We are living in the transmodern era. Now we could detect beyond the similarities and the differences between the modernism and the postmodernism the common search for the human integrality. Only this time we are not beginning with the proclaimed human unity, but with the human diversity. The Human Being has a non generic universality. The unity is purpose before being ground.

Within an increasingly unequal, heterogeneous, and authoritarian Global North, a new global consumerism movement championed by activist consumers, together with academics, managers, and organizations, has emerged as the ultimate ethical management discourse for a better global future. NGC reframes Cold War official history of buycott consumerism by emancipating “passive” consumers and “insurgent” boycotts. Drawing on decolonial liberating transmodernity from Latin America, this paper shows how and why “old” and “new” dominant histories of consumerism deny the racialist/colonialist side of liberal (...) capitalism. The discussion involves transmodern and counter-transmodern mechanisms and overlooks everyday liberating boycott consumerism against the colonialism/racialism mobilized by subaltern victims of history. We problematize the re-appropriation of transmodernity as a potential path to decolonizing consumerism and management historiography from a majority perspective. (shrink)

This article explores the usefulness of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel's work for film-philosophy, as the field increasingly engages with a world of cinemas. The piece concludes with an analysis of two films with an ecological focus, Trolljegeren/Troll Hunter (2010) and The Hunter (2011). They are indicative of a much broader emerging trend in ecocinema that explores the interaction between humanity and the environment in relation to world history, and which does so by staging encounters between people and those ‘nonhuman’ (...) aspects of the Earth excluded by coloniality/modernity (e.g. animals, animal-spirits, mythological creatures, shaman, the very Earth itself). The interdisciplinary concerns of this work place it at the intersection of the latest research into a world of cinemas (in particular the various moves to understand films beyond the national paradigm now increasingly labelled the ‘transnational turn’; alongside growing concerns with how cinema helps us engage with ecology); and the need to broaden our philosophical grasp of the world. This latter point requires engagement with thinkers from beyond the Eurocentric canon of Western thought that currently dominates philosophy, and equally shapes film-philosophy. Dussel's philosophy is shown to provide a perspective capable of illuminating the intertwined nature of human and planetary history evident in these films, in a manner that is extremely pertinent to our global situation. Thus it is shown to be more useful than approaches to similar groupings of films which draw on, for example, speculative realism, when it comes to providing a cine-ethics appropriate to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

We could ask: how national could be a culture or another? The modernist or postmodernist perspectives seems to be unilateral here. Could be transmodernism the right sollution? The distictions between modernism, postmodernism and transmodernism are actually a pretext to set into discussion again the old dispute between Culture, regarded as a humanity universal feature and national cultures, perceived as a human community tradition symbol (community that claims a territory, a language, a religious belief and a certain government form).

Volume "Social-Constructionist Epistemology" brings into the readers' attention the most important developments that were made around the transmodernity paradigm. During its eight chapters we intend to emphasize the close connection between areas such as: communication and semiotics, transmodernity, scientific authorship, epistemology, social constructionism, philosophy, ethics, quantum metaphysics, and appreciative inquiry. This paper is based on identifying the cultural models and cognitive patterns that make possible the comprehensive opening, in the meaning of rethinking ethics in terms of transmodern paradigm. (...) The base of this research is represented by a methodology that we called fractal constructionism. This concept is a paradigm taken from the sociology of communication, which tells us that reality is a construct "made by symbolic interacting of maps of the world of various individuals." In this sense, the idea of fractal implies a fundamental structural element and a generating law. The human being is "designed" to succeed and his success is produced thanks to the evolution of world, and most of all, thanks to development, creativity and understanding. (shrink)

