Decolonial Thought

1. Introduction

Decolonial thought is a heterogeneous intellectual and political tradition that examines how the end of formal empires did not dissolve coloniality—the long-lasting patterns of domination forged through conquest, racial slavery, and imperial rule. Rather than treating colonialism as a past historical episode, decolonial thinkers analyze how it continues to organize global hierarchies of power, knowledge, and being.

Emerging strongly from Latin American, Afro-diasporic, and Indigenous contexts, but increasingly articulated across Africa, Asia, the Arab world, and the Pacific, decolonial thought approaches modernity/coloniality as a single, entangled process. Proponents argue that European modernity’s narratives of progress, rationality, and universality were co-constituted with colonization, extraction, and racialization. This position distinguishes decolonial work from approaches that view colonialism as a regrettable side-effect of otherwise emancipatory modern projects.

Central to this tradition is a sustained critique of Eurocentrism in philosophy, social theory, and the sciences. Decolonial authors question how supposedly universal categories—such as “human,” “reason,” “development,” or “citizenship”—were historically shaped by colonial encounters and continue to exclude or subordinate non-European peoples and knowledges. They explore how epistemic disobedience and delinking from dominant frameworks might open space for alternative ways of knowing and living.

At the same time, decolonial thought is not a unified doctrine. It comprises multiple currents: Latin American modernity/coloniality theory, decolonial feminism, Indigenous resurgence, Afro-decolonial and Black diasporic perspectives, and decolonial aesthetics, among others. These strands share a focus on coloniality but differ in their emphases on race, land, gender, spirituality, capitalism, or the state.

Debate is ongoing about the relationship between decolonial and postcolonial theories, the risks of academic co-optation, and the meaning of pluriversality—a “world where many worlds fit.” Across these differences, decolonial thought consistently links critique with transformative praxis, seeking to understand and unsettle the lingering infrastructures of empire in contemporary life.

2. Geographic and Cultural Roots

Decolonial thought is geographically dispersed but coheres around specific regions where colonial histories and contemporary struggles have provided key reference points.

Latin America and Abya Yala

Many scholars locate a principal node in Latin America and Abya Yala (an Indigenous term for the Americas). Thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Enrique Dussel developed the modernity/coloniality framework from reflection on Iberian conquest, the transatlantic slave trade, and republican independence movements. They argue that 1492 and the conquest of the Americas constituted a foundational moment for global racial capitalism.

Indigenous movements in the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Southern Cone contribute cosmologies and practices—such as buen vivir / sumak kawsay, communal landholding, and collective authority—that inform decolonial critiques of development, sovereignty, and private property.

Africa and the African Diaspora

African and Afro-diasporic contexts—West and Central Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, and North America—provide another crucial ground. Anti-colonial movements, pan-Africanism, and Black radical traditions (e.g., Césaire, Fanon, Cabral, Nkrumah, Nascimento) have supplied analyses of racial slavery, plantation economies, and anti-Blackness that decolonial authors treat as constitutive of modernity itself.

Arab World, South Asia, and the Pacific

In the Arab world and South Asia, experiences of British and French rule, partition, and ongoing imperial entanglements shape engagements with decolonial frameworks. Some scholars intersect decolonial thought with Islamic intellectual traditions, Subaltern Studies, or postcolonial theory, adapting coloniality analyses to these settings.

In Pacific and Oceanian contexts, particularly among Māori and Aboriginal thinkers, land-based ontologies, treaty histories, and cultural resurgence movements inform critiques of settler colonialism, extractivism, and state multiculturalism.

Transnational Formations

Migration, diaspora, and global activism create transnational networks—for example, university-based research groups, Indigenous solidarity campaigns, and environmental justice coalitions—that circulate decolonial ideas. These networks complicate simple “North–South” or “center–periphery” models, emphasizing instead shifting, relational geographies of coloniality and resistance.

