Eurocentrism Kritik

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 1
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Eurocentrism K GDI 2013

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1NC Shell

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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

Eurocentrism K
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 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. -- AngloAmerican) 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

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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
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

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(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 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 socio-historical 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

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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.

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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

Eurocentrism K
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 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,

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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 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

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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 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.

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Only using Western research is simply racist it conveys the

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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 intrasocietal 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 selfcontained 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 neo-liberal 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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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 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/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

Eurocentrism K
(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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 the 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 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 nation-state 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
nation-states, 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

Eurocentrism K
generation and management of the institutions of public authority and its specific
mechanisms of violence. This authority is exercised in every sphere of social
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 nation-state began as a process of colonization of some
peoples over others that were, in this sense, foreigners, and therefore the nationstate 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

Eurocentrism K
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-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,

Eurocentrism K
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
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 modernity
and 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 thought
postmodernism, transnationalism, and globalizationare 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/bad-left 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

Eurocentrism K
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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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.

Eurocentrism K
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)
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 deep-seated 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 con sequence, 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

Eurocentrism K
aforementioned constitutionalists do not seem to recognize. In this sense, Raquel
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 para meters. 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 Euro centrism. 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 sub ject
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 ori ginare 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

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in doing so, pose an intense challenge to the Eurocentric parameters of
constitutionalism.

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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

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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

Eurocentrism K
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

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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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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, 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) and 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).

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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.)

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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 changebacked 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.

Eurocentrism K
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)

Eurocentrism K
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 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 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

Eurocentrism K
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.

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

Eurocentrism K
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 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
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
who do no wrong. For
populations than to military apparatuses, as is well known. However, deaths of civilians belonging to the other army
damages able to permanently destroy the

colonized economy are unexpected although justifiable collateral impacts. For
are described as perfectly proportional. Also
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.
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
Occasionally, their
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,

Eurocentrism K
Bantu, Latin American [mestizo, Aymara, Quechua, Maya], etc.) 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 ethicomythical 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 aspects
and 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

Eurocentrism K
testify to the extinction of the majority of 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 neo-Conservatism, 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!)

Eurocentrism K
Interestingly, such a label dovetails with the notion of 'Wilsonian realism', which
signifies a commitment to Wilson's so-called liberal internationalist 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.

Eurocentrism K
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."

Eurocentrism K
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 pre-empt 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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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!

Eurocentrism K
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 mid-nineteenth 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 double-edged 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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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 neo-liberal 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 AngloSaxon 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,

Eurocentrism K
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 Englishlanguage 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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 pan-Latinism 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

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

Eurocentrism K
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)

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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.

Eurocentrism K
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.
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

Eurocentrism K
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
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!

Eurocentrism K
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.
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

Eurocentrism K
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 ,

Eurocentrism K
which until then indicated only geographic origin or country of origin, acquired from
then on a racial connotation in 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 cross-pollination, 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 knowledg e? 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 realor-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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 self-avowedly 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 nonWest 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 inter-subjectivity 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,

Eurocentrism K
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 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.)

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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 nonEuropeans 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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. -- AngloAmerican) 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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)

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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)

Eurocentrism K
To many, the story may initially seem out of place because it is foreign. This is
hardly the case. The United States is so unprecedentedly powerful that it can be
best understood (even in its domestic race relations) when 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 Eu- rocentric 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,fromthemagicmythic 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 hyper-exploitation 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.

Eurocentrism K
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 de-population 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.

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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 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 crosscultural 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.

Eurocentrism K
Only unthinking Eurocentrism solves- thats key to solve other

forms and methods of exclusion
97
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

Eurocentrism K
(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 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.

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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 socio-historical 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

Eurocentrism K
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. 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 Afro-Caribbean 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 capitalistcommunist 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 Asian-American 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 world-system 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 postOccidental 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. Selfascribed civilized European males from within their newly sovereign territorial states
became the managing centers and all-knowing 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 mono-cultural epistemological framework during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Eurocentrism K
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
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 nonwestern 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 non-European 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

Eurocentrism K
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

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

Eurocentrism K
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 selfunderstanding 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
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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 cultures

ones 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 world-system
(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

Eurocentrism K
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.
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 omissionscompensatory 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,

Eurocentrism K
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
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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 de-population 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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-profitsUSA are good, anybody challenging these concepts of their consequences is ipso
facto a Communist-subversive-enemy. 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 non-modern.
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

Eurocentrism K
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 (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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 nonWestern 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 antiethnocentric 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 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
sources on the margin, and pats itself on the back for being so cosmopolitan."6

Eurocentrism K
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.
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 ones
by [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.