Transmodern ethics establishes moral norms on liberal, pluralist and pragmatic principles. We see a comeback of the negation morals, however not of ontology-anchored morals, as is the case of the God who picks favourites or of the jealous God paradigm, and not even of morals anchored in a contractualist perspective, as is the case in the modern period. The preferred focus is on the value of positivism, of cooperation as a source of efficiency, of personal enrichment, be it cultural, spiritual, (...) or moral, derived from the access to alterity. Tolerance as an ethical value is legitimised by a new, utilitarian humanism. The ethical construction of identity revolves around the value of loyalty to a tradition, a dogma, a mentality, and by extension to any coherent system liable to generate a sense of belonging. Postindustrial ethics uses for instance the value of loyalty as a strategy in marketing, organisational development, political propaganda etc. The policies used in order to increase the loyalty of a shop's customers, the employee's loyalty for the company she works for, the supporter's loyalty to his team, are the translation in layman terms of the loyalty ethics that in spiritual terms was one of the foundations of orthodoxy as loyalty to the tradition of the holy fathers. The values of equality, liberty and fraternity have been more than that, as they have laid the foundations of the modern society. (shrink)

The core of what we call transmodern turn is sustained by the shaping of an ontological model of the “Essentials Unity”, in which Human Being, the World and God should be in a non-conflictual relationship of togetherness, by a resonant / holographic mechanism of light. cognizing that the world-object and metalanguage have an objective interface, religion, philosophy and modern sciences harmonise their specific assertions through a semiotics of the "loving light” capable of proving that: syntactically, the world is governed by (...) unifying patterns which contain the semantic meanings of an objective human “language of light”; from a pragmatic point of view, biophotonically assumed, the fundamental values of human being / history can be traced in the ontologic act of signification which foregrounds the becoming of universal resonance into love. (shrink)

Derrida, in some remarks about the inauguration of new refuge-cities in Europe and America,argues for the invention of a new cosmopolitical polity which would be instituted on the basis of an ethics of hospitality. The implications run up against current notions of sovereigntyand challenge many current assumptions about citizenship and rights which draw from Enlightenment thought. This article will sketch these issues, linking up notions of rights and sovereignty inherited from the Enlightenment to their possible transmutation in contemporary conditions and (...) to questions of an ethics of responsibility and hospitality. It will examine the implications for the dissolution of the public sphere as it is now constituted and the emergence of culturally plural and transmodern forms of sociality. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of whether, as Nanda claims, treating all knowledge traditions including science as local, denies the possibility of criticism. It accepts the necessity for criticism but denies that science can be the sole arbiter of truth and argues that we have to live with holding differing knowledges in tension with one another.

The winds of change sweeping across our globalised world have inspired a wide range of studies, new research paradigms, and new concepts that seek to characterise their nature and effects, the chal...

Resumen Debido a la polisemia que la complejidad exhibe, se pretenden exponer las distintas posturas, definiciones, descripciones y debates acerca de esta, a la luz de lo descrito por Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Progogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez y Julio Aguirre, quienes comportan un principio dialógico y translúcido, que integraría la lógica clásica teniendo en cuenta sus límites de facto y de jure, que además llevaría en sí el principio de la Unitas Multiplex, que escapa a la unidad abstracta (...) por lo alto y por lo bajo. Luego de la presentación de las posturas de los autores mencionados se pasa a describir los encuentros y desencuentros que de estos aparecen sobre este concepto; y finalizar al proponer una definición y caracterización personal de la complejidad.Due to the polysemy of Complexity, it is intended to expose different postures, definitions, descriptions and debates about It, in the light of what was described by Carlos Maldonado, Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonardo Rodríguez and Julio Aguirre. For them it implies a dialogical and translucent principle that would integrate classical logic considering its de facto and de jure limits, and that in addition would take in himself the principle of Unitas Multiplex that escapes to the abstract unity by the high and by the low. After the presentation of the positions of the mentioned authors the paper goes on to describe encounters and disagreements about this concept finally proposing a definition and characterization of complexity. (shrink)