3. Linguistic Context and Plurilingualism

Language is not treated as a neutral medium in decolonial thought but as a central terrain of coloniality and resistance. European languages—Spanish, Portuguese, English, French—spread through conquest, missionization, and schooling, often displacing or subordinating Indigenous, African, and local tongues. Decolonial authors analyze how this process shaped who could speak, whose words counted as knowledge, and which concepts were thinkable.

Plurilingual Practices

Decolonial work is characteristically plurilingual, operating across multiple languages:

Authors frequently keep key terms in their original languages—colonialidad, pluriversalidad, buen vivir, ubuntu, sumak kawsay—to signal that their meanings do not fully coincide with available English equivalents. This practice is framed as a form of epistemic disobedience, refusing what some view as the assimilative force of English-dominated scholarship.

Grammar, Ontology, and Translation

Several decolonial thinkers argue that coloniality operates through grammatical and semantic structures. For instance, they suggest that the subject–object split or nature–culture dichotomy encoded in many European languages has shaped scientific and philosophical worldviews that marginalize relational or more-than-human ontologies present in many Indigenous languages.

Translation is thus treated ambivalently:

• Proponents of strategic translation see it as necessary for cross-cultural dialogue and global alliances, provided asymmetries of power are recognized.
• Others emphasize untranslatability, arguing that some concepts are embedded in land, ritual, and everyday practice in ways that cannot be captured by academic discourse.

This plurilingual orientation situates language as both a site of colonial imposition and a resource for articulating plural worlds.

4. Historical Emergence and Genealogies

Decolonial thought draws on long histories of resistance and reflection that precede its explicit naming in the late 20th century. Its genealogies are diverse and contested, but several strands are commonly highlighted.

Early Anti-Colonial and Maroon Traditions

From the 15th century onward, Indigenous uprisings, maroon communities, and enslaved peoples’ writings articulated critiques of conquest and slavery. Historians identify petitions by Andean nobles, chronicles by Guaman Poma de Ayala, slave narratives, and intellectual currents around the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) as part of a “pre-theoretical” decolonial archive, even though they did not use that term.

19th–Mid-20th Century Anti-Colonial Thought

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, independence leaders, pan-Africanists, and anti-colonial theorists—such as Simón Bolívar, José Martí, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, and later Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire—developed critiques of imperialism, racism, and capitalism. Decolonial authors often read these figures as precursors, while also noting their ambivalent positions toward Eurocentric models of the nation-state and modernity.

Cold War Era: Dependency and Liberation Currents

During the 1960s–1980s, dependency theory, liberation philosophy, and liberation theology in Latin America questioned developmentalism and Eurocentric economic models. Enrique Dussel and others argued for a “philosophy of liberation” grounded in the experiences of the oppressed, which would influence later coloniality debates.

Consolidation of the Modernity/Coloniality Group

The explicit language of coloniality gained prominence in the 1990s through the modernity/coloniality research program, centered around Quijano, Mignolo, Dussel, Catherine Walsh, and others. They systematized ideas of coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, and proposed border thinking as an epistemic stance from the margins.

Parallel and Intersecting Genealogies

Other genealogies emphasize:

Some scholars argue for a strong continuity between these currents and decolonial thought; others propose sharper distinctions, especially around geography (Latin America vs. Anglophone world) and conceptual emphases (coloniality vs. postcoloniality).

5. Foundational Texts and Thinkers

Decolonial thought does not have a single canon, but several texts and authors are widely cited as foundational reference points.

Frequently Highlighted Works

Other often-cited figures include Enrique Dussel (philosophy of liberation), Catherine Walsh (pluriversality and pedagogy), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (abyssal thinking), Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Decolonizing Methodologies), and Sylvia Wynter (reconceptualizations of the “human”).

Debates on Canon Formation

There is debate over how to define a “decolonial canon”:

• Some emphasize Latin American authors of the modernity/coloniality group as core theorists.
• Others argue such a focus risks repeating exclusions by sidelining Indigenous, Black, feminist, and non-Latin American contributions.
• A further position stresses that oral, performative, and land-based practices—ceremonies, storytelling, community protocols—should be treated as equally foundational “texts,” challenging print-based notions of theory.