Eurocentrism K
Their evidence doesnt assume all parts of history

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

Eurocentrism K
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

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, irrationalrational, 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 non-Eurocentric,
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 worldsystem 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,

Eurocentrism K
, http://www.google.com/url?
NGzs72xcKKnpIfpEkBPsIhMONn0eQ&sig2=6WnFAZPF8pes3AW7uuHLw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE, accessed 7-7-13 KR)

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 K
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
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.

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)

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 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 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 antiethnocentric 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,

Eurocentrism K
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 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.
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 antiEurocentric, 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."

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

Eurocentrism K
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
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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 non-European 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

Eurocentrism K
contributions from non-European cultures but says that if theyre important enough,
theyll be subsumed within the Western legacy; that the current 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 political-economic 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 political-economic 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),

Eurocentrism K
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.
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 self-contained Western world is
assumed, its production by the imperialist project is ignored (86). Through these
visions, the crisis of European historyassumed 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.

Eurocentrism K
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.
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

Eurocentrism K
away from being an immanent self-transcendence of the particular, and recomprehended 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 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
non-ethnocentric 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 lived-experience, 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 livedexperience, 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 TwoThirds 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"

Eurocentrism K
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 elsewhere
to 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
(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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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
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 AbdelMalek (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

Eurocentrism K
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 non-Western
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 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.

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 worldsystem analysis. [End Page 62] World-system analysis in its turn did something that
the dependency analysis was not in a 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-

Eurocentrism K
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 FalsBorda 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. Fals-Borda'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.
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

Eurocentrism K
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

Eurocentrism K
Bantu community from sub-Saharan Africa dying of hunger; or for millions of semirural 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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, Arabo-centric 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 1750-1800 [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 antiEurocentric 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

Eurocentrism K
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 privileged access to the wealth required to jumpstart 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 nonEuropean 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

Eurocentrism K
obstacles to the natural development of "commercial society"; in the antiEurocentric 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 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 matured
unless 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

Eurocentrism K
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 "anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism." The
third argument seems to me to be undoubtedly correct, and deserves our full
attention. What kind of curious animal could "anti-Eurocentric 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 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 non-European 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 firstlevel 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 antiEurocentric 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

Eurocentrism K
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 panhumanity? 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
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 socalled 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 AngloAmerican 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,

Eurocentrism K
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, 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 FalsBorda 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

Eurocentrism K
of forms of knowledge, even when such knowledges were critical to
colonialism from within colonialism itself (like Bartolome de las 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

Eurocentrism K
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) 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 fifteenthcentury 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

Eurocentrism K
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.
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 worldsystem. 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 world-system. The insertion of the word colonial, as in
modern/colonial world-system, 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 non-Western developing countries
(Friedman, 2006; Ganji, 2008; Jones, 2003: ixxl; 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 Westerncentered configurations of eco nomic, technological, and military power. This
explains why non-Western challenges to those configurations, for example, the
strategic shift in the loci of the global concentrations of economic power to nonWestern 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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

Eurocentrism K
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 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 logic
consolidated 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 nonbrutal 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 sociopolitical preferences. But to be value-free in this sense does not at all mean that

Eurocentrism K
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 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

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Eurocentrism Kritik

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 1

Eurocentrism K GDI 2013

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Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

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Eurocentrism frames social norms the normative function of

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The alternative is to reject the aff - key to decolonize

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 10

Researchers contributing to the Latin American Modernidad / Colonialidad research

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

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The intellectual conceptualization of the process of modernity produced a

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Only using Western research is simply racist it conveys the

Research 'through imperial eyes' describes an approach which assumes that

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Interventionist US engagement reinforces the dominant,

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The Plan uses an exploitative Eurocentric model in Latin

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Globalization seeks to Americanize whole populations shuts

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The rise in international discourses of various kinds of rights indigenous, human,

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

Capitalist determinations, however, required also (and in the same historical

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State to State Engagement

The Nation-State One of the clearest examples of this tragedy of equivocations in

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European centralized states synonymous emergence with

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The critique of Eurocentrism articulated in the development aid context often

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Object/subject of the resolution

US policies towards Latin America reinforce a hierarchal form

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The colonialist Eurocentric mindset is leading to a

Eurocentric thinking, in our view, is fundamentally unrepresentative of a world

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Topic Country Names

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

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