Examples Of Coloniality Of Power

Coloniality of power is a concept/phrase originally coined by Anibal Quijano. The concept itself refers to interconnecting the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge. More specifically, it describes the lasting legacy of colonialism within modern society in the form of social and racial discrimination that has been incorporated into today’s social orders. Furthermore, it identifies the racial, political and social hierarchies enforced by European colonialists in Latin America that gave value to certain people while marginalizing others. Quijano’s main argument is based around the notion that the colonial structure of power created a class system, where Spaniards and other light skinned ethnicities

This is what coloniality of power is based on. The Eurocentric system of knowledge allocated the creation of knowledge to Europeans and prioritized the use of European ways of knowledge creation. This means that any knowledge originating from indigenous cultures was suppressed and denied existence. Only the knowledge of the European lifestyle was accepted. Quijano writes, "Europe’s hegemony over the new model of global power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity, culture, and especially knowledge and the production of knowledge under its hegemony” (Quijano 540). This denial and suppression of knowledge and tradition against conquered peoples was again built around the basis of the superiority/inferiority relationship enforced by the hierarchical

Lugones claims that the domination of gender played an equal role within the coloniality of power as race did. In the gender system, there exists dichotomous hierarchies which implement binaries of male/female, white/non-white, civilized/non-civilized, etc. The male was seen as the perfection, while the female was seen as the inversion, or deformation of the male. She states, “I call the analysis of racialized, capitalist, gender oppression ‘the coloniality of gender.’ I call the possibility of overcoming the coloniality of gender "decolonial feminism” (Lugones 747). She also spoke about different ways in which this oppression was resisted. An example of resisting subjectivity is what she called ‘infra-politics.’ What she means by this is to look within yourself and realize consciously that you are not what your suppressors say you are. By doing this, one can see their true potential as a human being and not view themselves using the definitions given to them by their