF ANSWERS

Eurocentrism K
Link Answers

Eurocentrism K
AT: Knowledge Production

Eurocentrism is key to multicultural knowledge production- its
just a locus point- it doesnt produce evil or westernized
knowledge
OBrien, Professor of Economic History, London School of
Economics, 10
(Patrick Karl, Centennial Professor of Economic History, London School of Economics,

Fellow of the British Academy and Academia Europaea,. Doctorates honoris causa
from Carlos III University Madrid and Uppsala University, Sweden; Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, President of British
Economic History Society, 9/7/10, Global History for the London School of
Economics, How Do You Study Global History? Comparisons, Connections,
Entanglements and Eurocentrism,
http://globalhistoryatlse.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/how-do-you-study-globalhistory-comparisons-connections-entanglements-and-eurocentrism/, Accessed:
7/6/13, LPS.)
The US is the uebermost case of a nation defined on a centred historical and
ideological construct. Anyone can become American if they sign up to this founding
mythology. Is Centred History good History? A centred history has flaws
because it must create distinct events in order for its narrative arc to
work. However, events are not centred and so each centred history much
obscure one thing when it tries to focus on another. For example, the
Renaissance was only possible because the Arabs preserved knowledge of
the Ancient Greeks which Europe had lost (I almost wrote which we lost,
naughty). Focussing on a narrative of the Renaissance risks ignoring the
rest of the world. Are all histories equal? Some would say yes. A Global
History Scholar from Malaysia attended a conference on Global History and
requested that non-Islamic scholars admit the Koran as a historical source. Is the
History of the Koran admissible? What is good history? Is it a matter of the
quantity of sources? The quality of the sources provided? There are a
multitude of sources on most subjects saying contrary things, very often
from very good authorities too. This way lies rampant relavatism, from
which it is difficult to learn anything. The problem with centred history is that
because it is highly specialised and necessarily fragmented it risks only being able
to explain itself; it becomes arcane knowledge. History as a discourse becomes
history as rhetoric. History of exceptionalism from American to Chinese fails to
help us explain the world. Global History attempts to overcome this by being a
completely cosmopolitan exercise. Not only that but by focussing on a very long
time scale it avoids the risk of being beholden to a dominant narrative of any one
historian or school of historians. Comparisons, connections, interactions and
entanglements Connections are important because we need to understand the
webs and flows of goods, knowledge and people between distant (in space and
time) others. This information is revealed in different channels; trade; diffusion of
ideas; exchange; encounters; dislocation; aculturation. There are also vectors that
determine how these connections are made, technological, scientific and
epidemiological. All history is Comparative history. With reciprocal

Eurocentrism K
comparisons we can try to avoid some of the flaws of euro- and westerncentric histories. Rather than ask why didnt China end up like England, we can
ask why didnt England end up like China? This allows us to surmount the
tyranny of local detail. It also prevents us from taking ownership of a topic
and allowing this to cloud our judgement. We can aggregate and average
features over large areas and examine their similarities and differences.
Interactions and entanglements also give us a way to examine things without a
centre. For example, Iberia, Southeast Asia and the US/Mexico border all give us
opportunities to look at competing narratives and identities. This is not to accept
relavatism, but rather to enable us to accept and analyse the existence of
completing and complimentary identities. Global History allows us to examine
the diversity of human experience and enables us to challenge the cultural
and political enterprises of hegemony. Virtues of Global History It revisits
common denominators of chronology, concepts and causality across as much of
time and space as possible. It helps us to deal with the facts on the grounds
while accepting diversity to avoid describing contingent events as
universal experiences. This decentred history helps us to understand the process
of change rather than merely explain how we got to where we are, however
narrowly or broadly we are defined

Eurocentrism K
Permutations

Eurocentrism K
Perm - General
Permutation do both an approach will facilitates policy action
is key to re-conceptualize power. The alt alone ensures
cooption, vote aff to use the masters tools to take down the
shed
Park, University of Oklahoma and Wilkins, University of Texas,
5
(Jane, Univ. of Oklahoma, Karin, Univ of Texas @ Austin, Global Media Journal, Reorienting the Orientalist Gaze, http://lass.purduecal.edu/cca/gmj/sp05/gmj-sp05park-wilkins.htm, accessed 7/6/13, IGM)
By implication, the north/south and west/east divisions conventionally understood
as the way to organize national settings within a global system are now less
relevant. A dominant geometry of development (Shah & Wilkins, 2004),
divides countries along political (communism in east vs. democracy in west),
economic (industrialized north vs. agricultural south), cultural (modern vs.
traditional), and hierarchical (first =west; second =east, and third=south) lines.
However, the validity of these regional distinctions should be questioned. This
model has been critiqued for its ethnocentric and arrogant vision,
collapsing diverse communities with a wide range of cultural histories into
monolithic groups. More often than not, the interests of domestic elites in poorer
countries are identical to the interests of the elite in the wealthier countries. These
categorizations, such as West/East, are problematic, given rapidly shifting politicaleconomic contexts involving changing patterns of political and economic dominance
among national actors, the strengthening of regional institutions and identities, the
globalization of economic and communication systems, and the privatization of
industries (Hagopian, 2000; Schuurman, 2000). New global categorizations may
need to focus on access to resources, whether economic, political, social
or cultural, within and across geopolitical territories. Inequity in terms of
access to resources then becomes the overarching concern (Schuurman, 2000).
Although we need to foreground tangible issues related to basic human needs, the
broader concern with access to resources addresses the intangible as well, touching
on social, cultural, political and spiritual resources (Steeves, 2002). Access to
resources builds from ones position within a socio-political network. This vision
offers a more nuanced framework of power, in which networks offer the
possibility for some to reach certain goals, such as employment, education,
media production, policy making, and more. Power is not only activated
within state and corporate institutions, but also within social groups,
though these networks tightly intersect. While issues of territory are still
relevant, particularly when clearly many groups, such as Palestinians, are struggling
for a sovereignty rooted in place, and nation-states are still critical actors in
the global sphere (Morris & Waisbord, 2001), we need to rethink relationships
of power as partly connected with spatial arrangements (Escobar, 2000;
Escobar et al., 2002), and not just in terms of place. And when we do
consider place, we may need to attend to the critical role of regional
actors and not just the US.

Eurocentrism K
Permutation do both action is a prerequisite to change.

Exclusively criticizing a problem obscures the effects of
imperialism

7/5/13, JB)
The main currents in postmodernism have not been able to escape from the limits
of a grand Western, Eurocentric narrative. The recognition of the colonial
experience is essentially absent. 4 According to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(1994,66),Some of the most radical criticisms coming out of the West
today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of the
West, or the West as Subject....Although the history of 524 Nepantla Europe as
subject is narrativized by the law, political economy and ideology of the West, this
concealed Subject pretends it has no geo-political determinations. Exploring
Foucaults and Gilles Deleuzes contributions, she concludes that their findings are
drastically limited by ignoring the epistemic violence of imperialism, as well as the
international division of labor. Spivak argues that once the version of a selfcontained Western world is assumed, its production by the imperialist
project is ignored (86). Through these visions, the crisis of European history
assumed as universalbecomes the crisis of all history. The crisis of the
metanarratives of the philosophy of history, of the certainty of its laws, becomes
the crisis of the future as such. The crisis of the subjects of that history turns into
the dissolution of all subjects. The disenchantment of a Marxist generation
that experienced in its own flesh the political and theoretical collapse of
Marxism and socialism and lived through the existential trauma of the
recognition of the gulag evolves into universal skepticism and the end of
collective projects and politics. This justifies a cool attitude of
noninvolvement, where all ethical indignation in the face of injustice is
absent. In reaction to structuralism, economism, and determinism, the
discursive processes and the construction of meanings are unilaterally
emphasized. Economic relations and all notions of exploitation disappear from the
cognitive map. The crisis of the political and epistemological totalizing
models leads to a withdrawal toward the partial and local, rendering the
role of centralized political, military, and economic powers opaque. The Gulf
War thus becomes no more than a grand show, a televised superproduction.
For these perspectives, the crisis is not of modernity as such, but of one of its
constitutive dimensions: historical reason (Quijano 1990). Its other dimension,
instrumental reason (scientific and technological development, limitless
progress, and the universal logic of the market),finds neither criticism nor
resistance. History continues to exist only in a limited sense: the
underdeveloped countries still have some way to go before reaching the
finish line where the winners of the great universal competition toward
progress await them. It seems a matter of little importance that the majority of
the worlds inhabitants may never reach that goal, due to the fact that the

Eurocentrism K
consumer patterns and the levels of material well-being of the central countries are
possible only as a consequence of an absolutely lopsided use of the resources and
the planets carrying capacity.
Theory alone cant solve an understanding of the role of IR in

creating change is key to effective criticism
Matin, committee member of Centre for Advanced
International Theory, 12 (Kamran, European Journal of International
Relations 2013 19: 353
Redeeming the universal: Postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism,
http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/19/2/353 pg. 355, date accessed 7/7/13 IGM)
My core argument is that there is a fundamental tension between theory and

method in postcolonialism that prevents the translation of its critique of
Eurocentrism into an alternative non-ethnocentric social theory. For on
the one hand, postcolonialism declares macro-theoretical agnosticism
toward the social in general, which is manifest in its categorical rejection of, or
deep skepticism toward, the concept of the universal identified with Eurocentric
anticipation and violent pursuit of global socio-cultural homogeneity. On the other
hand, postcolonialism comprehends colonial socialities in terms of their interactive
constitution through a method whose strategic site of operation is specifically the
intersocietal or the international. But the idea of the international logically
requires a general conception of the social in general whose historical
referent bursts the empirical bounds of any notion of the social in the
singular, whether society, culture, or civilization. This is for the simple reason
that the idea of the international encompasses, or rather ought to
encompass, the interconnected multiplicity of the social as an ontological
property. This mutually constitutive relation between the social and the
international escapes any theory that is strategically anchored in only one of these
two dimensions of social reality. The apparent theoretical incommensurability of
classical IR and social and political theories is a testimony to this claim (Waltz, 1979;
Wight, 1966). A unified theoretical comprehension of the social and the
international must, I therefore contend, be central to any attempt at
supplanting Eurocentrism. This requires an explicit theoretical
incorporation of the universal. But a conception of the universal that is
fundamentally rethought away from being an immanent selftranscendence of the particular, and re-comprehended as a radical
amenability to, and constitutiveness of, alterity (Cheah, 2008; cf. Chernilo,
2006). IR with its paradigmatic focus on the condition and consequences of political
multiplicity is arguably a, if not the most, fertile intellectual ground for pursuing
such a theoretical project. That this intellectual potential has not been
realized has a great deal to do with the supra-social and non-historical
conception of the international by main stream IR theory; a problem that
recent historical sociological scholarship in IR has thrown in to sharp relief (e.g.
Lawson, 2006; Rosenberg, 1994; Teschke, 2003). But a historical sociological
IR in and of itself cannot succeed in exorcizing IRs Eurocentric spirit.
The historicization of international relations has to be dialectically
complemented with the internationalization of the social, that is, the

Eurocentrism K
theoretical articulation of the constitutive impact of the interactive coexistence of
multiple societies on internal processes of social change (Matin, 2007). The idea
of uneven and combined development (Trotsky, 1985), I argue, contains the
organic integration of these two intellectual moves involving an
interactive and heterogeneous notion of the universal. It is therefore
imbued with a radical potential for generating a positive nonethnocentric international social theory.