These discussions shape how decolonial thought is taught and institutionalized, and how its genealogies are narrated.

6. Core Concepts: Coloniality, Modernity, and Pluriversality

Several interrelated concepts structure decolonial analyses of the contemporary world.

Coloniality

Colonialidad (coloniality) refers to enduring patterns of power that originate in colonialism but persist after formal independence. Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power highlights how racial classification, global labor hierarchies, and Eurocentric knowledge systems form a durable matrix embedded in capitalism. Subsequent work extends this to:

• Coloniality of knowledge (colonialidad del saber): prioritization of Western epistemologies as universal.
• Coloniality of being (colonialidad del ser): differential recognition of who counts as fully human.
• Coloniality of gender (colonialidad de género): imposition of modern/colonial gender and sexual regimes.

Modernity/Coloniality

For decolonial thinkers, modernity and coloniality are inseparable dimensions of one world-historical process. Europe’s self-image as the cradle of progress is seen as dependent on colonization, extraction, and racialization elsewhere. The framework of modernidad/colonialidad contests periodizations that treat colonialism as an external “episode” in an otherwise autonomous European modernity.

Pluriversality

Pluriversalidad (pluriversality) names an envisioned configuration in which multiple ontologies and epistemologies coexist without being subordinated to a single universal framework. It is distinguished from:

Proponents argue that pluriversality requires delinking from Eurocentric assumptions and recognizing subaltern knowledges as sources of theory, not just data. Critics note potential risks of relativism or fragmentation and query how conflicts between “worlds” would be negotiated.

Together, these concepts provide the analytical vocabulary through which decolonial thought interrogates global structures and imagines alternative arrangements.

7. Decolonial Thought and Western Philosophy

The relationship between decolonial thought and Western philosophy is characterized by both critical engagement and selective appropriation.

Critique of Eurocentrism and Canon

Decolonial authors argue that Western philosophy’s canon—Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, among others—was historically constructed alongside colonial expansion, yet often abstracts from this context. They contend that key philosophical categories (reason, subject, freedom, human) were formulated in ways that implicitly excluded colonized and racialized peoples. Concepts such as abyssal thinking (Santos) are used to describe how Western epistemologies draw invisible lines that render some populations as beyond the sphere of rights and knowledge.

Dialogues with Critical Traditions

At the same time, decolonial thinkers frequently draw on Western critical traditions:

Some authors call for a “pluriversal” philosophy in which Western traditions become one interlocutor among many, rather than the default standard.

Refusal and Border Thinking

Certain Indigenous and Afro-diasporic scholars emphasize refusal—a decision not to engage Western philosophy on its own terms—as a decolonial stance, focusing instead on their own intellectual traditions. Others advocate border thinking, working from the “edges” of Western philosophy to displace its universality while still conversing with it.

Debates continue over whether decolonial thought should primarily transform Western philosophy from within, provincialize it as one tradition among others, or bypass it in favor of alternative genealogies.

8. Major Schools and Currents

Decolonial thought is internally diverse, organized around several overlapping schools and currents rather than a single unified movement.

Modernity/Coloniality Research Program

Centred largely in Latin America and its diaspora, this program includes figures such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Catherine Walsh. It systematizes core notions of coloniality of power/knowledge/being, border thinking, epistemic disobedience, and pluriversality. Critics sometimes describe it as overly abstract or Latin America–centric; proponents view it as a key theoretical backbone of decolonial thought.

Decolonial Feminism and Gender Studies

Led by thinkers like María Lugones, Ochy Curiel, Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, and Rita Segato, this current foregrounds coloniality of gender, intersectionality, and critiques of both mainstream Western feminism and some male-dominated decolonial writing. It will be treated in detail in a later section but is widely recognized as a distinct and influential strand.