This article analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most recent novel, Americanah (2013), which brings to the fore the complex issues faced by female migrants in a globalized world. Given the centrality of digital platforms in Americanah and their impact and ubiquity in modern societies, the essay examines cyberspace as a tool for identity formation, specifically of Ifemelu, the novel’s Nigerian female protagonist, and as a platform that enhances transnational solidarity by offering female migrants the opportunity to be heard and gain agency. (...) By examining different forms of social discrimination Ifemelu encounters during her long stay in America, and the agency she gains by setting up a blog to openly express her views and those of her readers, my analysis shows the importance of an intersectional approach for understanding and encompassing the multidimensionality of women’s experiences in today’s interconnected world. The article concludes that Americanah is a representative example of transmodern fiction that captures both the challenges and the opportunities created by the mobility, transnational and transcultural reality of our times. (shrink)

This article argues the following points. (1) It is necessary to affirm that all of humanity has always sought to address certain `core universal problems' that are present in all cultures. (2) The rational responses to these `core problems' first acquire the shape of mythical narratives. (3) The formulation of categorical philosophical discourses is a subsequent development in human rationality, which does not, however, negate all mythical narratives. These discourses arose in all the great urban neolithic cultures (even if only (...) in initial form). (4) Modern European philosophy confused its economic, political and cultural domination, and the resulting crises in other philosophical traditions, with a Eurocentric universality claim, which must be questioned. (5) In any case there are formal universal aspects in which all regional philosophies can coincide, and which respond to the `core problems' at an abstract level. (6) All of this impels entry into a new age of inter-philosophical dialogue, respectful of differences and open to learning from the useful discoveries of other traditions. (7) A new philosophical project must be developed that is capable of going beyond Eurocentric philosophical modernity, by shaping a global trans - modern pluriverse, drawing upon the `discarded' (by modernity) own resources of peripheral, subaltern, postcolonial philosophies. Key Words: Al-Jabri • dialogue • Eurocentric • Fornet-Betancourt • Hountondji • inter-philosophical • myth • narrative • rationality • Ricoeur • transmodern. (shrink)

For different reasons, and with different political goals at stake, the fundamental principles advocated by the Enlightenment are being challenged by both the left and the right. This entry sets out to clear a critical space for examining what is at stake in the present in interrogating its legacy as discourse for imagining alternative transmodern and transcolonial futures. A re-evaluation of the Enlightenment by reference to concepts of equality, liberty, emancipation, justice and becoming(s) is central to that task.

1. Transmodernity, in the words of Irena Ateljevic, is “an umbrella term that connotes the emerging socio-cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift” which we are experiencing in the era...

Exploring new frontiers of sociology does not mean extending existing theories and methods but rather interrogating some of its uncritically accepted modernist assumptions, such as the equating of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Beyond Sociology explores pathways in which we go beyond sociology in terms of exploring the contours of a transformational sociology; this seeks to transform the assumptions of conventional sociological theorizing and practice as well as modes of sociological (...) imagination. Despite all the waters that have flowed around the world for the last 150 years, contemporary sociology, even so-called global sociology, suffers from what Ulrich Beck called the NATO-like firepower of Western sociology. In this context, sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about the very themes of thinking about self, culture and society. So far, globalization of sociology has meant globalization of themes and methods of modernist sociology, which makes an easy equation between sociology and modernity. For sociologists such as Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and André Béteille, sociology is a modern discipline and is post-traditional. But if sociology blindly follows the post-traditional teleology of modernity, how can it study varieties of forms of life—traditional, modern, postmodern and transmodern? These varieties of forms of life exist not only in the so-called traditional societies such as India or Lapland but in all contemporary societies—whether India, Indonesia, Sweden, France, Britain, Germany, Singapore, China or the USA. Beyond Sociology thus initially challenges us to go beyond an a priori teleological privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology. It invites us to make a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology as a prelude to making sociology part of a planetary conversation about the very themes such as society and individual that it seeks to understand. (shrink)