Eurocentrism K
Perm - Methodology
Permutation do both. Engaging in one methodology falls
short. Institutional debate about these issues creates the
possibility for difference
7/5/13, JB)
These debates create possibilities for new intellectual strategies to
address the challenges posed by the crisis of modernity for Latin American
critical theory. In view of the fact that we are at a point in our work where we
can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context of our studies (Said
1993,6),it is absolutely necessary to question whether postmodern theories offer an
adequate perspective from which to transgress the colonial limits of modern social
thought. Some of the main issues of postcolonial perspectives have been
formulated and taken anew at different times in the history of Latin American social
thought of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Mart 1987; Maritegui
1979; Fals-Borda 1970; 526 Nepantla Fernndez Retamar 1976). There have been
extraordinary developments associated with the revitalization of the
struggles of indigenous peoples in recent decades.5 Nonetheless, these
issues paradoxically have been of relatively marginal concern in the
academic world, outside anthropology and some areas of the humanities. Western
social sciences, which must be applied creatively to the study of the realities of
Latin America, are still assumed to be the best of universal thought. Due to
both institutional and communicational difficulties, as well as to the
prevailing universalist orientations (intellectual colonialism? subordinate
cosmopolitanism?),6 today the Latin American academy has only limited
communication with the vigorous intellectual production to be found in Southeast
Asia, some regions of Africa, and in the work of academics of these regions working
in Europe or the United States. The most effective bridges between these
intellectual traditions are being offered today by Latin Americans who work in North
American universities (Escobar 1995; Mignolo 1996a,1996b; Coronil 1996, 1997).

Eurocentrism K
Impact Answers

Eurocentrism K
No Internal Link
No internal link-Eurocentrism is merely a knowledge archetype
Solomon, a professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities,
Shanghai Jiaotong University, 13
(Jon, a professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities, Shanghai Jiaotong
University 2013, TransEuropeennes, The Experience of Culture: Eurocentric Limits
and Openings in Foucault,
http://www.transeuropeennes.eu/en/articles/voir_pdf/108, P.7-8, Accessed: 7/6/13,
LPS.)
True to Foucaults understanding, we should remember that the intellectual is

not just the product or the agent of the division of labor, but also an
anthropological figure in the sense this term acquires in It is in this sense
that I understand Robert Youngs appraisal of the status of eurocentrism in
Foucault The Order of Things could be seen as an analysis not of
eurocentrism as such, but of its philosophical and conceptual
archaeology (Young 1995, 9). Foucaults acute orientalism is not merely
the obverse of his investment in the methodological error of culturalisms
self-containment, it is also, far more crucially, a sign of the
intellectuals inability to avert the disastrous reversibility and confusion
between the opposing poles of knowledge and experience that was
identified by The Order of Things as the crucial feature of modernity. The crux of
eurocentrism, as the quintessential modern geocultural hegemony, lies in the
economy that links experience to knowledge through a plethora of philosophical
decisions such as dialectical negation and phenomenological reduction (the two
main straw men in Foucaults work). Indeed, Chapter Nine of The Order of Things is
devoted to analyzing the transcendental and empirical elements in the constitution
of knowledge that turn the analysis of actual experience into a hopelessly
equivocal discourse of mixed nature (Foucault 1966/1973, 332/321). Dialectical
negativity and phenomenology both constitute, each in separate ways,
flawed yet archaeologically-similar responses to this amphibological
mixture that results in the modern construct of Man as simultaneously
both subject and object of knowledge. Leonard Lawlor has persuasively
demonstrated how Foucaults critique of the amphibological nature of the modern
concept of lived-experience ( le vcu ) lies at the heart of the critique of modern
Man deployed by The Order of Things . Against this critique of le vcu or livedexperience, Foucault proposes a notion of le vivant , or the living, whose point of
departure is taken from Canguilhems biological notion of error. In explaining
Foucaults objection to the concept of lived-experience, Lawlor writes: the critique
of the concept of vcu is based on the fact that the relationship in vcu is a
mixture ( un mlange ) which closes un cart infime . Conversely, Foucaults
conception of the relationship here we must use the word vivant in le
vivant is one that dissociates and keeps lcart infime open (Lawlor 2005,
417). This cart infime , which the English translation of Les mots et les choses
renders as a miniscule hiatus (Foucault 1966/1973, 351/340), must be
understood, argues Lawlor, in both senses of the French word infime : both
miniscule and infinitesimal or infinitely divisible (Lawlor 2005, 422). I suppose

Eurocentrism K
that what Lawlor has in mind when basing his argument on the dual meaning of the
French word infime is a form of what Sakai calls continuity in discontinuity (Sakai
2009, 85). In this case, the meaning of infime as the infinitely divisible would
refer us to what mathematics calls continuity, while that of the miniscule would
take us back to a difference so small it cannot be measured, thus constituting the
incommensurability of discontinuity.

Eurocentrism K
AT-Root Cause
Their root cause claims are false-there is no single cause of
events, rather many different causes
But even if we agree on the definition and the timing, and therefore so to
speak on the reality of the phenomenon, we have actually explained very
little. For we must then explain why it is that Europeans, and not others, launched
the specified phenomenon, and why they did so at a certain moment of history. In
seeking such explanations, the instinct of most scholars has been to push
us back in history to presumed antecedents. If Europeans in the eighteenth or
sixteenth century did x, it is said to be probably because their ancestors (or
attributed ancestors, for the ancestry may be less biological than cultural,
or assertedly cultural) did, or were, y in the eleventh century, or in the
fifth century B.C. or even further back. We can all think of the multiple
explanations that, once having established or at least asserted some
phenomenon that has occurred in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, proceed
to push us back to various earlier points in European ancestry for the truly
determinant variable.
There is a premise here that is not really hidden, but was for a long time undebated.
The premise is that whatever is the novelty for which Europe is held responsible in
the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, this novelty is a good thing, one of which
Europe should be proud, one of which the rest of the world should be envious, or at
least appreciative. This novelty is perceived as an achievement, and numerous book
titles bear testimony to this kind of evaluation.
There seems to me little question that the actual historiography of world
social science has expressed such a perception of reality to a very large
degree. This perception of course can be challenged on various grounds, and this
has been increasingly the case in recent decades. One can challenge the accuracy
of the picture of what happened, within Europe and in the world as a whole in the
sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. One can certainly challenge the plausibility of the
presumed cultural antecedents of what happened in this period. One can implant
the story of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in a longer duration, from several
centuries longer to tens of thousands of years. If one does that, one is usually
arguing that the European "achievements" of the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries thereby seem less remarkable, or more like a cyclical variant, or less like
achievements that can be credited primarily to Europe. Finally one can accept that
the novelties were real, but argue that they were less a positive than a negative
accomplishment.

Eurocentrism K
Alternative Answers

Eurocentrism K
AT: Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism falls short on both sides of the methodological
spectrum
Mowitt, University of Minnesota Cultural studies and
Comparative Literature professor, 1
John, is professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, and English at the
University of Minnesota In the Wake of Eurocentrism An Introduction, Cultural
Critique 47 (2001) 3-15,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cultural_critique/v047/47.1mowitt.html, Muse,
Accessed July 6 2013, JB)
However, there is another--perhaps even more challenging--limitation to the
Western critique of Eurocentrism. Intellectuals and cultural producers in
the West disturbed by the paradoxical fate of humanism have, in large part,
responded by calling for what is commonly referred to as "multiculturalism."
Initially a strategic political category and now a burgeoning cottage industry,
multiculturalism has lately been deployed by those seeking to displace
Eurocentrism within academia by diversifying the core curriculum of the
humanities. It has, perhaps predictably, been assailed from both the Right
(by the likes of Arthur Schlesinger) and from the Left (by, among others, Slavoj
Zizek), thereby confronting its critics with a field that is as volatile as it is
congested. However, as a constitutive element of the wake of
Eurocentism, the multicultural initiative would appear to be critically
compromised in two pertinent ways. First, because it reinvests in Man, that
is, in a notion of global human identity that prompts one to mistake
immediate, socially specific opportunities to broaden one's cultural
horizons for humanity's alleged universal capacity for choosing which
identity markers it wishes to affirm. And second--as others have observed-because it fails to differentiate meaningfully between contexts where
multiculturalism effectively has been imposed (true, for example, of virtually
all colonial encounters) and contexts where it is fostered as an intellectual
innovation. Even when, in the former colonies of Asia and Africa, an imposed
multiculturalism is vigorously reappropriated, it is done with an eye toward
renegotiating a distinctly local version of an often imported tension between
tradition and modernity. Thus, to the extent that multiculturalism is
represented as a necessary corollary to the critique of Eurocentrism
(especially in the West), it threatens to contradict the ends of such a critique
by authorizing means for [End Page 11] realizing it that obscure crucial
differences "on the ground." Not to put too fine a point on it: multiculturalism to
a Bolivian tin miner, who wears Tweeds T-shirts (assembled in Bolivia, sold in the
United States, black-marketed everywhere) while listening to Ricky Martin on the
camp radio, does not mean what it does to a Midwestern student in the United
States who carries his copy of Cien aos de soledad in a book bag made of leather
from Argentina that, in the semiotics of North American youth subcultures, signifies
alternative. Despite the fact that multiculturalism is under siege (especially from the
Right), and criticism of it is now fashionable, if it cannot meaningfully
differentiate among cultural contexts and serves, in effect, to protect the

Eurocentrism K
West from actually transforming the conditions of its self-representation,
then not only is it a flawed immanent critique of Eurocentrism, but--for
that very reason--it must also be abandoned as a global strategy. " We"
are not the world , and perhaps this is never more obvious than when we attempt
to compensate for that very fact. At least, that's what we were thinking.

Eurocentrism K
Alt Cant Solve

European thought is the crux and root of Western and modern
philosophy- they cant access their solvency
(2) Universalism. Universalism is the view that there exist scientific truths
that are valid across all of time and space. European thought of the last
few centuries has been strongly universalist for the most part. This was
the era of the cultural triumph of science as a knowledge activity. Science
displaced philosophy as the prestige mode of knowledge and the arbiter of
social discourse. The science of which we are talking is Newtonian-Cartesian
science. Its premises were that the world was governed by determinist laws taking
the form of linear equilibria processes, and that, by stating such laws as universal
reversible equations, we only needed knowledge in addition of some set of initial
conditions to permit us to predict its state at any future or past time. What this
meant for social knowledge seemed clear. Social scientists might discover the
universal processes that explain human behavior, and whatever hypotheses they
could verify were thought to hold across time and space, or should be stated in
ways such that they hold true across time and space. The persona of the scholar
was irrelevant, since scholars were operating as value-neutral analysts. And the
locus of the empirical evidence could be essentially ignored, provided the data were
handled correctly, since the processes were thought to be constant. The
consequences were not too different, however, in the case of those scholars whose
approach was more historical and idiographic, as long as one assumed the
existence of an underlying model of historical development. All stage theories
(whether of Comte or Spencer or Marx, to choose only a few names from a long list)
were primarily theorizations of what has been called the Whig interpretation of
history, the presumption that the present is the best time ever and that the past led
inevitably to the present. And even very empiricist historical writing, however
much it proclaimed abhorrence of theorizing, tended nonetheless to
reflect subconsciously an underlying stage theory. Whether in the ahistorical
time-reversible form of the nomothetic social scientists or the diachronic stage
theory form of the historians, European social science was resolutely
universalist in asserting that whatever it was that happened in Europe in
the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries represented a pattern that was
applicable everywhere, either because it was a progressive achievement of
mankind which was irreversible or because it represented the fulfillment of
humanity's basic needs via the removal of artificial obstacles to this realization.
What you saw now in Europe was not only good but the face of the future
everywhere. Universalizing theories have always come under attack on the grounds
that the particular situation in a particular time and place did not seem to fit the
model. There have also always been scholars who argued that universal

Eurocentrism K
generalizations were intrinsically impossible. But in the last thirty years a third kind
of attack has been made against the universalizing theories of modern social
science. It has been argued that these allegedly universal theories are not in fact
universal, but rather a presentation of the Western historical pattern as though it
were universal. Joseph Needham quite some time ago designated as the
"fundamental error of Eurocentrism ...the tacit postulate that modern science and
technology, which in fact took root in Renaissance Europe, is universal and that it
follows that all that is European is" (cited in Abdel-Malek, 1981: 89).
Social science thus has been accused of being Eurocentric insofar as it was
particularistic. More than Eurocentric, it was said to be highly parochial. This hurt to
the quick, since modern social science prided itself specifically on having risen
above the parochial. To the degree that this charge seemed reasonable, it was far
more telling than merely asserting that the universal propositions had not yet been
formulated in a way that could account for every case.
Rejection of Eurocentric ideology fails