Indigenous Decolonial and Resurgence Traditions

Indigenous scholars and activists from Abya Yala, Turtle Island, Aotearoa, and Australia articulate land-based epistemologies, sovereignty claims, and resurgence practices. Authors such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Glen Coulthard, and Moana Jackson emphasize treaty relations, ceremony, and land return as central to decolonization, sometimes expressing skepticism toward state-centered or purely epistemic approaches.

Afro-Decolonial and Black Diasporic Thought

This current builds on Fanon, Césaire, Sylvia Wynter, Achille Mbembe, Abdias do Nascimento, and others to stress that racial slavery and anti-Blackness are constitutive of modernity. It explores Black aesthetics, religion, politics, and ontology as sites of both colonial violence and creative reworlding.

Decolonial Aesthetics and Epistemic Disobedience

Artists, critics, and theorists such as Rolando Vázquez, Ticio Escobar, and Suely Rolnik explore decolonial aesthetics, challenging Eurocentric canons and museum practices, and advocating practices that delink art and knowledge from colonial value regimes. This current intersects with education, curation, and activism.

These currents overlap, borrow from one another, and at times disagree over strategy, vocabulary, and political priorities, contributing to the field’s internal dynamism.

9. Decolonial Feminism and Gender Critiques

Decolonial feminism examines how gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism are co-constitutive, arguing that modern gender systems cannot be understood apart from coloniality.

Coloniality of Gender

María Lugones’s concept of colonialidad de género (coloniality of gender) is central. She argues that European colonialism imposed a modern/colonial gender system—binary, heteronormative, and tied to racial hierarchies—on societies that often had different gender logics. Under this system, “woman” and “man” are racialized categories, with white bourgeois women occupying a different position than Indigenous or Black women subjected to labor, sexual violence, and dispossession.

Critique of Western Feminisms

Decolonial feminists contend that mainstream Western feminisms have frequently universalized the experiences of white, middle-class women, assuming access to citizenship, wage labor, and the public sphere that many colonized women did not share. They critique rights-based and individualist frameworks for neglecting colonial histories, land, spirituality, and community obligations.

Intersection with Other Currents

This current intersects with:

Internal Debates

Within decolonial feminism, debates address:

• The extent to which “gender” as a category itself reflects European modernity and may not align with Indigenous or Afro-diasporic ontologies.
• How to negotiate tensions between community traditions and feminist critiques, especially where patriarchal norms are justified as “cultural.”
• Whether decolonial feminism should be a distinct field or fully integrated into broader decolonial theory.

Despite these differences, decolonial feminism consistently foregrounds the ways coloniality is gendered and sexualized, challenging any decolonial project that neglects these dimensions.

10. Indigenous Resurgence and Land-Based Epistemologies

Indigenous decolonial currents emphasize that colonialism is not only a historical event or a cultural imposition but an ongoing settler colonial structure centered on land dispossession and sovereignty.

Land as Ontological and Epistemic Ground

Indigenous scholars often describe land as a living relation rather than a resource or property. Land-based epistemologies locate knowledge in practices like hunting, farming, ceremony, and kinship with more-than-human beings. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, for example, frames Indigenous intelligence as emerging from reciprocal relationships with specific territories.

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“Our knowledge practices are generated through our relationships to place.”

— Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back

Such views challenge modern separations of nature/culture and subject/object, and inform critiques of extractivism and climate policy.

Resurgence and Everyday Practices

Resurgence refers to Indigenous-led renewal of language, governance, ceremony, and subsistence practices. Thinkers like Glen Coulthard argue that resurgence prioritizes self-determining practices grounded in land, rather than seeking recognition from the settler state. This can include language revitalization, land reclamation camps, traditional food systems, and community-run schools.

Relationship to the State and Rights

There is significant debate about engagement with state institutions:

Some Indigenous thinkers also question the language of “decolonization” itself, suggesting that their projects predate and exceed colonial intrusion, and should be framed in their own terms.