Under the intentionality that leads to promoting the liberation of the oppressed in global coloniality, considering planetary decoloniality as the urgency of complexity as transmethod, in the present investigation from rhizomatic deconstruction as a transmethod, the properties of rhizomes are analyzed as the essence of planetary-complex decolonial investigations; That is the complex objective of the investigation. It is framed in the lines of research: education-transcomplex transepistemologies and transepistemologies of knowledge-knowledge and transcomplex transmethodologies. In the reconstruction, the philosophical significances of the (...) properties of the rhizomes are specified: connection and heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture and cartography and decal we obtain contributions in complex planetary investigations with an anti-method criticality that is deeply complex and transdisciplinary in the anti-Eurocentrist project. We have reconciled the complex conceptions that were occurring in postcolonialism that perspectives of theoretical articulation between transmodern decolonial criticism with the reflections of Michel Foucault, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze as possible collaborations in the liberating mission of planetary decoloniality. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

The continuing growth of semiotics signifies increased awareness of global communicative processes. Expansion of the communicative universe through semiotic research furthers the transformation of our contemporary experience. Semiotics thus provides a means to articulate transmodernity. We validate this assertion through semiotic analysis of an everyday object, by which we discover an infinite horizon. With that horizon, we transcend the global culture of addiction and reach the spiritual science that is necessary to develop a lasting paradigm for humankind.

ABSTRACT This article discusses the Celtic myths, figures, and central themes of Tomm Moore’s animated movie Song of the Sea, from a transmodern feminist perspective. While the movie offers a vivid portrayal of the dichotomy between the tranquil Irish countryside and the turbulent city of Dublin, its main theme revolves around a rural family’s lament for the loss of the mother who is a modern-day personification of the Celtic selkie. This curious female figure embodies contradictory characteristics: she is semi-human and (...) at the same time a mother and a wife who, in struggling with her in-between state, leaves her family and returns to her mythical roots. By focusing on several of the Celtic mythical figures and central themes of maternal loss, motherhood, gender relations, and family reconciliation, I attempt to show that the movie’s transmodern echoes and concerns suggest that alternative family formations and changed gender roles are possible in Irish society and in the world more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article seeks to draw parallels between today’s transmodern reality and the events recounted in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and in The Handmaid’s Tale Hulu TV series, particularly Seasons 2 and 3. Addressing issues such as controlled reproduction, violence, corporeal subjection of women, and environmental injustice, I focus on the body as a site of social construction, vulnerability and control. Drawing on the work of various scholars, I argue that the body is simultaneously a site of vulnerability and of (...) resistance that exceeds totalitarian categories, thus allowing for empowering “modes of heterogeneity,” fluidity, diversity, environmental as well as transcorporeal. In Gilead, the totalitarian state where Atwood’s two novels are set, it is the body that is acted upon, with massive repression and violence, and it is the body that resists by forming alternative relations and practices, which eventually facilitate the fall of Gilead from within. Throughout my analysis, I draw on the transmodern concept, while widening it toward the corporeal enmeshment with others in order to demonstrate that it is the interdependence of vulnerability and empowerment that reveals transmodernity’s “new visions of justice.”. (shrink)

Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism is central to the project of decoloniality. It is a critical reflection on the European civilization project that gives expression to the disenchantment with European modernity that began to be felt in many places after the Second World War. This essay describes the overcoming of Cartesian reason through the “decolonial gift,” which makes possible an opening toward transmodernity, an alternate response or pathway in view of the declining geo-political and epistemological significance of Europe and (...) the United States. (shrink)