Wasserstrom, University of California History Professor, 1
(Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, January 2001, American Historical Foundation

Eurocentrism and Its Discontents,
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0101/0101vie1.cfm, accessed
July 6, 2013, EK)
First, so many factors are in play in the debate that all blanket statements
about how far the critique of Eurocentrism has gone or should go are bound to
be reductionist.
Second, knee-jerk anti-Eurocentrism can lead to the writing of bad history.
Sometimes, in rushing to combat any possible overemphasis on Europe,
the baby is indeed thrown out with the bathwater, as Landes claims. And it has
become too easy, as Judt argues, to replace Eurocentric narratives with tales so
ungrounded that they come across as disembodied and passionless.
Third, terms such as "Eurocentrism," "Western-centric," and "Orientalist" are
too often being used now as all-purpose epithets that inhibit rather than
launch meaningful exchanges of ideas. When these terms are employed to
challenge the validity or arguments of specific work's validity, this should be done
carefully, with the critic's understanding of the word in question spelled out.
Historians of the Two-Thirds World writing in the United States should be particularly
sensitive to this issue. After all, we are often accused of being "Eurocentric" or
"Western-centric" ourselvessometimes justifiably, sometimes notby scholars
based outside of the West.
Fourth, in spite of all this, the enduring legacy of many Eurocentric
tendencies, assumptions, and practices remains a real problem that needs
to be addressed in creative, forceful ways. "Read Globally, Write Locally" is, I
think, a good watchword for all graduate students in history of the 21st century. But
this advice is still much easier for Europeanists than for others to ignore; it should
not be. This suggests to me that there is still much that can and should be doneat
the AHR and elsewhereto encourage new habits of reading and new forms of
cross-fertilizations between area specialists (and world historians) of various sorts.
Alt Fails too connected to everything

Dirlik, Former Duke University History Professor, 99

Eurocentrism K
(Arif Dirlik, Spring 1999, Is There History after Eurocentrism?: Globalism,
Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History, pg. 18-19, JSTOR, accessed July 7,
2013, EK)
Recognition of Eurocentrism as a historical phenomenon that differs from other
centrisms in terms of the totalizing structures that served as its agencies returns us
to the question that I raised earlier. If Eurocentrism globalized a certain
ethnocentrism, and rendered it into a universal paradigm, is there then an
outside to Eurocentrism? An outside to Eurocentrism may be found in
places untouched and marginalized by it, which are fewer by the day, or it
may be found in its contradictions, which proliferate daily. The
universalization of Eurocentrism must itself be understood in terms of the ways in
which EuroAmerican values were interpellated into the structures of societies
worldwide, transforming their political, social, and economic relations, but not
homogenizing them, or assimilating them to the structures and values of
Eurocentrism. Questions of homogenization versus heterogenization, sameness and
difference, assimilation and differentiation, are in many ways misleading questions,
for they confound what are historical processes with the apportionments of identity
into ahistorical, static categories. As I understand it here, the universalization
of Eurocentric practices and values through the EuroAmerican conquest of
the world implies merely the dislodging of societies from their historical
trajectories before Europe onto new trajectories, without any implication
of uniformity, for the very universalization of Eurocentrism has bred new
kinds of struggles over history, which continue in the present. It also
implies, however, at least in my understanding, that these struggles took place increasingly on terrains that, however different from one another, now included
EuroAmerican power of one kind or another as their dynamic constituents. That, I
believe, distinguishes what we might want to describe as a modernity defined by
EuroAmerica from earlier forms of domination, which were regionally, politically, and
socially limited by the technological, organizational, and ideological limits of
domination. Sinocentrism, however effective in East and Southeast Asia, was
nevertheless limited to those regions. Eurocentrism as compared to earlier
"centrisms"
Alternative Fails to engrained to shift away


2013, EK)
To affirm the historical role that Eurocentrism has played in shaping the
contemporary world is not to endow it with some normative power, but
to recognize the ways in which it continues to be an intimate part of the
shaping of the world, which is not going to disappear with willful acts of
its cultural negation. One aspect of Eurocentrism that infused both earlier
revolutionary ideologies and the accommodationist alternatives of the present
seems to me to be especially important, perhaps more important for the historian
than for others because it is complicit in our imagination of temporalities:
developmentalism. The notion that development is as natural to humanity as air

Eurocentrism K
and water is deeply embedded in our consciousness, and yet development as an
idea is a relatively recent one in human history. As Arturo Escobar has argued
forcefully in a number of writings, development as a discourse is embedded
not just in the realm of ideology, but in institutional structures that are
fundamental to the globalization of capital.36
If globalism is a way of promoting these structures by rendering their claims into
scientific truths, postcolonialism serves as their alibi by not acknowledging their
presence. Historians, meanwhile, continue to write history as if attaining the goals
of development were the measure against which the past can be evaluated. That, I
think, is the most eloquent testimonial to the implication of our times in the
continuing hegemony of capital, for which the disavowal of an earlier past serves as
disguise. It also indicates where the tasks may be located for a radical agenda
appropriate to the present: in questioning contemporary dehistoricizations of the
present and the past, and returning inquiry to the search for alternatives to
developmentalism. However we may conceive such alternatives, they are likely to
be post-Eurocentric, recognizing that any radical alternatives to modernity's forms
of domination must confront not just the cultures, but also the structures of
modernity. At any rate, it seems to me that we need a reaffirmation of history and
historicity at this moment of crisis in historical consciousness, especially because
history seems to be irrelevant-either because of its renunciation at the centers of
power where a postmodernism declares a rupture with the past, unable to decide
whether such a rupture constitutes a celebration or a denunciation of capitalism, or,
contradictorily, because of an affirmation of premodernity among those who were
the objects of modernity, who proclaim in order to recover their own subjectivities
that modernity made no difference after all. A historical epistemology will not
resolve the contradiction, or provide a guide to the future, but it might
serve at least to clarify the ways in which the present uses and abuses the
past, and serve as a reminder of our own historicity- why we say and do
things differently than they were said or done in the past. Ours is an age
when there is once again an inflation of claims to critical consciousness. These
claims are often based on an expanded consciousness of space. We need to
remind ourselves, every time we speak of the constructedness of some
space or other, that it may be impossible, for that very reason, to think of
spaces without at the same time thinking of the times that produced those
spaces.
The Alt cant solve- Counter discourses of Eurocentrism stem

from western modes of thought and knowledge production

In any case, who would argue that Japan can claim ancient Indic civilizations as its
foreground on the grounds that they were the place of origin of Buddhism, which
has become a central part of Japan's cultural history? Is the contemporary United

Eurocentrism K
States closer culturally to ancient Greece, Rome, or Israel than Japan is to Indic
civilization? One could after all make the case that Christianity, far from
representing continuity, marked a decisive break with Greece, Rome, and Israel.
Indeed Christians, up to the Renaissance, made precisely this argument. And is not
the break with Antiquity still today part of the doctrine of Christian churches?
However, today, the sphere in which the argument about values has come to the
fore is the political sphere. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia has been very
specific in arguing that Asian countries can and should "modernize" without
accepting some or all of the values of European civilization. And his views have
been widely echoed by other Asian political leaders. The "values" debate has also
become central within European countries themselves, especially (but not only)
within the United States, as a debate about "multiculturalism." This version of the
current debate has indeed had a major impact on institutionalized social science,
with the blossoming of structures within the university grouping scholars denying
the premise of the singularity of something called "civilization." (4) Orientalism.
Orientalism refers to a stylized and abstracted statement of the
characteristics of non-Western civilizations. It is the obverse of the concept,
"civilization," and has become a major theme in public discussion since the writings
of Anouar Abdel-Malek (1981 [1963]) and Edward Said (1978). Orientalism was not
too long ago a badge of honor (see Smith, 1956). Orientalism is a mode of
knowledge that claims roots in the European Middle Ages, when some intellectual
Christian monks set themselves the task of understanding better non-Christian
religions, by learning their languages and reading carefully their religious texts. Of
course, they based themselves on the premise of the truth of Christian faith and the
desirability of converting the pagans, but nonetheless they took these texts
seriously as expressions, however perverted, of human culture. When Orientalism
was secularized in the nineteenth century, the form of the activity was not very
different. Orientalists continued to learn the languages and decipher the texts. In
the process, they continued to depend upon a binary view of the social world. In
partial place of the Christian/pagan distinction, they placed the Western/Oriental, or
modern/non-modern distinction. In the social sciences, there emerged a long line of
famous polarities: military and industrial societies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft,
mechanical and organic solidarity, traditional and rational-legal legitimation, statics
and dynamics. Though these polarities were not usually direcly related to the
literature on Orientalism, we should not forget that one of the earliest of these
polarities was Maine's status and contract, and it was explicitly based on a
comparison of Hindu and English legal systems. Orientalists saw themselves as
persons who diligently expressed their sympathetic appreciation of a nonWestern civilization by devoting their lives to erudite study of texts in
order to understand (verstehen) the culture. The culture that they
understood in this fashion was of course a construct, a social construct by
someone coming from a different culture. It is the validity of these constructs
that has come under attack, at three different levels: it is said that the concepts
do not fit the empirical reality; that they abstract too much and thus erase
empirical variety; and that they are extrapolations of European
prejudices. The attack against Orientalism was however more than an attack on
poor scholarship. It was also a critique of the political consequences of such social
science concepts. Orientalism was said to legitimate the dominant power position of
Europe, indeed to play a primary role in the ideological carapace of Europe's
imperial role within the framework of the modern world-system. The attack on

Eurocentrism K
Orientalism has become tied to the general attack on reification, and allied to the
multiple efforts to deconstruct social science narratives. Indeed, it has been argued
that some non-Western attempts to create a counterdiscourse of
"Occidentalism" and that, for example, "all elite discourses of antitraditionalism in
modern China, from the May Fourth movement to the 1989 Tienanmen student
demonstration, have been extensively orientalized," (Chen 1992, 687), therein
sustaining rather than undermining Orientalism . 5) Progress. Progress, its
reality, its inevitability, was a basic theme of the European Enlightenment.
Some would trace it back through all of Western philosophy (Bury 1920, Nisbet
1980). In any case, it became the consensus viewpoint of nineteenth-century
Europe (and indeed remained so for most of the twentieth century as well). Social
science, as it was constructed, was deeply imprinted with the theory of
progress.
The alt doesnt solve their understanding of eurocentrism is

reductionist, and ignores the historical circumstance that it
came out of. In reality, eurocentrism is inevitable
Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science from the University
of Oregon, 99 (Arif, Cultural Critique, No 42 (Spring, 1999), pp. 1-34 Is There
History after Eurocentrism?: Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of
History, pg. 1-2, date accessed 7/7/13, jstor, IGM)
Ours would seem to be another age of paradoxes. Localization accompanies
globalization, cultural homogenization is challenged by insistence on
cultural heterogeneity, denationalization is more than matched by ethnicization.
Capitalism at its moment of victory over socialism finds itself wondering about
different cultures of capitalism at odds with one another. There is a
preoccupation with history when history seems to be increasingly
irrelevant to understanding the present. Worked over by postmodernism,
among other things, the past itself seems to be up for grabs, and will say anything
we want it to say.
It is another one of these paradoxes that I take up in this essay: the paradox of
Eurocentrism. The repudiation of Eurocentrism in intellectual and cultural life
seems to be such an obvious necessity that it may seem odd to speak of it as a
paradox. Yet a good case can be made that Eurocentrism, too, has come under
scrutiny and criticism at the very moment of its victory globally. Whether
we see in the present the ultimate victory or the impending demise of
Eurocentrism depends on what we understand by it, and where we locate
it. The widespread assumption in our day that Eurocentrism may be
spoken or written away , I will suggest, rests on a reductionist culturalist
understanding of Eurocentrism. Rendering Eurocentrism into a cultural
phenomenon that leaves unquestioned other locations for it distracts
attention from crucial ways in which Eurocentrism may be a determinant
of a present that claims liberation from the hold on it of the past. What is
at issue is modernity, with all its complex constituents, of which Eurocentrism was
the formative moment. Just as modernity is incomprehensible without reference

