|
| Publications [#374456] of Walter D. Mignolo
Articles in a Collection
- Mignolo, WD. "The Refiguration of the Social and the Re-Configuration of the Communa." Considering Space: A Critical Concept for the Social Sciences. January, 2023, 159-185. [doi]
(last updated on 2024/07/16)
Abstract:
I argue that “space and the re-configuration of society” is a statement highlighting two Western concepts “space” and “society.” I argue that none of the coexisting civilizations, before 1500, have and care about these two concepts introduced in the vernacular modern European languages. I use the example of ancient Nahuatl speakers in the Valley of Mexico, since I cannot go through planetary civilization, to sustain my argument. Nahualts stressed places, directions and landscapes (e.g., the condition of the land in a given place), rather than space. I am not comparing two cosmologies but looking into their entanglement since 1500 and the power differential that set up the privileges-through today-of Western civilization over the others. It is a gnoseological argument that situates Western epistemology in its limited and well-deserved place. It is also a political and ethical argument relevant to what we in the planet are witnessing both at the inter-state conflict and in resurgence of the pollical society displacing the “social and the individual” separated from life on Earth, to restore “communal relations” among animal humans and all living organism on earth to reconnect with the Earthy and Cosmic energies separated from “society” (e.g., climate crisis).
|