Resumo: Objetiva-se analisar e cotejar a teoria da decolonialidade, a partir das elaborações teóricas heterogêneas de dois de seus principais representantes na América Latina: Enrique Dussel (1934-2023) e Anibal Quijano (1928-2018). Tais elaborações teóricas apresentam-se sob a forma e conteúdo de duas chaves de leitura: o conceito de transmodernidade de Dussel e de matriz colonial de poder de Quijano; a partir das quais desenvolveram críticas à modernidade e à razão, com o propósito de forjar um novo tipo de conhecimento, capaz (...) de representar a identidade, autonomia e unidade latino-americano. A partir da leitura imanente das obras, apresentar-se-á os limites e possibilidades que emergem da crítica decolonial. Trata-se da adoção de um procedimento metodológico complexo que poderia ser sintetizado na forma e no conteúdo do conceito de aufhebung (suprassunção), a partir do qual institui-se a unidade de contrários como técnica e método de investigação e exposição dos processos históricos e entendimento do movimento e dinâmica do objeto. Palavras-chave: Teoria da História; Decolonialidade; Dialética Marxiana Decoloniality as a gift: the myth of the past more than perfect Abstract: The objective is to analyze and compare the theory of decoloniality, based on the heterogeneous theoretical elaborations of two of its main representatives in Latin America: Enrique Dussel (1934-2023) and Anibal Quijano (1928-2018). Such theoretical elaborations are presented in the form and content of two reading keys: Dussel's concept of transmodernity and Quijano's colonial matrix of power; from which they developed criticisms of modernity and reason, with the purpose of forging a new type of knowledge, capable of representing Latin American identity, autonomy and unity. From the immanent reading of the works, the limits and possibilities that emerge from decolonial criticism will be presented. It is the adoption of a complex methodological procedure that could be synthesized in the form and content of the concept of aufhebung, from which the unity of opposites is established as a technique and method of investigation and exposure of historical and understanding the movement and dynamics of the object. Key-words: Theory of History; Decoloniality; Marxian Dialectics La decolonialidad como don: el mito del passado perfecto Resumen: El objetivo es analizar y comparar la teoría de la descolonialidad, a partir de las heterogéneas elaboraciones teóricas de dos de sus principales representantes en América Latina: Enrique Dussel (1934-2023) y Aníbal Quijano (1928-2018). Tales elaboraciones teóricas se presentan en la forma y el contenido de dos claves de lectura: el concepto de transmodernidad de Dussel y la matriz colonial del poder de Quijano; a partir de las cuales desarrollaron críticas a la modernidad y la razón, con el propósito de forjar un nuevo tipo de conocimiento, capaz de representar la identidad, autonomía y unidad latinoamericana. A partir de la lectura inmanente de las obras se presentarán los límites y posibilidades que emergen de la crítica decolonial. Es la adopción de un procedimiento metodológico complejo que podría sintetizarse en la forma y contenido del concepto de aufhebung, a partir del cual se establece la unidad de los opuestos como técnica y método de investigación y exposición de la historia y comprensión del movimiento. y dinámica del objeto. Palabras clave: Teoría de la Historia; Decolonialidad; Dialéctica Marxista Data de registro: 07/07/2022 Data de aceite: 24/01/2024. (shrink)

We are experiencing a new phase of the crisis of the universality in the transmodern era. In the XXIst century there is room for the common search for the human unity starting from the acceptance of our fundamental diversity and the experiencing of an insular, local universality in the Digital Realm of the Net. There are good reasons to consider the Human Being has a ground non generic universality, inviting us to search the human integrality as a process, not as (...) a result and to accept that the digital natives are naturally adapted to the Transmodern Era. (shrink)

The philosopher Enrique Dussel offers a critical analysis of European construction of indigenous peoples which he calls "transmodern." His theory is especially relevant to feminist and other concerns about the potential disabling effects of postmodern approaches for political action and the development of theory. Dussel divides modernity into two concurrent paradigms. Reflection on them suggests that modernism and postmodernism should not be too strongly distinguished. In conclusion, his approach is compared with that of Mohanty.