Eurocentrism K
to Eurocentrism, Eurocentrism as a concept is specifiable only within the
context of modernity. Rather than define Eurocentrism from the outset,
therefore, I seek to contextualize it in order to restore to it-and the many
arguments against it-some sense of historicity.
Attempts at decolonizing the academies Eurocentric

epistemology fall short leaving the original colonial power
structures in place it is nothing more than a theory of
dependency
Studies, 2
2002, The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference, Pg. 61 63, The
2013, JB)
The Liberation of Philosophy and the Decolonization of the Social Sciences

Dependency theory has not yet lost its posture, although it has been severely
criticized. It is capable of holding its own in the middle of a critical tempest
because its critics addressed the conceptual structure of dependency, not its raison
d'tre. The fact that dependency at large was and is the basic strategy in the
exercise of coloniality of power is not a question that needs lengthy and detailed
argumentation. Even though in the current stage of globalization there is a
Third World included in the First, the interstate system and the coloniality
of power organizing it hierarchically have not vanished yet. It is also not the
point here whether the distinction between center and periphery was as valid at the
end of the twentieth century as it was in the nineteenth century. If dependency in
the modern/colonial world-system is no longer structured under the
center/periphery dichotomy, this does not mean that dependency vanishes
because this dichotomy is not as clear today as it was yesterday. On the other hand,
interdependency is a term that served to restructure the coloniality of
power around the emergence of transnational corporations. 19 What Anibal
Quijano terms "historico-structural dependency" should not be restricted to
the center/periphery dichotomy. 20 Rather, it should be applied to the very
structure of the modern/colonial world-system and capitalistic economy.
Dependency theory was more than an analytic and explanatory tool in the social
sciences. 21 While world-system analysis owes its motivating impulse and basic
economic, social, and historical structure to dependency theory, 22 it is not and
could not have served as the political dimension of dependency theory.
Dependency theory was parallel to decolonization in Africa and Asia and
suggested a course of action for Latin American countries some 150 years
after their decolonization. World-system analysis operates from inside the
system, while dependency theory was a response from the exteriority of the
systemnot the exterior but the exteriority. That is to say, the outside is named
from the inside in the exercise of the coloniality of power. Dependency
theory offered an explanation and suggested a course of action for Latin America
that could hardly have been done by a world-system analysis. [End Page 62] Worldsystem analysis in its turn did something that the dependency analysis was not in a

Eurocentrism K
position to accomplish. That is, world-system analysis introduced a historical
dimension and a socioeconomic frame (the modern world-system) into the
social sciences, thus displacing the origin of history and cultures of
scholarship from ancient Greece to the modern world-system. The emergence of
the social sciences in the nineteenth century was indeed attached to the epistemic
frame opened by the second modernity (the French Enlightenment, German
Romantic philosophy, and the British industrial revolution). 23 World-system
analysis responded to the crisis of that frame in the 1970s, when decolonization
took place in Africa and Asia and the changes introduced by transnational
corporations brought to the foreground the active presence of a world far
beyond Western civilization. The irreducible (colonial) difference between
dependency theory and world-system analysis cannot be located in their
conceptual structures but in the politics of their loci of enunciation. Dependency
theory was a political statement for the social transformation of and from Third
World countries, while world-system analysis was a political statement for academic
transformation from First World countries. This difference, implied in the geopolitics
of knowledge described by Carl E. Pletsch, is indeed the irreducible colonial
differencethe difference between center and periphery, between the
Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism and knowledge production by those
who participated in building the modern/colonial world and those who
have been left out of the discussion. 24 Las Casas defended the Indians, but
the Indians did not participate in the discussions about their rights. The emerging
capitalists benefiting from the industrial revolution were eager to end
slavery that supported plantation owners and slaveholders. Black Africans
and American Indians were not taken into account when knowledge and social
organization were at stake. They, Africans and American Indians, were
considered patient, living organisms to be told, not to be heard.
The impact of dependency theory on the decolonization of scholarship in
Latin America was immediate and strong. In 1970 Colombian sociologist Orlando
Fals-Borda published an important book titled Ciencia Propia y Colonialismo
Intelectual [Intellectual colonialism and our own science], which today echoes a
widespread concern in cultures of scholarship in Asia and Africa. The scenario is
simple: Western expansion was not only economic and political but also
educational and intellectual. The Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism was
accepted in former colonies as "our own" critique [End Page 63] of
Eurocentrism; socialist alternatives to liberalism in Europe were taken, in
the colonies, as a path of liberation without making the distinction
between emancipation in Europe and liberation in the colonial world. Quite
simply, the colonial difference was not considered in its epistemic dimension. The
foundation of knowledge that was and still is offered by the history of
Western civilization in its complex and wide range of possibilities,
provided the conceptualization (from the right and the left) and remained
within the language frame of modernity and Western civilization. FalsBorda's book is still valid because it keeps in mind a current dilemma in cultures of
scholarship. In fact, Fals-Borda's early claims for the decolonization of the social
sciences echoes the more recent claims made by Boaventura de Sousa Santos from
Portugal in his argument "toward a new common sense." 25 Granted, Santos is not
focusing on Colombia or Latin America. However, the marginality of Portugal, as the
south of Europe, allows for a perception of the social sciences different from that
which one might have from the north.

Eurocentrism K
While Wallerstein argues for the opening of the social sciences, assuming
the need to maintain them as a planetary academic enterprise, Fals-Borda's
concerns are with the very foundation of the social sciences and other
forms of scholarship. In other words, the planetary expansion of the social
sciences implies that intellectual colonization remains in place, even if
such colonization is well intended, comes from the left, and supports
decolonization. Intellectual decolonization, as Fals-Borda intuited, cannot
come from existing philosophies and cultures of scholarship. Dependency
is not limited to the right; it is created also from the left. The postmodern
debate in Latin America, for example, reproduced a discussion whose
problems originated not in the colonial histories of the subcontinent but in
the histories of European modernity.
Epistemology isnt ahistorical attempts to reduce

Eurocentrism down to mere forms of knowledge production fail
its irreducible and ignorant of the colonial difference
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
An indirect continuation of Fals-Borda's argument for intellectual
decolonization is the project that Enrique Dussel has been pursuing since the
early 1990s. 26 Philosophy of liberation, as conceived by Dussel since the late
1960s, is another consequence of dependency theory and the intellectual
concerns that prompted its emergence. One of Dussel's main concerns was and
still is a philosophical project contributing to social liberation (I will return to the
distinction between emancipation and liberation). His latest book is the
consequence of a long and sustained philosophical, ethical, and political reflection.
27 Fals-Borda's argument was concerned not just with a [End Page 64] project
in the social sciences for the liberation of the Third World; rather, it
concerned also a project of intellectual liberation from the social sciences.
In the case of Dussel, liberation is thought with regard to philosophy. Here again is
the irreducible colonial (epistemic) difference between a leftist social
sciences project from the First World and a liberation of the social
sciences (and philosophy) from the Third World. 28
The logic of this project, from the standpoint of the colonial difference, has been
formulated in Dussel's confrontations between his own philosophy and ethic of
liberation and that of Gianni Vattimo. 29 In one short but substantial chapter
("With Vattimo?'; Against Vattimo?'") Dussel relates Vattimo's philosophy to
nihilism and describes nihilism as a "twilight of the West, of Europe, and
of modernity." 30 In closing this section (and immediately after the preceding
description), Dussel adds,
Has Vattimo asked himself the meaning that his philosophy may have for a
Hindu beggar covered with mud from the floods of the Ganges; or for a member of a
Bantu community from sub-Saharan Africa dying of hunger; or for millions of semi-

Eurocentrism K
rural Chinese people; or for hundreds of thousands of poor marginalized in suburban
neighborhoods like Nezahualcoyotl or Tlanepantla in Mexico, as populated as Torino?
Is an aesthetic of "negativity," or a philosophy of "dispersion as final destiny of
being," enough for the impoverished majority of humanity? 31
At first glance, and for someone reading from the wide horizon of continental
philosophy, this paragraph could be interpreted as a cheap shot. It is not, however.
Dussel is naming the absent location of thinking, obscured by the
universalizing of modern epistemology and its parallelism and
companionship with capitalism, either as justification or as internal critique,
such as Vattimo's. Indeed, what is at stake in Dussel's argument is not just being
but the coloniality of being, from whence philosophy of liberation found its energy
and conceptualization. It is simply the colonial difference that is at stake.
Dussel's point comes across more clearly in the second section of his article on
Vattimo, when Dussel underlines the discrepancy between the starting point in both
projects. As is well known, a room looks altered if you enter it from a different door.
Furthermore, of the many doors through which one could have entered the room of
philosophy, only one was open. The rest were closed. You understand what it means
to have only one door open and the entry heavily regulated. Dussel notes that the
starting point [End Page 65] for a "hermeneutic ontology of the twilight" (Vattimo)
and the "philosophy of liberation" are quite different. Dussel framed this distinction
in terms of the geopolitics of knowledge: the first is from the north; the second,
from the south. The south is not, of course, a simple geographic location but a
"metaphor for human suffering under global capitalism." 32 The first discourse is
grounded in the second phase of modernity (industrial revolution, the
Enlightenment). The second discourse, that of philosophy of liberation, is grounded
in the first phase of modernity and comes from the subaltern perspectivenot from
the colonial/Christian discourse of Spanish colonialism but from the perspective of
its consequences, that is, the repression of American Indians, African slavery, and
the emergence of a Creole consciousness (both white/mestizo mainly in the
continent and black in the Caribbean) in subaltern and dependent positions. From
this scenario Dussel points out that while in the north it could be healthy to
celebrate the twilight of Western civilization, from the south it is healthier
to reflect on the fact that 20 percent of the earth's population consumes
80 percent of the planet's income.
It is no longer possible, or at least it is not unproblematic, to "think" from the
canon of Western philosophy, even when part of the canon is critical of
modernity. To do so means to reproduce the blind epistemic ethnocentrism
that makes difficult, if not impossible, any political philosophy of inclusion. 33 The
limit of Western philosophy is the border where the colonial difference
emerges, making visible the variety of local histories that Western thought, from
the right and the left, hid and suppressed. Thus there are historical experiences of
marginalization no longer equivalent to the situation that engendered Greek
philosophy and allowed its revamping in the Europe of nations, emerging together
with the industrial revolution and the consolidation of capitalism. These new
philosophies have been initiated by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Rigoberta
Mench, Gloria Anzalda, Subramani, Abdelkhebir Khatibi, and Edouard Glissant,
among others. Consequently, two points should be emphasized.
The first is the ratio between places (geohistorically constituted) and thinking, the
geopolitics of knowledge proper. If the notion of being was invented in
Western philosophy, coloniality of being cannot be a continuation of the

Eurocentrism K
former. Because of coloniality of power, the concept of being cannot be dispensed
with. And because of the colonial difference, coloniality [End Page 66] of being
cannot be a critical continuation of the former (a sort of postmodern
displacement) but must be, rather, a relocation of the thinking and a critical
awareness of the geopolitics of knowledge . Epistemology is not
ahistorical . But not only that , it cannot be reduced to the linear history
from Greek to contemporary North Atlantic knowledge production . It has
to be geographical in its historicity by bringing the colonial difference into
the game. 34 The densities of the colonial experience are the location of emerging
epistemologies, such as the contributions of Franz Fanon, that do not overthrow
existing ones but that build on the ground of the silence of history. In this sense
Fanon is the equivalent of Kant, just as Guaman Poma de Ayala in colonial Peru
could be considered the equivalent of Aristotle. 35 One of the reasons why Guaman
Poma de Ayala and Fanon are not easily perceived as equivalents of Aristotle and
Kant is time. Since the Renaissancethe early modern period or emergence of the
modern/colonial worldtime has functioned as a principle of order that increasingly
subordinates places, relegating them to before or below from the perspective of the
"holders (of the doors) of time." Arrangements of events and people in a time line is
also a hierarchical order, distinguishing primary sources of thought from interesting
or curious events, peoples, or ideas. Time is also the point of reference for the order
of knowledge. The discontinuity between being and time and coloniality of being
and place is what nourishes Dussel's need to underline the difference (the colonial
difference) between continental philosophy (Vattimo, Jrgen Habermas, Karl-Otto
Apel, Michel Foucault) and philosophy of liberation.

