ABSTRACT
Ideas such as “postcolonial criticism,” “postcolonial studies,” “coloniality,” and the“decolonial turn” all share concerns and issues closely related to the Americas. The focus of postcolonial studies has been on analyzing the lasting consequences of the processes of colonialization–anchored in the late modernity of European empires, societies, and former metropolitan societies of the global south–and the production of knowledge, disciplines, and subjectivities. One convergent thesis in both conceptual genealogies is that “the colonial” is part of the global present. Dissimilar authors such as Edward Said, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Aníbal Quijano, and Walter Mignolo propose that it is necessary to understand the continuities of the colonial. The concept of modernity and its legacy is perhaps the clearest point of divergence between postcolonial perspectives and coloniality. According to Quijano, “in world capitalism the questions of work, race and gender are three central instances with respect to which the conflictive relations of exploitation/domination are organized”.