The concept of modern world-system from Wallerstein is still eurocentric in front of Quijano’s concept of « coloniality of power » or that from Dussel of « transmodernity ». To show that Europe has colonised, exploited, ruled the world is not enough. We need to understand the radical ignorance of others organized by the colonial power since the 16th century. Independency is not sufficient if it maintains colonial hierarchies of knowledge and power. Decolonisaton of the mind is still on (...) the agenda. (shrink)

The peculiar dilemma of the self in our era has been noted by a wide range of writers, even as they have emphasized different aspects of that dilemma, such as the self’s alienation, disorientation, inflation, or fragmentation. In The Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis, Paul C. Vitz and Susan M. Felch bring together scholars from the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, theology, literature, biology, and physics to address the inadequacies of modern and postmodern selves and, ultimately, to suggest what an alternative, (...) “transmodern” account of the self might look like. The transmodern self, the editors argue, acknowledges meaning and purpose transcending the individual. In other words, it reflects an understanding of the human person that is not only intimately connected with the Judeo-Christian tradition but also rejects the twin delusions of absolute autonomy and cosmic meaninglessness that mark the present age. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I discuss Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other as a transmodern narrative that gives voice to a marginalised group of black women living in Britain. Written in a hybrid style that combines prose and poetry and eschewing punctuation and long sentences, the novel interweaves sundry stories from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century set in countries ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, and America to Britain. This networked structure exposes transtemporal and transnational patterns of diversity, connectedness and (...) relationality, as well as the distinctive genealogy of black British women and their maternal empowerment. I argue that the resilience of the characters in the face of social, racial and gender marginalisation springs from their empathic relatedness and solidarity. This emphasis on the importance of care for the other highlights the need for improving not only women’s rights and socioeconomic opportunities but of benefiting humanity on a broader scale. (shrink)

RESUMEN El objetivo de este artículo fue analizar cómo es subsumido el sentido de lo transmoderno por el filósofo colombiano Santiago Castro-Gómez para proponer una política emancipatoria. La transmodernidad es un proyecto decolonial planteado por Enrique Dussel en 1994. La modernidad, definida como mito sacrificial -eurocéntrica, colonizadora y capitalista- sería superada desde el momento en que se pueda afirmar la alteridad de las culturas universales -analéctica-. Tal proyecto de la Filosofía de la Liberación se puede concebir como un método que (...) tomaría lo mejor de la modernidad -su carácter racional-, pero en sentido contrario a la dominación política, cultural y económica. Castro-Gómez asume este método para proponer un republicanismo transmoderno. En este texto se establece como hilo conductor el posible diálogo modernidad/colonialidad establecida por estos dos filósofos para determinar cómo es posible plantear una nueva forma de entender la ontología de la política emancipatoria que presenta el filósofo colombiano. ABSTRACT This article seeks to analyze how the sense of transmodernity is subsumed in philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, to propose an emancipatory policy. Transmodernity is a decolonial project proposed by Enrique Dussel in 1994. Modernity, defined as a sacrificial myth -eurocentric, colonizing, and capitalist- would be overcome from the moment in which it is possible to affirm the otherness of the universal cultures -ana-lectic-. Such a project of the Philosophy of Liberation can be conceived as a method that would take the best of modernity -its rational character-, but in an opposite sense to political, cultural, and economic domination. Gastro-Gómez assumes this method to propose a transmodern republicanism. In this text, the possible modernity/ coloniality dialog, corroborated by these two philosophers, will be established as the guiding thread to determine how a new way of understanding the ontology of emancipatory politics, presented by the Colombian philosopher, is possible. (shrink)

E. Dussel builds an ethics involved in the liberation of the victims of a world-system increasingly global. In this paper the contributions that this ethics of liberation does to the necessary project of an intercultural dialogue are studied. This dialogue must begin with a critic of modern reason, which is eurocentric and violent, and it has to be based on a «transmodern» rationality, whose starting point is the afirmation and the recognition of the reason of the Other (the excluded human (...) being). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is concerned with the relationship between femininity and divinity in feminist speculative fiction. It equates becoming divine with becoming plant, and studies the transformations that attend women in this process in modernity, postmodernity and transmodernity. Taking as its point of departure Mark Taylor’s evolution of the concept of God through immanence, transcendence and immanent transcendence, and Rosa María Rodríguez Magda’s definition of transmodernity, it examines “The Sleep of Plants” by Anne Richter, “The Neglected Garden” by (...) Kathe Koja, and “The Bad Graft” by Karen Russell. It argues that by becoming plants these women locate themselves in opposition to the norms of divinity created by men, and proposes to delineate the contours of a new feminist paradigm in the present transmodern age through the study of botany. (shrink)