Eurocentrism K
Neg links to the K

Neg employs eurocentrism
El-Affendi, Cambridge University Islamic Studies Professor, 12
(Abdelwahab el-Affendi, October 14, 2012, Economic and Social Research Council,
Narratives of Insecurity, Democratization and the Justification of (Mass)
Violence,http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-071-270010/outputs/Read/58ab38e7-50c3-4211-805f-a2af2e3cca91, accessed July 7, 2013,
EK)
By complaining about the Eurocentrism of the Europeans, as we are doing
here, are we not ourselves directly promoting Eurocentric narratives?
There is an implicit acceptance here of the post-Enlightenment
universalist claims of western narratives. We can be Afro-centric, Arabocentric or Islamo-centric, or we can speak for the Third Word. But they
cannot be Eurocentric: they speak for humanity as a whole. So they are
cannot be permitted to be Eurocentric, and must live up to their
universalist image and role. So Eurocentrism is built in even in the critical
narratives deploring it.
K links to itself their knowledge relies on European structures

too, and thus shouldnt be universalized
Wood, advisory editor of Solidarity.org 1
(Ellen Meiksins, an advisory editor of Against the Current, Solidarity.org, A new,
revised and substantially expanded edition of Wood's latest book, The Origin of
Capitalism, was be published by Verso in 2001, May-June, 2001, Solidarity,
Eurocentric Anti-Eurocentric, http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/993, Accessed:
7/5/13, LPS.)
Of course, in these narratives it is the West that was most successful in
removing such obstacles. The main impediments have been "parasitic"
political and legal forms, like feudalism or certain kinds of monarchy, which
were cast off by the West. There have also been certain external barriers, like the
closing of trade routes by "barbarian" invasions of one kind or another, so that
capitalism really took off when the trade routes were reopened. Other impediments
often cited in the conventional accounts are "irrational" superstitions and certain
kinds of religious or cultural beliefs and practices. So another common corollary of
this view is that economic development in the West was associated with the
progress of "reason," which means anything from Enlightenment philosophy to
scientific and technological advances and the "rational" (i.e., capitalist) organization
of production. It tends to follow from these accounts that the agents of progress
were merchants or "bourgeois," the bearers of reason and freedom, who only
needed to be liberated from feudal obstruction so that they could move history
forward along its natural and preordained path. How, then, do anti-Eurocentric
histories differ from these classic explanations of the origin of capitalism? The
critiques generally take one or both of two forms. First, they deny the
"superiority" of Europe and emphasize the importance, in fact the
dominance, of non-European economies and trading networks throughout

Eurocentrism K
most of human history, as well as the level of technological development
achieved by some of the main actors (for example, Andre Gunder Frank's argument
about the Asian-dominated world economy, which, he argues, lasted until 17501800 [See note 1]); and/or second, they emphasize the importance of European
imperialism in the development of capitalism. Often this second thesis has to do
with the role of British imperialism, particularly the profits of sugar plantations and
the slave trade, in the development of industrial capitalism, though 1492 is also a
major milestone in the earlier rise of capitalism, as it is for J.M. Blaut, who attributes
European economic development in large part to the riches plundered from the
Americas.[See note 2] These two theses may be combined in the argument
that the dominant non-European trading powers could and probably would
have produced capitalism (or maybe even did, though further
development was thwarted), if only they hadn't been ripped off by
Western imperialism. Now clearly, no serious historian today would deny the
importance of trade and technology in Asia and other parts of the non-European
world, or, for that matter, the relatively modest level of development attained by
Europeans before the rise of capitalism. Nor would any such historian, especially on
the left, deny the importance of imperialism in European history and the
tremendous damage it has done. The question, though, is what this has to do with
capitalism, and on that score, the anti-Eurocentric arguments tend to fall into
precisely those Eurocentric (and bourgeois) traps they are meant to avoid. The
remarkable thing about anti-Eurocentric critiques is that they start from the same
premises as do the standard Eurocentric explanations, the same commercialization
model and the same conception of primitive accumulation. Traders or merchants
anywhere and everywhere are seen as potential, if not actual, capitalists, and the
more active, wide-ranging, and wealthy they are, the further they are along the
road of capitalist development. In that sense, many parts of Asia, Africa, and the
Americas were well on their way to capitalism before European imperialism, in one
way or another, blocked their path. None of these critics seems to deny that at some
point, Europe did diverge from other parts of the world, but this divergence is
associated with "bourgeois revolution" and/or with the advent of industrial
capitalism, once enough wealth had been accumulated by means of trade and
imperial expropriation. Since trade was widespread in other parts of the world,
imperialism was the really essential factor in distinguishing Europe from the rest,
because it gave European powers the critical mass of wealth that finally
differentiated them from other commercial powers. So, for instance, J.M. Blaut talks
about "protocapitalism" in Asia, Africa, and Europe and argues that the break which
distinguished Europe from the rest occurred only after wealth acquired by looting
the Americas made possible two types of revolution in Europe, first the "bourgeois"
and then the "industrial." "I use the word `protocapitalism'," he says, "not to
introduce a technical term but to avoid the problem of defining another term,
`capitalism.'"[See note 3] This evasion is disarmingly candid, but also revealing.
Since Blaut does not conceive of capitalism as a specific social form, he can have no
clear conception of non- or precapitalist modes of production with different
operating principles, and no conception of a transition from one to the other.
Commercial practices shade into "protocapitalism," which grows into "modern"
capitalism. "Protocapitalism," argues Blaut, finally matured in "modern" capitalism
because of wealth accumulated from the colonies. Here, Europe had a distinct
"locational" advantage because the Americas were relatively accessible to European
empires. It was this crucial geographic advantage, Blaut believes, that gave Europe

Eurocentrism K
privileged access to the wealth required to jump-start their bourgeois and industrial
revolutions. The "bourgeois revolutions," which, according to Blaut, first truly
distinguished Europe from the rest of the world, finally gave political power to the
classes that had been enriched especially by colonial wealth, and allowed them to
get on with the business of capitalist development unhindered by non-capitalist
forces. Once they took power, they were able to mobilize the state to facilitate
accumulation and create the infrastructure for industrial development. From then
on, the Industrial Revolution, though it did not happen overnight, was inevitable. In
this version, the echoes of the old Eurocentric and bourgeois narrative are truly
uncanny: Not only is European development basically the rise to power of the
bourgeoisie, but advanced and wealthy non-European civilizations seem to be cases
of arrested development because, even if through no fault of their own, they never
did throw off their shackles by means of bourgeois revolution. And here too, just as
in classical political economy and its notion of "primitive accumulation," the leap
forward to "modern" capitalism occurred because the bourgeoisie had managed, in
one way or another, to accumulate sufficient wealth. Blaut tries to dissociate himself
from the notion of "primitive accumulation" but seems to miss the point completely.
[See note 4] Accumulation from the American colonies, he argues, was not some
"primitive" form of accumulation but, from the start, "capital accumulation: of
profit." But this proposition simply confirms his affinity to the classic conception, in
which "primitive accumulation" is indeed the accumulation of "capital." "Capital," in
that conception, is indistinguishable from any other kind of wealth or profit, and
capitalism is basically more of the same, just as it is for Blaut. "Primitive
accumulation" is "primitive" only in the sense that it represents the accumulation of
the mass of wealth required before "commercial society" can reach maturity. In that
sense, it's very much like Blaut's own conception of early "capital accumulation,"
which, after 1492 and the looting of the Americas, reached the critical mass that
made "mature" capitalism (or, in the terms of classical political economy,
"commercial society") possible. Like classical political economy, Blaut's argument
evades the issue of the transition to capitalism by presupposing its existence in
earlier forms. As we'll see in a moment, a decisive break from the classic model
came with Marx's critique of political economy and its notion of "primitive
accumulation," his definition of capital not simply as wealth or profit but as a social
relation, and his emphasis on the transformation of social property relations as the
real "primitive accumulation." Yet critics of Eurocentric history have more or less
returned to the old notion. Even at the point where they diverge most
emphatically from the classic Eurocentric histories, in their emphasis on
imperialism, they simply invert an old Eurocentric principle. In the old
accounts, Europe surpassed all other civilizations by removing obstacles to the
natural development of "commercial society"; in the anti-Eurocentric inversion, the
failure of non-Europeans to complete the process of development, despite the fact
that they had already come so far, was caused by obstacles created by Western
imperialism. So here again there seems to be no conception of capitalism as a
specific social form, with a distinctive social structure, distinctive social relations of
production, which compel economic agents to behave in specific ways and generate
specific laws of motion. And here again there is no real transition. In much the same
way that the old Eurocentric arguments took capitalism for granted, this one too
avoids explaining the origin of this specific social formor to be more precise,
denies its specificity and hence evades the question of its originby assuming its
prior existence ("protocapitalism," not to mention even earlier forms of trade and

Eurocentrism K
mercantile activity). There is no explanation of how a new social form came into
being. Instead, the history of capitalism is a story in which age-old social practices,
with no historical beginning, have grown and maturedunless their growth and
maturation have been thwarted by internal or external obstacles. There are of
course variations on the old themes, most of all the attack on imperialism.
There are also other refinements like the idea of "bourgeois revolution"though
even this idea, no matter how much it is dressed up in Marxist trappings, is not
fundamentally different from Eurocentric-bourgeois accounts which treat the
bourgeoisie as agents of progress and credit them with throwing off the feudal
shackles that impeded it. But whatever variations are introduced into the story,
basically capitalism is just a lot more of what already existed in protocapitalism and
long before: more money, more urbanization, more trade, and more wealth.
Critiques of Eurocentrism fail- they are reproduced from a

Eurocentric form of thought means theres no way to solve

The multiple forms of Eurocentrism and the multiple forms of the critique
of Eurocentrism do not necessarily add up to a coherent picture. What we
might do is try to assess the central debate. Institutionalized social science
started as an activity in Europe, as we have noted. It has been charged with
painting a false picture of social reality by misreading, grossly exaggerating, and/or
distorting the historical role of Europe, particularly its historical role in the modern
world. The critics fundamentally make, however, three different (and
somewhat contradictory) kinds of claims. The first is that whatever it is that
Europe did, other civilizations were also in the process of doing it, up to the moment
that Europe used its geopoliticaL power to interrupt the process in other parts of the
world. The second is that whatever Europe did is nothing more than a continuation
of what others had already been doing for a long time, with the Europeans
temporarily coming to the foreground. The third is that whatever Europe did has
been analyzed incorrectly and subjected to inappropriate extrapolations, which have
had dangerous consequences for both science and the political world. The first two
arguments, widely offered, seem to me to suffer from what I would term "antiEurocentric Eurocentrism." The third argument seems to me to be undoubtedly
correct, and deserves our full attention. What kind of curious animal could "antiEurocentric Eurocentrism" be? Let us take each of these arguments in turn. There
have been throughout the twentieth century persons who have argued that, within
the framework of say Chinese, or Indian, or Arab-Muslim "civilization," there existed
both the cultural foundations and the socio-historical pattern of development that
would have led to the emergence of full-fledged modern capitalism, or indeed was
in the process of leading in that direction. In the case of Japan, the argument is
often even stronger, asserting that modern capitalism did develop there, separately
but temporally coincident with its development in Europe. The heart of most of

