Can the subaltern save us?

Abstract

A cursory review of diverse theories (postmodernism, posthumanism, postcolonialism, decolonial theory, and anthropology) that are concerned with the crisis of modernity and ecological destruction reveal not only how moderns often have turned to indigenous cosmologies and ontologies to find resolutions to this crisis, but also how confounding this process of recuperation has been. We observe moderns sometimes trying to appear as saviors of the subalterns because they intuit in the subalterns a revelation so powerful it will prevent the definite destruction of the world, or at least redeem the moderns from the sins of their ancestors. At other times, we find moderns giving a substantive importance to the concepts and ontologies developed by non-moderns as a way to imagine futurity for themselves. Instead of rescuing the subaltern, it is the subaltern that rescues them. There are also cases where indigenous ontologies and cosmologies are utilized in unstated forms as in posthumanism, revealing the colonial relationship to indigenous knowledges that modern theorists often have. This includes postcolonial and decolonial theorists from the south, which is my locus of enunciation. Indigenous intellectuals themselves are committed to rescue their ancestral knowledges to build futurity as they also believe that their cosmologies and ontologies are better suited to solve the problems of modernity. But in the indigenous projects, there are no absolute dividing lines or clear-cut dichotomies between indigenous and modern epistemologies. Here I argue that indigenous peoples have dealt for centuries with modern epistemologies. Indigenous theories must be taken more seriously, but also critically analyzed.

Ceci n’est pas un subalterne. A Comment on Indigenous Erasure in Ontology-Related Archaeologies

“…Now, even if Latour embraces an ethnographic ethic in his insistence that humans are not the main actors in this world, he neither recognises nor cites any Indigenous thinker in his work (Todd 2016). A similar critique has been directed towards famous anthropologists such as Viveiros de Castro or Holbraad (Hunt 2014;Mendoza 2018;Sundberg 2014;V. Watts 2013), to whom archaeologies of the 'ontological turn' are indebted to different degrees (Alberti et al 2011;Domańska 2014;Henare et al 2007;C.…”

“…Western scholars look at alternate-Indigenous ideas of co-constitutive relations between objects, nature, animals and humans to help them renew the discipline and even the world, but on their terms, they homogenise and generalise Indigenous worldviews which are far more complex than the scholars' understanding of them and not as symmetrical as claimed to be (Franco 2012;Mendoza 2018). By filtering and misinterpreting local theories/stories, new animists essentialise conceptions building a pan-Indigenous epistemology that does not exist.…”

“…Scrambling for answers to question the ruins of the established Cartesian and colonial roots of the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, 'object-oriented' and 'new animist' scholars have 'discovered' other -more symmetrical-ways of understanding and being in the world and have crafted them for Western audiences, gaining in the process considerable symbolic and academic capital. In an unexpected turn of events, it seems that the 'Indigenous/subaltern/non-modern' is helping the 'modern' -in this case Western anthropologists and archaeologists-to cope with the destruction of their own world, as if the subaltern can now save scholars from their own theoretical deadlocks (Mendoza 2018).…”

Seeking common ground: On possible dialogues between Marxisms and Political Ontology

“…Transmodernity, for Dussel, is then the possibility of enabling a "universality in difference and difference in universality" (Dussel 2015: 48). This constitutes the second trend of decolonial thought, a project anchored not on whether subalterns can speak, but on whether we can learn to listen, and learn to come into dialogue with other forms of thought (Santos 2014;Leff 2017;Esteva 2019;Mendoza 2019).…”

“…This process effectively challenged the colonial ontology of separation by encoding a pluriversal ontology into their political codes (i.e., the constitution) and existing political structures (i.e., the State). The result arguably questioned neoliberal capitalism but without altering the dynamics of extraction, violence, and the colonial hierarchies that underpin global capitalism (Dinerstein 2015;Mendoza 2019;Riofrancos 2020).…”