These perspectives contribute a distinct emphasis on territoriality, relationality, and more-than-human governance within broader decolonial thought.

11. Afro-Decolonial and Black Diasporic Perspectives

Afro-decolonial and Black diasporic currents foreground the centrality of racial slavery and anti-Blackness to modernity/coloniality.

Slavery, Plantation, and Modernity

Building on Césaire, Fanon, and later Achille Mbembe, many argue that the transatlantic slave trade and plantation economies were not peripheral but foundational to modern capitalism and political thought. The plantation is treated as a prototype of disciplinary labor, racial hierarchy, and ecological transformation.

Sylvia Wynter’s work is especially influential in theorizing how the category of “Man” in Western humanism is historically overrepresented as white, European, and bourgeois, casting Black and colonized peoples as outside the human.

Black Radical and Diasporic Traditions

Afro-decolonial thought draws on pan-Africanism, Black Marxism, and Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian movements:

These perspectives frequently highlight music, religion (e.g., Candomblé, Vodou), and everyday practices as key sites of decolonial possibility.

Anti-Blackness and Coloniality

Some scholars stress anti-Blackness as a distinct, structural form of dehumanization within coloniality, shaping policing, incarceration, and global migration regimes. There is debate over whether coloniality can be fully understood without an explicit theorization of Blackness, and how it relates to Indigenous dispossession and other racial formations.

Afro-decolonial perspectives contribute to decolonial thought by centering the afterlives of slavery, interrogating the category of the human, and elaborating Black aesthetic and political imaginaries as responses to colonial violence.

12. Key Debates and Internal Critiques

Decolonial thought is marked by vigorous internal debate over its concepts, scope, and political strategies.

Decolonization: Metaphor or Material Process?

A widely cited intervention by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argues that “decolonization is not a metaphor”, insisting that it must involve land return and structural transformation, not just curricular or representational change. Supporters warn that the term “decolonize” risks dilution when used broadly (e.g., “decolonize your bookshelf”). Others maintain that epistemic, cultural, and symbolic transformations are vital, though they often agree that these should not substitute for material change.

Relation to Postcolonial Theory

There is disagreement about how decolonial thought relates to postcolonial studies:

Critics also question whether framing decoloniality as a “new” paradigm risks erasing longstanding anti-colonial intellectual work.

Universality vs. Pluriversality

Debates around pluriversality revolve around whether decolonial thought should:

• Reject universal claims entirely in favor of context-specific worlds.
• Propose a non-imperial, dialogical universality rooted in cross-cultural negotiation.
• Maintain some shared ethical or political principles (e.g., against domination) while allowing ontological plurality.

Concerns include avoiding relativism and addressing conflicts between different “worlds.”

State, Law, and Human Rights

Positions vary on engagement with state structures:

• Some see nation-states, constitutionalism, and human rights as inherently colonial forms.
• Others pursue decolonial reforms within these frameworks.
• A further strand advocates autonomous or community-based governance separate from the state.

Academic Institutionalization

As decolonial discourse gains traction in universities and cultural institutions, critics worry about co-optation, tokenism, and the emergence of “decolonial” as a depoliticized brand. Others argue that academic spaces can be used strategically if scholars remain accountable to communities and movements.

These debates indicate that decolonial thought is an evolving field rather than a settled doctrine.

13. Decolonial Aesthetics, Education, and Praxis

Decolonial thought extends beyond theory into artistic practices, pedagogies, and everyday forms of action.

Decolonial Aesthetics

Decolonial aesthetics challenges Eurocentric standards of beauty, form, and artistic value. Artists and theorists argue that museums, galleries, and art markets often reproduce colonial hierarchies by privileging European canons and framing non-European art as “ethnographic” or “primitive.” Decolonial approaches seek to:

• Recenter Indigenous and Afro-diasporic visualities, sounds, and performances.
• Question ownership, authorship, and the commodification of cultural objects.
• Experiment with forms that embody border thinking and pluriversality.