Eurocentrism K
these arguments is a stage theory of development (frequently its Marxist variant),
from which it logically followed that different parts of the world were all on parallel
roads to modernity or capitalism. This form of argument presumed both the
distinctiveness and social autonomy of the various civilizational regions of the world
on the one hand and their common subordination to an overarching pattern on the
other. Since almost all the various arguments of this kind are specific to a given
cultural zone and its historical development, it would be a massive exercise to
discuss the historical plausibility of the case of each civilizational zone under
discussion. I do not propose to do so here. What I would point out is one logical
limitation to this line of argument whatever the region under discussion,
and one general intellectual consequence. The logical limitAtion is very
obvious. Even if it is true that various other parts of the world were going down the
road to modernity/capitalism, perhaps were even far along this road, this still leaves
us with the problem of accounting for the fact that it was the West, or Europe, that
reached there first, and was consequently able to "conquer the world." At this point,
we are back to the question as originally posed, why modernity/capitalism in the
West? Of course, today there are some who are denying that Europe in a deep
sense did conquer the world on the grounds that there has| always been resistance,
but this seems to me to be stretching our reading of reality. There was after all real
colonial conquest that covered a large portion of the globe. There are after all rea
military indicators of European strength. No doubt there were always multiple forms
of resistance, both active and passive, but if the resistance were truly so formidable,
there would be nothing for us to discuss today. If we insist too much on nonEuropean agency as a theme, we end up whitewashing all of Europe's sins, or at
least most of them. This seems to me not what the critics were intending. In any
case, however temporary we deem Europe's domination to be, we still need to
explain it. Most of the critics pursuing this line of argument are more interested in
explaining how Europe interrupted an indigenous process in their part of the world
than in| explaining how it was that Europe was able to do this. Even more to the
point, by attempting to diminish Europe's credit for this deed, this presumed
"achievement," they reinforce the theme that it was an achievement. The theory
makes Europe into an "evil hero" - no doubt evil, but also no doubt a hero in the
dramatic sense of the term, for it was Europe that made the final spurt in the race
and crossed the finish line first. And worse still, there is the implication, not too far
beneath the surface, that, given half a chance, Chinese, or Indians, or Arabs not
only could have, but would have, done the same - that is, launch
modernity/capitalism, conquer the world, exploit resources and people, and play
themselves the role of evil hero. This view of modern history seems to be
very Eurocentric in its anti-Eurocentrism, because it accepts the
significance (that is, the value) of the European "achievement" in precisely
the terms that Europe has defined it, and merely asserts that others could
have done it too, or were doing it too. For some possibly accidental reason,
Europe got a temporary edge on the others and interfered with their development
forcibly. The assertion that we others could have been Europeans too seems to me a
very feeble way of opposing Eurocentrism, and actually reinforces the worst
consequences of Eurocentric thought for social knowledge. The second line of
opposition to Eurocentric analyses is that which denies that there is anything really
new in what Europe did. This line of argument starts by pointing out that, as of the

Eurocentrism K
late Middle Ages, and indeed for a long time before that, western Europe was a
marginal (peripheral) area of the Eurasian continent, whose historical role and
cultural achievements were below the level of various other parts of the world (such
as the Arab world or China). This is undoubtedly true, at least as a first-level
generalization. A quick jump is then made to situating modern Europe within the
construction of an ecumene or world structure that has been in creation for several
thousand years (see various authors in Sanderson, 1995). This is not implausible,
but the systemic meaningfulness of this ecumene has yet to be established, in my
view. We then come to the third element in the sequence. It is said to follow from
the prior marginality of western Europe and the millennial construction of a Eurasian
world ecumene that whatever happened in western Europe was nothing special and
simply one more variant in the historical construction of a singular system. This
latter argument seems to me conceptually and historically very wrong. I do not
intend however to reargue this case (see Wallerstein, 1992a). I wish merely to
underline the ways in which this is anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism. Logically, it
requires arguing that capitalism is nothing new, and indeed some of those who
argue the continuity of the development of the Eurasian ecumene have explicitly
taken this position. Unlike the position of those who are arguing that a given other
civilization was also en route to capitalism when Europe interfered with this process,
the argument here is that we were all of us doing this together, and that there was
no real development towards capitalism because the whole world (or at least the
whole Eurasian ecumene) was always capitalist in some sense. Let me point out
first of all that this is the classic position of the liberal economists. This is not really
different from Adam Smith arguing that there exists a "propensity [in human nature]
to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" (1937, 13). It eliminates
essential differences between different historical systems. If the Chinese, the
Egyptians, and the Western Europeans have all been doing the same thing
historically, in what sense are they different civilizations, or different historical
systems? (per contra, see Amin 1991). In eliminating credit to Europe, is there any
credit left to anyone except to pan-humanity? But again worst of all, by
appropriating what modern Europe did for the balance-sheet of the
Eurasian ecumene, we are accepting the essential ideological argument of
Eurocentrism, that modernity (or capitalism) is miraculous, and wonderful,
and merely addding that everyone has always been doing it in one way or
another. By denying European credit, we deny European blame. What is so terrible
about Europe's "conquest of the world" if it is nothing but the latest part of the
ongoing march of the ecumene? Far from being a form of argument that is critical of
Europe, it implies applause that Europe, having been a "marginal" part of the
ecumene, at last learned the wisdom of the others (and elders) and applied it
successfully. And the unspoken clincher follows inevitably. If the Eurasian ecumene
has been following a single thread for thousands of years, and the capitalist worldsystem is nothing new, then what possible argument is there that would indicate
that this thread will not continue forever, or at least for an indefinitely long time? If
capitalism did not begin in the sixteenth (or the eighteenth) century, it is surely not
about to end in the twenty-first. Personally, I simply do not believe this, and I have
made the case in several recent writings (Wallerstein, 1995; Hopkins & Wallerstein,
1996). My main point, however, here, is that this line of argument is in no way antiEurocentric, since it accepts the basic set of values that have been put forward by
Europe in its period of world dominance, and thereby in fact denies and/or

Eurocentrism K
undermines competing value systems that were, or are, in honor in other parts of
the world.

Eurocentrism K
Turn Rejection = Worse Alternatives Fill In

Rejecting or eradicating Eurocentrism just allows other worse
pervasive and exclusionary form of epistemology and
knowledge production from seeping in - turns the K
This kind of revisionist historiography is often persuasive in detail, and

certainly tends to be cumulative. At a certain point, the debunking, or
deconstructing, may become pervasive, and perhaps a counter-theory
take hold. This is, for example, what seems to be happening (or has already
happened) with the historiography of the French Revolution, where the so-called
social interpretation that had dominated the literature for at least a century and a
half was challenged and then to some degree toppled in the last thirty years. We
are probably entering into such a so-called paradigmatic shift right now in the basic
historiography of modernity.
Whenever such a shift happens, however, we ought to take a deep breath,
step back, and evaluate whether the alternative hypotheses are indeed
more plausible, and most of all whether they really break with the crucial
underlying premises of the formerly dominant hypotheses. This is the
question I wish to raise in relation to the historiography of European presumed
achievements in the modern world. It is under assault. What is being proposed
as a replacement? And how different is this replacement? Before, however,
we can tackle this large question, we must review some of the other
critiques of Eurocentrism.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Deconstruction/Decolonization
Decolonization requires an encounter with the colonized
simply deconstructing one knowledge base doesnt allow for
any new modes of thought
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
The irreducible colonial difference that I am trying to chart, starting from

Dussel's dialogue with Vattimo, was also perceived by Robert Bernasconi in his
account of the challenge that African philosophy puts forward to continental
philosophy. Simply put, Bernasconi notes that "Western philosophy traps
African philosophy in a double bind. Either African philosophy is so similar
to Western philosophy that it makes no distinctive contribution and
effectively disappears; or it is so different that its credentials to be
genuine philosophy will always be in doubt." 45 This double bind is the
colonial [End Page 70] difference that creates the conditions for what I have
elsewhere called "border thinking." 46 I have defined border thinking as an
epistemology from a subaltern perspective. Although Bernasconi describes the
phenomenon with different terminology, the problem we are dealing with here is the
same. Furthermore, Bernasconi makes his point with the support of African
American philosopher Lucius Outlaw in an article titled "African Philosophy':
Deconstructive and Reconstructive Challenges." 47 Emphasizing the sense in which
Outlaw uses the concept of deconstruction, Bernasconi at the same time underlines
the limits of Jacques Derrida's deconstructive operation and the closure of Western
metaphysics. Derrida, according to Bernasconi, offers no space in which to ask the
question about Chinese, Indian, and especially African philosophy. Latin and
Anglo-American philosophy should be added to this. After a careful discussion
of Derrida's philosophy, and pondering possible alternatives for the extension
of deconstruction, Bernasconi concludes by saying, "Even after such
revisions, it is not clear what contribution deconstruction could make to
the contemporary dialogue between Western philosophy and African philosophy." 48
Or, if a contribution could be foreseen, it has to be from the perspective that Outlaw
appropriates and that denaturalizes the deconstruction of the Western metaphysics
from the inside (and maintains the totality, la Derrida). That is to say, it has to be
a deconstruction from the exteriority of Western metaphysics, from the
perspective of the double bind that Bernasconi detected in the interdependence
(and power relations) between Western and African philosophy. However, if we
invert the perspective, we are located in a particular deconstructive strategy that I
would rather name the decolonization of philosophy (or of any other branch of
knowledge, natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities). Such a
displacement of perspective was already suggested by Moroccan philosopher
Abdelkhebir Khatibi, which I have discussed at length elsewhere. 49 However,

Eurocentrism K
certainly Bernasconi will concur with Khatibi in naming decolonization as the type of
deconstructive operation proposed by Outlaw, thus maintaining and undoing the
colonial difference from the colonial difference itself. That is to say, maintaining the
difference under the assumption that "we are all human" although undoing the
coloniality of power that converted differences into values and hierarchies. "The
existential dimension of African philosophy's challenge to Western philosophy in
general and Continental philosophy in particular is located in the need to decolonize
the mind. This task is at least as important for [End Page 71] the colonizer as it is for
the colonized. For Africans, decolonizing the mind takes place not only in
facing the experience of colonialism, but also in recognizing the
precolonial, which established the destructive importance of so-called
ethnophilosophy." 50 The double bind requires also a double operation from the
perspective of African philosophy, that is, an appropriation of Western philosophy
and at the same time a rejection of it grounded in the colonial difference.
Bernasconi recognizes that these, however, are tasks and issues for African
philosophers. What would be similar issues for a continental philosopher? For
Europeans, Bernasconi adds, "decolonizing the colonial mind necessitates an
encounter with the colonized, where finally the European has the
experience of being seen as judged by those they have denied. The extent
to which European philosophy championed colonialism, and more particularly
helped to justify it through a philosophy of history that privileged Europe, makes it
apparent that such a decolonizing is an urgent task for European thought." 51

