International Center for Cultural Studies

Global Coloniality and the World Disorder: A Decolonial Take

2021-11-02

Walter D. Mignolo is William H. Wannamaker Professor and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities at Duke University. Mignolo is an important thinker of decoloniality and a postcolonial theorist. Drawing on decolonial thoughts and Indigenous thinking from Latin America, his study exposes the coloniality of power, the hegemony of Western epistemology, and geopolitics of knowledge hidden behind the world system since the sixteenth century.

Mignolo’s recent work investigates the political forces of re-Westernization, de-Westernization and the multipolar world order that have emerged in global politics. Providing a critical examination of the knowledge system, financial institutions and the idea of sustainable development that shaped the current global order, Mignolo’s work invites alternative thinking on concepts such as “sustainable economies” and “living in harmony and plenitude.” This book is a collection of representative works selected by Mignolo, a brand new chapter written for the book, and an interview conducted by local scholars. It aims to open a perspective of the “Global South” that responds to the world’s pressing issues and encourages intellectual decolonization for readers in the Chinese-speaking world.