For different reasons, and with different political goals at stake, the fundamental principles advocated by the Enlightenment are being challenged by both the left and the right. This entry sets out to clear a critical space for examining what is at stake in the present in interrogating its legacy as discourse for imagining alternative transmodern and transcolonial futures. A re-evaluation of the Enlightenment by reference to concepts of equality, liberty, emancipation, justice and becoming is central to that task.

For different reasons, and with different political goals at stake, the fundamental principles advocated by the Enlightenment are being challenged by both the left and the right. This entry sets out to clear a critical space for examining what is at stake in the present in interrogating its legacy as discourse for imagining alternative transmodern and transcolonial futures. A re-evaluation of the Enlightenment by reference to concepts of equality, liberty, emancipation, justice and becoming is central to that task.

Although these essays derive from much previously published material, the whole is greater than its parts. The collection allows a comparative view of a variety of local knowledge systems, from that of the medieval masons who built the cathedral of Chartres to early modern cartography, and from the complex navigation system of Micronesia to present‐day research on malaria and on turbulence. David Turnbull marshals local systems of knowledge to substantiate his thesis that “there is not just one universal form of (...) knowledge but a variety of knowledge” .Turnbull aims to show that knowledge is motley—that it is assembled out of heterogeneous components. It is a product of social labor. Its contents are pertinent to the locality in which it was produced. As such, contrary to the claims of modernist Western science, it is not rational, autonomous, and objective. Knowledge is performative and historically contingent. It is both various and able to be compared across diverse cultures. Against the claim of science to represent universal, objective knowledge, Turnbull points to the conclusions of philosophers such as Richard Rorty who have examined the indeterminacies of modern scientific and technical ways of knowing. Using an eclectic variety of studies in philosophy and the sociology of knowledge, Turnbull reiterates Wittgenstein's point that meaning consists of embodied performance and usage.For me the most illuminating part of this book is its comparison of the development of Western cartographic techniques in the “age of discovery” with the profoundly different navigational system that was developed in the Pacific by Polynesians. Turnbull shows the difficulties that early Europeans had in assembling the multitude of local knowledges about place and distance into a systematic cartographic knowledge in the interest of the state. He then discusses the profoundly different but also highly sophisticated navigational system of the Polynesians. They developed what he calls “a dynamic cognitive map,” a map based on a star compass and etak, a system of mental representation in which the canoe was conceived as stationary and a reference island as moving backward against the rising and setting points of the stars. It was a complex system of navigation that Polynesian navigators learned by long years of study from childhood; it allowed an accurate estimation of the distance traveled. Pacific oceanic navigation was based on this system of mapping and on a key, highly sophisticated technology, the seaworthy canoe. Turnbull here undermines the “great divide” between so‐called traditional knowledge systems and modern scientific ones. He effectively questions assumptions such as the one that contrasts deliberate European discoveries of the Americas with accidental Polynesian discoveries of the Pacific islands.He takes a similar approach in his discussion of the building of Gothic cathedrals, which he conceives as sites of experimental practice, as “laboratories.” He describes the cathedrals as sites of local knowledge, built with talk, tradition, and templates . Pointing to the evolution of the master mason into the architect in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he suggests that thereby “theory became divorced from practice and skill became expertise” . Here Turnbull oversimplifies the later development. History itself becomes a template cut for the purposes of his own theoretical structure, rather than the complex, locally contingent, messy, and inherently interpretive entity that it is. Calling cathedrals “laboratories” and the process of their construction “technoscience” places modern categories onto the past in a procedure that can only create a distorting lens.This criticism can be directed at many social studies of science that use historical examples and is not meant to detract from the great value of this collection of interrelated studies. For modern science, Turnbull emphasizes both the motley assemblage and indeterminacy of scientific practices . Rather than modern science being superior to other knowledge systems, both are based on local practices. The question then becomes not how scientific methodology achieves universal, objective truth, but how technoscientific knowledge spaces achieves apparent universality and connectedness. Turnbull's answer includes technical devices and social strategies that treat various instances of knowledge/practice as equivalent and that make connections through ordering. He also shows the legitimacy and sophistication of knowledge systems that developed before or outside of modern technoscientific knowledge, and he creates a legitimizing space for both kinds, emphasizing the value of comparison and reciprocity. Rejecting the extremes of both the modern and the postmodern, he aims to create a middle ground that he calls the transmodern, a ground in that reciprocal dialogue between scientific and other kinds of knowledge systems can create both new insights and concrete human progress. This book is a valuable contribution toward such a goal. (shrink)