Eurocentrism K
Decolonization Bad
Colonialism included the colonial expansion of knowledge
regardless of whether it not it was critical of itself means the
alternative links to the K
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
It cannot be said of Wallerstein that he, like Vattimo or Habermas, is blind to

colonialism. Unlike continental thought, Wallerstein is not imprisoned in the GrecoRomanmodern European tradition. The politics of location is [End Page 79] a
question valid not just for minority epistemology. On the contrary, it is the keystone
of universalism in European thought. Cornel West's perception and analysis of the
"evasion of American philosophy" speaks to that politics of location that is not a
blind voluntarism but a force of westernization. 66 Although the United States
assumed the leadership of Western expansion, the historical ground for thinking was
not, and could not have been, European. The "evasion of American philosophy"
shows that tension between the will to be like European philosophy and
the impossibility of being so. 67 The logic of the situation analyzed by West is
similar to the logic underlined by Bernasconi vis--vis African philosophy. The
variance is that the evasion of American philosophy was performed by
Anglo-Creoles displaced from the classical tradition instead of native
Africans who felt the weight of a parallel epistemology.
The social sciences do have a home in the United States as well as in
Europe, which is not the case for philosophy. But the social sciences do not
necessarily have a home in the Third World. Therefore, while opening the
social sciences is an important claim to make within the sphere of their
gestation and growth, it is more problematic when the colonial difference
comes into the picture. To open the social sciences is certainly an
important reform, but the colonial difference also requires decolonization .
To open the social sciences is certainly an important step but is not yet sufficient,
since opening is not the same as decolonizing, as Fals-Borda claimed in the 1970s.
In this sense Quijano's and Dussel's concepts of coloniality of power and
transmodernity are contributing to decolonizing the social sciences
(Quijano) and philosophy (Dussel) by forging an epistemic space from the
colonial difference. Decolonizing the social sciences and philosophy means
to produce, transform, and disseminate knowledge that is not dependent
on the epistemology of North Atlantic modernitythe norms of the disciplines
and the problems of the North Atlanticbut that, on the contrary, responds to the
need of the colonial differences. Colonial expansion was also the colonial
expansion of forms of knowledge, even when such knowledges were
critical to colonialism from within colonialism itself (like Bartolome de las

Eurocentrism K
Casas) or to modernity from modernity itself (like Nietzsche). A critique of
Christianity by an Islamic philosopher would be a project significantly different from
Nietzsche's critique of Christianity. [End Page 80]
Alt cedes the political the academic community cannot solely

focus on obsessing over the cultural demise it allows for
atrocities to continue
Academic research on Maori became oriented to such debates and

obsessed with describing various modes of cultural decay. The 'fatal
impact' of the West on indigenous societies generally has been theorized
as a phased progression from: (1) initial discovery and contact, (2)
population decline, (3) acculturation, (4) assimilation, (5) 'reinvention' as
a hybrid, ethnic culture. While the terms may differ across various theoretical
paradigms the historical descent into a state of nothingness and hopelessness has
tended to persist. Indigenous perspectives also show a phased progression, more
likely to be articulated as: (1) contact and invasion, (2) genocide and destruction,
(3) resistance and survival (4) recovery as indigenous peoples. The sense of hope
and optimism is a characteristic of contemporary indigenous politics which is often
criticized, by non-indigenous scholars, because it is viewed as being overly
idealistic.
While Western theories and academics were describing, defining and
explaining cultural demise, however, indigenous peoples were having their
lands and resources systematically stripped by the state; were becoming
ever more marginalized; and were subjected to the layers of colonialism
imposed through economic and social policies. This failure of research, and
of the academic community, to address the real social issues of Maori was
recalled in later times when indigenous disquiet became more politicized
and sophisticated. Very direct confrontations took place between Maori and some
academic communities. Such confrontations have also occurred in Australia and
other parts of the indigenous world, resulting in much more active resistances by
communities to the presence and activities of researchers.

Eurocentrism K
Speaking for Others

These critiques come from within a single knowledge base no
risk that their deconstruction is the one desired by ones
most effected merely another form the the colonial difference
the negative critiques
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
I have mentioned that Wallerstein, Quijano, and Dussel have dependency
theory as a common reference, and my previous argument suggested that while
Wallerstein brought dependency theory to the social sciences as a discipline,
Quijano and Dussel follow the political and dialectical scope of dependency theory.
The epistemic colonial difference divides one from the other. Of course, this
does not place one against the other but underlines the colonial difference as the
limit of the assumed totality of Western epistemology. That is why to open the social
sciences is a welcome move, but an insufficient one. It is possible to think, as
Quijano and Dussel (among others) have, beyond and against philosophy
and the social sciences as the incarnation of Western epistemology. It is
necessary to do so in order to avoid reproducing the totality shared by
their promoters and their critics. In other words, the critiques of modernity,
Western logocentrism, capitalism, Eurocentrism , and the like performed in
Western Europe and the United States cannot be valid for persons who
think and live in Asia, Africa, or Latin [End Page 85] America . Those who
are not white or Christian or who have been marginal to the foundation,
expansion, and transformation of philosophy and social and natural
sciences cannot be satisfied with their identification and solidarity with
the European or American left. Nietzsche's (as a Christian) criticism of
Christianity cannot satisfy Khatibi's (as a Muslim and Maghrebian) criticism of
Christianity and colonization. It is crucial for the ethics, politics, and
epistemology of the future to recognize that the totality of Western
epistemology, from either the right or the left, is no longer valid for the
entire planet. The colonial difference is becoming unavoidable. Greece
can no longer be the point of reference for new utopias and new points of
arrival, as Slavoj Zizek still believes, or at least sustains. 76
If Wallerstein, Quijano, and Dussel have dependency theory as a common
reference, they also share a critique of Eurocentrism. 77 However, their
motivation is different. Quijano's and Dussel's critiques of Eurocentrism respond
to the overwhelming celebration of the discovery of America, which both scholars
read not only as a Spanish question but also as the beginning of modernity and
European hegemony. Both concur that Latin America and the Caribbean
today are a consequence of the North Atlantic (not just Spanish and European)

Eurocentrism K
hegemony. Wallerstein's critique of Eurocentrism is a critique of the social
sciences: "Social sciences has been Eurocentrism throughout its institutional
history, which means since there have been departments teaching social science
within a university system." 78 Thus Wallerstein's critique of Eurocentrism is one of
epistemology through the social sciences. Quijano's and Dussel's critiques
come to Western epistemology through coloniality of power from the
colonial difference.

Eurocentrism K
AT: Quijano
Quijanos theory relies on coloniality being constitutive
history proves the two existed independent of each other
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
Coloniality of Power, Dependency, and Eurocentrism
Wallerstein, Quijano, and Dussel have in common their debt to
dependency theory. They are apart (although not enemies) because of the
epistemic colonial difference. Quijano's concepts of coloniality of power and
historic-structural dependency emphasize this complicity, similar to Dussel's
arguments with and against Vattimo. 68
To understand Quijano's coloniality of power, it is first necessary to accept
coloniality as constitutive of modernity and not just as a derivative of modernity
that is, first comes modernity and then coloniality. The emergence of the
commercial Atlantic circuit in the sixteenth century was the crucial moment in which
modernity, coloniality, and capitalism, as we know them today, came together.
However, the Atlantic commercial circuit did not immediately become the
location of Western hegemonic power. It was just one more commercial
circuit among those existing in Asia, Africa, and Anahuac and Tawantinsuyu
in what would later become America. 69 Modernity/coloniality is the moment
of Western history linked to the Atlantic commercial circuit and the
transformation of capitalism (if we accept from Wallerstein and Arrighi that the
seed of capitalism can be located in fifteenth-century Italy) 70 and the foundation of
the modern/colonial world-system.
In the preceding paragraph I purposely mixed two macronarratives. One I will call
the Western civilization macronarrative and the other the modern/colonial worldsystem narrative. The first emerged in the Renaissance and was consolidated during
the Enlightenment and by German philosophy in the early nineteenth century. As
such, this macronarrative is tied to historiography (the Renaissance) and philosophy
(the Enlightenment). The second macronarrative emerged during the Cold War as it
is linked to the consolidation of the social sciences. The first macronarrative has its
origin in Greece; the second in the origin of the Atlantic commercial circuit. Both
macronarratives are founded in the same principles of Western epistemology, and
both have their own double personality complex (double side). For instance, the
narrative of Western civilization is at the same time celebratory of its
virtues and critical of its failings. In the same vein modernity is often
celebrated as hiding coloniality and yet is critiqued because of coloniality,
its other side. Both macronarratives can also be criticized from the inside
(Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Wallerstein, Gunder Frank, etc.) and [End Page 81]
from the exteriority of the colonial difference. 71 Both coloniality of power and
historico-structural dependency are key concepts in Quijano's critique of
the above macronarratives from the exteriority of the colonial difference.

Eurocentrism K
Colonialism exists on a multiplicity of levels Quijano missed

the critique of the western civilization and the modern world
Studies, 2
2013, JB)
Coloniality of power worked at all levels of the two macronarratives,

Western civilization and modern world-system, that I mentioned earlier. The
colonized areas of the world were targets of Christianization and the civilizing
mission as the project of the narrative of Western civilization, and they became the
target of development, modernization, and the new marketplace as the project of
the modern world-system. The internal critique of both macronarratives
tended to present itself as valid for the totality, in the sense that it is
configured by the program of Western civilization and the modern worldsystem. The insertion of the word colonial, as in modern/colonial worldsystem, makes visible what both macronarratives previously obscured:
that the production of knowledge and the critique of modernity/coloniality
from the colonial difference is a necessary move of decolonization.
Otherwise, opening the social sciences could be seen as a well-intentioned
reproduction of colonialism from the left. Similarly, a critique of Western
metaphysics and logocentrism from the Arabic world may not take into account the
critical epistemic legacy and the memory of epistemic violence inscribed in Arabic
language and knowledge. Historico-structural dependency, in the narrative of the
modern/colonial world-system, presupposes the colonial difference. It is, indeed, the
dependency defined and enacted by the coloniality of power. Barbarians,
primitives, underdeveloped people, and people of color are all categories
that established epistemic dependencies under different [End Page 84]
global designs (Christianization, civilizing mission, modernization and
development, consumerism). Such epistemic dependency is for Quijano the
very essence of coloniality of power. 75
Both Quijano and Dussel have been proposing and claiming that the
starting point of knowledge and thinking must be the colonial difference,
not the narrative of Western civilization or the narrative of the modern
world-system. Thus transmodernity and coloniality of power highlight the
epistemic colonial difference, essentially the fact that it is urgently necessary to
think and produce knowledge from the colonial difference. Paradoxically, the
erasure of the colonial difference implies that one recognize it and think from such
an epistemic locationto think, that is, from the borders of the two
macronarratives, philosophy (Western civilization) and the social sciences (modern
world-system). The epistemic colonial difference cannot be erased by its
recognition from the perspective of modern epistemology. On the contrary,
it requires, as Bernasconi clearly saw in the case of African philosophy, that
epistemic horizons open beyond Bacon's authoritarian assertion that "there can be
no others." The consequences of this are gigantic not only for epistemology but also

Eurocentrism K
for ethics and politics. I would like to conclude by highlighting some of them in view
of future discussions.

Eurocentrism K
Eurocentrism Inevitable

Eurocentrism K
General
Eurocentric Framing is inevitable human nature
Zahrai, Ethics Journalist, 8
(Koorosh Zahrai, March 18, 2008, Control Structures Review, Eurocentrism: The
basis of our society, culture, and source of our problem coexisting with nature,
http://controlstructures.spheerix.com/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=19:eurocentrism-the-basis-of-our-societyculture-and-source-of-our-problem-coexisting-with-nature&catid=5:digitalculture&Itemid=6, accessed July 6, 2013, EK)
The Eurocentric worldview permeates every aspect of our lives, as we are
all products of the system of the United States. Whether at home or
abroad, in our relationships with each other and nature, each of us
participates in and replicates these notions of Western society and
culture, as we are all indoctrinated through the education system and
communal socialization. Creating new living experiences and narratives free of
these constraining and altered states of being begins with liberation of our selves,
minds, and actions and becoming harmonious in our relations with nature and each
other. More positive present and future experiences will shape our paths so that we
can all join together to work on attaining a more meaningful relationship with our
surroundings.
Unthinking Eurocentrism focusses on Eurocentrism and multiculturalism in popular
culture. It is written in the passionate belief that an awareness of the
intellectually debilitating effects of the Eurocentric legacy is indispensable
for comprehending not only contemporary media representations but even
contemporary subjectivities. Endemic in present-day thought and education,
Eurocentrism is naturalized as "common sense." Philosophy and literature are
assumed to be European philosophy and literature. The "best that is thought and
written" is assumed to have been thought and written by Europeans. (By
Europeans, we refer not only to Europe per se but also to the "neo-Europeans" of
the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere.) History is assumed to be European history,
everything else being reduced to what historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (in 1965!)
patronizingly called the "unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque
but irrelevant corners of the globe."1 Standard core courses in universities stress
the history of "Western" civilization, with the more liberal universities insisting on
token study of "other" civilizations. And even "Western" civilization is usually taught
without reference to the central role of European colonialism within capitalist
modernity. So embedded is Eurocentrism in everyday life, so pervasive, that
it often goes unnoticed. The residual traces of centuries of axiomatic
European domination inform the general culture, the everyday language,
and the media, engendering a fictitious sense of the innate superiority of
European-derived cultures and peoples.

