Mingolo

In his article, Mingolo compels us to reconsider our naïve notions regarding the knowledge-making process – one that completely negates that knowledge production has actual geo-political locations, that is closely tied to very real power structures in the world, and indeed is part of that process. Mingolo explains how the Geo-politics of knowledge goes hand in hand with geo-politics of knowing. He is basically concerned with questions of Who, when, why and where is knowledge generated, and in doing so he attempts to shift our focus from the “enunciated to the enunciation”. However if we recognize the knowledge production is tied to coloniality, how do we respond to it in order to move beyond this conundrum. Mingolo claims that it is not enough to simply change the content of what is being said, but actually the terms in which it is being said. However, in the process of changing those terms – what alternative do we really have? And, how much scope do we really have to change the terms involved in the discussion? Can we really delink ourselves by playing within the rules of the game? For instance, much of what we have talked about positionality in this course is an attempt to push us  into that direction of delinking ourselves, however, how emancipatory is it, if continues to hold the same system, and uses the same terms of agency, resistance, autonomous domain, rationality.  I agree that in attempting to call in question the colonial foundation of modern knowledge production we need to shift our attention from the known to the knower, but even then what possilbities do we really have?