Local Histories/Global Designs:
Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking
Walter D. Mignolo

Paper | 2000 | $35.00 / £24.95 | ISBN: 9780691001401
296 pp. | 6 x 9 | 2 tables 12 halftones

Shopping Cart | Endorsements | Table of Contents

This book is an extended argument on the "coloniality" of power by one of the most innovative scholars of Latin American studies. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of "colonial difference" into study of the modern colonial world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge, which he calls "border thinking."

Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by employing the terms and concerns of New World scholarship. His concept of "border gnosis," or what is known from the perspective of an empire's borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.

The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization and argues that, rather than one "civilizing" process dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization and mundializacion, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.

Endorsement:

"Walter Mignolo, one of America's most eminent postcolonialists, presents a challenging new paradigm for understanding the realities of a planetary 'coloniality of power,' and the limits of area studies in the United States. Local History/Global Designs is one of the most important books in the historical humanities to have emerged since the end of the Cold War University. This is vintage Mignolo: packed with insights, breadth, and intellectual zeal."--José David Saldívar, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

This book has been translated into:

• Portuguese
• Spanish

Series:

• Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History
  Sherry B. Ortner, Nicholas B. Dirks, and Geoffrey Eley, Editors

Subject Areas:

• Anthropology
• Latin American Studies
• American Literature
• Postcolonial Studies

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Paper: $35.00 ISBN: 9780691001401

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Paper: £24.95 ISBN: 9780691001401

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 11/6/2011

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