El artículo sostiene las siguientes tesis: 1) Es necesario afirmar que la humanidad ha expresado desde siempre ciertos núcleos problemáticos universales que se observan en todas las culturas. 2) La existencia de las respuestas racionales a esos núcleos se expresan en forma de narraciones míticas. 3)..

El artículo propone una contribución al debate contemporáneo sobre el futuro de la educación, enmarcado en las discusiones entre la escuela crítica de J. Habermas y el transhumanismo de S. Sorgner. Se somete a crítica, desde una perspectiva crítica y decolonial, los olvidos y omisiones de las condiciones materiales en las cuales se realizan las relaciones de enseñanza/aprendizaje. En términos metodológicos optamos por una hermenéutica crítica y democrática que nos permitió diseñar un cuadro propositivo de ‘Dimensiones de transformación’. Estas pueden (...) contribuir en la democratización y universalización de las educaciones futuras, a través de la definición de cuatro dimensiones claves: ‘Relaciones con la comunidad y la otredad’, ‘Saberes y sentires éticos y políticos’, ‘Inclusión de agentes invisibilizados’ y ‘Herramientas de transformación social’. (shrink)

El presente trabajo aborda el concepto de Transmodernidad bajo dos puntos de vista diferentes. Por un lado, la mirada de Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, la cual nos plantea la Transmodernidad como una tríada dialéctica entre Modernidad-Postmodernidad-Transmodernidad, siendo esta última tanto una continuación como una superación de la Postmodernidad. El otro punto de vista corresponde a Enrique Dussel, el cual nos plantea la Transmodernidad como un proyecto utópico que es transversal a la Modernidad/Postmodernidad; está antes de la Modernidad y a la (...) vez la trasciende, siendo una categoría de exterioridad que pretende sacar la voz propia de las culturas no europeo-norteamericanas, para así poder establecer diálogos interculturales simétricos que llevan consigo características de la propia cultura inconmensurables al proyecto moderno europeo. Así enfrentamos ambas concepciones de la Transmodernidad para destacar sus diferencias y contraposiciones. (shrink)

_Enrique Dussel was by any meaningful measure a giant representative of Latin American and world philosophy. This personal reflection sheds light on his intellectual trajectory and his contributions to liberation philosophy, world philosophy, South-South and South-North dialogues, and the decolonial turn._.

It is one thing to consider what human rights have been and another to inquire into what they could be. In this essay, I present a history of human rights vis-à-vis decolonization. I follow the scholarship of Samuel Moyn to suggest that human rights presented a “moral alternative” to political utopias. The question remains how to politicize the moral energy around human rights today. I argue that defending what Édouard Glissant calls a “right to opacity” could politicize the ethical energy (...) around human rights today. Glissant’s right to opacity outlines a blueprint for the praxis of human rights to shift from a “functional model” to a “critical model,” to use Enrique Dussel’s distinction. My ultimate aim is to show how social movements around human rights and decolonization could converge today. (shrink)