Eurocentrism K
Eurocentrism is inevitable its multifaceted nature makes

criticism impossible
Matin, committee member of Centre for Advanced
International Theory, 12 (Kamran, European Journal of International
Relations 2013 19: 353

Redeeming the universal: Postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism,
http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/19/2/353 pg. 359, date accessed 7/7/13 IGM)
In spite of this veritable history of anti-Eurocentric thought and practice,
mounting critique, obvious counter-facts, and logical tensions, Eurocentrism
continues to exert influence in the academy, in national and international
policy making centers, and among the elites and the intelligentsia of nonWestern developing countries (Friedman, 2006; Ganji, 2008; Jones, 2003: ix
xl; Landes, 2003; Sen, 1999). This influence is certainly closely related to the
ideological dimension of Eurocentrism, the fact that it sustains and is
sustained by the global dominance of the Western-centered configurations
of eco nomic, technological, and military power. This explains why nonWestern challenges to those configurations, for example, the strategic shift in the
loci of the global concentrations of economic power to non-Western countries such
as China, India, or Brazil, can destabilize Eurocentrism too. However, the
longevity of Eurocentrism, as an intellectual mode, has also to be understood
in terms of the limitations of the critiques it has been subjected to. One
key limitation of anti-Eurocentric critiques has been an indecisive challenge to
Eurocentrisms stadial conception of development. This is particularly important
because the assumption of stadial development is the culmination of Eurocentrisms
historical, prognostic, and normative assumptions. It contains an ideal typical
concept of modernity (Europe), a theory of history (stagist development) sustain ing
the concept, and a social-scientific methodology comparative analysis for
investigating it (Bhambra, 2007; Washbrook, 1997: 410; cf. Amin, 1989: x).
Eurocentrism inevitable

2013, EK)
I suggest by way of conclusion that a radical critique of Euro- centrism must rest on
a radical critique of the whole project of modernity understood in terms of the lifeworld that is cultural and material at once. Modernity in our day is not just
EuroAmerican, but is dispersed globally, if not equally or uniformly, in
transnational structures of various kinds, in ideologies of development,
and the practices of everyday life. It does not just emanate from
EuroAmerica understood geographically, nor are its agencies necessarily
Euro- American in origin. A radical critique of Eurocentrism, in other words, must
confront contemporary questions of globalism and postcolonialism, and return
analysis to the locations of contemporary struggles over the life-world. I should note
here that the critique of Eurocentrism is a diffuse characteristic of all kinds
of critiques of power in our day: from feminist to racial critiques. On occasion, it
seems as if the problems of the world would be solved if somehow we got

Eurocentrism K
rid of Eurocentrism. This, of course, is silly. It not only misses much about
Eurocentrism; it ignores even more about the rest of the world. Not the
least of what it ignores is that although the agencies that are located in
EuroAmerica may be the promoters of Eurocentrism, they are by now not the only
ones, and possibly not the most important ones. Eurocentrism may not be global
destiny, but it is a problem that needs to be confronted by any serious thinking
about global destinies. These problems are too serious to be left in the hands of
elites to whom Eurocentrism is an issue of identity in intra-elite struggles for power.

Eurocentrism K
Epistemology Specific
Eurocentric epistemological reproduction is inevitable
OBrien, Professor of Economic History, London School of
Economics, 10
(Patrick Karl, Centennial Professor of Economic History, London School of Economics,

Fellow of the British Academy and Academia Europaea,. Doctorates honoris causa
from Carlos III University Madrid and Uppsala University, Sweden; Fellow of the
Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, President of British
Economic History Society, 9/7/10, Global History for the London School of
Economics, How Do You Study Global History? Comparisons, Connections,
Entanglements and Eurocentrism,
http://globalhistoryatlse.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/how-do-you-study-globalhistory-comparisons-connections-entanglements-and-eurocentrism/, Accessed:
7/6/13, LPS.)
How do we learn the past? We learn the past by being taught it by someone
else, whether orally or by reading. History is also invented by peoples,
tribes, religions who need a common past as a means to define and
establish themselves. They need a common (sometimes mythical) common
origin to give the group a common destiny. This is done through a process of
othering. We can only know something we dont know through comparison with
something we do know. The other is alien, it is foreign. Everyone is ethnocentric
so some extent, it is unavoidable in the way we have been brough up to
define others in terms of their differences to you. Identity is a narrative of
yourself established in relation to the other. French versus English.
Argentinian versus Brazil. Protestant versus Catholic. Hindu versus Muslim. West
versus Rest. This is both a historical and Epistemology process.
Cant solve the impact-Eurocentrism is the underlying affect of

all education- it expands beyond the west systemically means
they cant solve
Solomon, a professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities,
Shanghai Jiaotong University, 13
(Jon, a professor in the Institute of Arts and Humanities, Shanghai Jiaotong
University 2013, TransEuropeennes, The Experience of Culture: Eurocentric Limits
and Openings in Foucault,
http://www.transeuropeennes.eu/en/articles/voir_pdf/108, P.7-8, Accessed: 7/6/13,
LPS.)
Against the modern concept of man that is based on an equivocal relation
between experience and knowledge, Foucaults critique calls not for a
mixing of the two but for a way of making the immeasurably small
differences between them discontinuous and non-relational. The way this
is to be done is to be found in a strategy of double negation that
affirms both terms rather than combines them (Lawlor 2005, 424). The
problem with the modern Western episteme , according to The Order of
Things , is that a fundamental equivocity and reversibility has been
installed between experience and knowledge. The resolution of this

Eurocentrism K
amphiboly is not what concerns me here so much as what I take to be a warning,
issued by archaeology to biopolitics. Biopolitics, particularly in the part of it that
lends itself to studies of governmentality, always runs the risk of becoming the
study of the actual experience of the politics of life. If the problem of
eurocentrism ultimately concerns a hegemony that is mobile and selftransformative, i.e., if the problem of the West is not limited to the
West, this is because at its core lies a fundamental equivocity or
amphibological confusion between knowledge and experience. Similarly,
the problem of the state amounts to a way of appropriating the amphiboly,
or of capturing it, under the guise of lived experience. Hence, to oppose
experienceactual experience, local experienceagainst the hegemony of the
West (and its avatar, Western theory) ends up being a strategy complicit at a
broad level with the hegemonic logicconsolidated in the stateaccording to
which the West first gathered itself as a subject in history.

Eurocentrism K
Eurocentrism Good

Eurocentrism K
Eurocentrism Good- Civilization

Eurocentrism is good- its the underlying creator of civilization,
civility, progress, and social sciences
(3) Civilization. Civilization refers to a set of social characteristics that are
contrasted with primitiveness or barbarism. Modern Europe considered
itself to be more than merely one "civilization" among several; it
considered itself (uniquely or at least especially) "civilized." What
characterized this state of being civilized is not something on which there has been
an obvious consensus, even among Europeans. For some, civilization was
encompassed in "modernity," that is, in the advance of technology and the
rise of productivity as well as the cultural belief in the existence of historic
development and progress. For others, civilization meant the increased
autonomy of the "individual" vis-a-vis all other social actors - the family, the
community, the state, the religious institutions. For others, civilization meant
non-brutal behavior in everyday life, social manners in the broadest sense.
And for still others, civilization meant the decline or narrowing of the scope of
legitimate violence and the broadening of the definition of cruelty. And of course, for
many, civilization involved several or all of these traits in combination. When French
colonizers in the nineteenth century spoke of la mission civilisatrice, they meant
that, by means of colonial conquest, France (or more generally Europe) would
impose upon non-European peoples the values and norms that were encompassed
by these definitions of civilization. When, in the 1990's, various groups in
Western countries spoke of the "right to interfere" in political situations in
various parts of the world, but almost always in non-Western parts of the
world, it is in the name of such values of civilization that they are
asserting such a right. This set of values, however we prefer to designate
them civilized values, secular-humanist values, modern values permeate social
science, as one might expect, since social science is a product of the same historical
system that has elevated these values to the pinnacle of a hierarchy. Social
scientists have incorporated such values in their definitions of the problems (the
social problems, the intellectual problems) they consider worth pursuing. They have
incorporated these values into the concepts they have invented with which to
analyze the problems, and into the indicators they utilize to measure the concepts.
Social scientists no doubt have insisted, for the most part, that they were seeking to
be value-free, insofar as they claimed they were not intentionally misreading or
distorting the data because of their socio-political preferences. But to be value-free
in this sense does not at all mean that values, in the sense of decisions about the
historical significance of observed phenomena, are absent. This is of course the
central argument of Heinrich Rickert (1913) about the logical specificity of what he
calls the "cultural sciences." They are unable to ignore "values" in the sense of

Eurocentrism K
assessing social significance. To be sure, the Western and social scientific
presumptions about "civilization" were not entirely impervious to the concept of the
multiplicity of "civilizations." Whenever one posed the question of the origin of
civilized values, how it was that they have appeared originally (or so it was argued)
in the modern Western world, the answer almost inevitably was that they
were the products of long-standing and unique trends in the past of the
Western world - alternatively described as the heritage of Antiquity and/or ofthe
Christian Middle Ages, the heritage of the Hebrew world, or the combined heritage
of the two, the latter sometimes renamed and respecified as the Judeo-Christian
heritage. Many objections can and have been made to the set of successive
presumptions. Whether the modern world, or the modern European world, is
civilized in the very way the word is used in European discourse has been
challenged. There is the notable quip of Mahatma Gandhi who, when asked, "Mr.
Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?", responded, "It would be a good
idea." In addition, the assertion that the values of ancient Greece and Rome or of
ancient Israel were more conducive to laying the base for these so-called modern
values than were the values of other ancient civilizations has also been contested.
And finally whether modern Europe can plausibly claim either Greece and Rome on
the one hand or ancient Israel on the other as its civilizational foreground is not selfevident. Indeed, there has long been a debate between those who have seen
Greece or Israel as alternative cultural origins. Each side of this debate has denied
the plausibility of the alternative. This debate itself casts doubt on the plausibility
of the derivation.

Eurocentrism Kritik - Gonzaga 2013

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 1

Eurocentrism K GDI 2013

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 2

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 3

Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 4

Eurocentrism frames social norms the normative function of

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 5

The alternative is to reject the aff - key to decolonize

(Michael, October 31 - November 4, , American Educational Studies Association,

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 6

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 7

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 8

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 9

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 10

Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 11

How we read, write, and speak are important it shapes the

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 12

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 13

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 14

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 15

Only using Western research is simply racist it conveys the

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 16

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 17

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 18

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 19

Interventionist US engagement reinforces the dominant,

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 20

The Plan uses an exploitative Eurocentric model in Latin

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 21

Globalization seeks to Americanize whole populations shuts

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 22

The logic of liberalism is part of the Eurocentric view of the

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 23

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 24

State to State Engagement

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 25

European centralized states synonymous emergence with

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 26

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 27

The critique of Eurocentrism articulated in the development aid context

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 28

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 29

Object/subject of the resolution

US policies towards Latin America reinforce a hierarchal form

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 30

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 31

(MexicoMatters, Racism or Eurocentrism? How the U.S. Views Mexico

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 32

The colonialist Eurocentric mindset is leading to a

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 33

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 34

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 35

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 36

Topic Country Names

The act of renaming the world is the act of claiming territory

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 37

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 38

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 39

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 40

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 41

Attempts to obtain natural resources from the earth were