Curatorial projects and community arts initiatives are frequently cited as examples of decolonial aesthetic practice.

Education and Pedagogy

In education, decolonial praxis appears in efforts to transform curricula, teaching methods, and institutional cultures:

Authors such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Catherine Walsh emphasize education as a key site for epistemic disobedience and institutional change, while also warning that reforms may be limited without broader structural shifts.

Praxis Beyond Institutions

Decolonial praxis is also associated with:

• Social movements (e.g., land defense, anti-racist mobilizations, language revitalization).
• Community-based economies and cooperative projects.
• Everyday practices of refusal, care, and mutual aid.

Some scholars stress that decolonial praxis should not be confined to academic or artistic interventions but rooted in collective struggles and community priorities. Others highlight the importance of symbolic and discursive shifts as part of broader transformations.

14. Institutionalization, Co-optation, and Limits

As decolonial vocabulary and frameworks gain prominence in universities, NGOs, museums, and cultural institutions, questions arise about institutionalization and its consequences.

Academic Uptake

Many higher-education institutions have launched “decolonizing the curriculum” initiatives, research centers, and funded projects. Supporters argue that this can open space for marginalized scholars, legitimize subaltern knowledges, and shift disciplinary boundaries. Critics counter that such initiatives may remain superficial, focused on adding diverse content without altering power structures, hiring practices, or resource allocation.

Branding and Professionalization

The growing visibility of “decolonial” work has led some commentators to speak of a decolonial brand. Concerns include:

• The risk that “decolonial” becomes a flexible label for grant applications, exhibitions, or conferences, detached from concrete anti-colonial commitments.
• The emergence of professional “experts” whose careers depend on decolonial discourse, potentially narrowing the range of acceptable critique.

Others argue that these dynamics are not unique to decolonial thought and that careful reflexivity and community accountability can mitigate them.

Limits and Self-Critique

Internal critiques highlight several perceived limits:

Some Indigenous and Black scholars suggest that not all resistance or resurgence should be framed as “decolonial,” preferring their own conceptual vocabularies. Others question whether decolonial frameworks can fully account for specific forms of oppression, such as anti-Blackness or caste.

These discussions indicate an ongoing effort to assess how far decolonial thought can be taken within existing institutions and where alternative or extra-institutional sites of theorizing and organizing may be necessary.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Decolonial thought is widely regarded as having reshaped contemporary discussions of colonialism’s afterlives and the nature of global modernity.

Intellectual Reorientation

By positing modernity/coloniality as a single process and elaborating the concept of coloniality, decolonial thinkers have provided a framework for reinterpreting global history, social theory, and philosophy. This has influenced disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, political theory, education, and cultural studies, prompting reconsideration of canonical narratives and categories.

Impact on Movements and Institutions

Decolonial analyses have informed:

• Social movements focused on land rights, environmental justice, anti-racism, and Indigenous sovereignty.
• Institutional reforms aimed at diversifying curricula, revising museum collections, and rethinking development policies.

While some observers see these developments as evidence of decolonial thought’s transformative potential, others caution that institutional uptake may be partial or cosmetic.

Comparative and Transnational Reach

Over time, decolonial frameworks have been adapted in diverse contexts—from South Africa and India to the Pacific and Europe—generating comparative work on colonial legacies across empires (Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, Dutch). This has contributed to a more multipolar understanding of theory production, in which the Global South is not only an object but also a source of concepts.

Continuing Debates

The historical significance of decolonial thought is itself debated. Some scholars describe it as a major paradigmatic shift in critical theory; others view it as part of a longer continuum of anti-colonial and postcolonial work, or as one among several critical approaches to global power. There is also discussion about its future trajectory: whether it will deepen and diversify, become normalized within existing structures, or give way to new vocabularies emerging from ongoing struggles.

Regardless of these divergent assessments, decolonial thought has established a durable presence in contemporary intellectual and political landscapes, foregrounding the enduring relevance of colonial histories for understanding the present.