Linda Alcoff - Thinking from the Underside of History

Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta

N ot so long ago Western societies claimed the name modernity for their time, their contemporaneity, assuming this to be at the forefront of the historical continuum. Modernity was a self-description that served as a self-affirmation, differentiating the West from the rest. Today, modernity has given way to globalization, or the global age, as a way to describe societies, though not merely or necessarily those of the industrialized West. Already there is a highly developed bibliography of materials seeking to explain how globalization came to pass and what its implications are for different types of societies. One thing is clear, however: globalization has made it extremely difficult to make naive universalizing claims, just as it has also made it significantly easier, if not de rigeur, to qualify ones pronouncements with a specifying prefix: European, Indian, Asian, African, Hispanic, North Atlantic, Pacific, and so on. Ronald Robertson has nicely defined this dialectic: Its [globalizations] central dynamic involves the twofold process of the particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particular. Such is the case with Latin American philosophy.

The project to develop a Latin American philosophy is not simply part and parcel of the construction of imaginary communities for the sake of nation-state consolidation. Nor is it merely the defensive and reactive posture assumed by those who feel the need to prove their humanity. Rather, the project to develop a Latin American philosophy is the project of overcoming the neocolonialism of Eurocentric thought, of provincializing European philosophy, and of bringing Latin American and, indeed, Third World realities to the center of critical thought, whether it is concerned with ethics, politics, epistemology, or religion. Western philosophy passes itself off as universal and disembodied, without cultural roots or limitations. This is its own self-deception, for which the concept of modernity provided the alibi. Philosophies born elsewhere, from the underside of modernity, are rewriting this historical self-understanding of European philosophy as well as the telos of global thought. Latin American philosophy has the potential, then, to claim universal significance, even while it has a self-avowed cultural location, through its advanced critical consciousness. It is by no means alone in this critical marginality to dominant Eurocentric thought, but what Latin American thought in particular has to contribute is its thorough knowledge of and engagement with the founding moment of Europe itself: the encuentro , or encounter, between two worlds, one old, the other new.

No one has contributed more to the development of Latin American philosophy as a critical reflection on modernity and globalization in the last half of the twentieth century than the Argentine-born philosopher Enrique Dussel. Dussels life has included extensive studies of pure Western philosophy, political activism, repression and exile from a military dictatorship, a turn toward Marxism and liberation theology, and the development of the comprehensive articulation of a philosophy of liberation. Dussel has incorporated and arguably surpassed the leading critical resources of European philosophy toward this project, including the hermeneutic critique of universalism, the critique of totality in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, and the discourse ethics developed by Karl-Otto Apel and Jrgen Habermas.

Dussel insists that our primary concern must be nothing less than the ongoing global genocide. An estimated 20 million persons die each year from starvation and malnutrition perpetrated by the new world order of global capitalism. Like many African philosophers and Indian postcolonial cultural critics, Dussel is convinced that European thought is an important site at which one might interfere with the smooth reproduction of this system. In his philosophy of liberation, Dussel has sought a solution to the totalitarian thought of oppression through a recourse to what it has excluded: the perspective, and the labor, of its victims. What emerges very clearly from this approach is that liberation must be pluritopic, not mono-topic, and that it will be culturally local. Dussel calls such an approach, which revises universality by combining it with a recognition of irreducible difference, a diversality.

In this volume, North American and European philosophers interpret, debate, and attempt to come to terms with the meaning and implications of Dussels thought. The chapters here do not presume readers who are already acquainted with Dussels corpus, but they provide accessible overviews of many aspects of his ideas, from ethics to politics to religion. Walter Mignolo situates Dussel vis--vis other critical theoretical projects such as subaltern studies, and Eduardo Mendieta explains and defends Dussels approach to global ethics. Elina Vuola critiques the philosophy of liberations account of feminism and of gender, and Lynda Lange explains the resources in Dussels work for a postcolonial feminism. Roberto Goizueta defends the religious implications of Dussels ethics, while Michael Barber considers whether Dussel has reflected enough on the inevitable tensions between making theory and recognizing alterity. Both James Marsh and Hans Schelkshorn consider Dussels critiques of discourse ethics, each agreeing and disagreeing with aspects of his critique, and Karl-Otto Apel attempts to defend discourse ethics against Dussels charges. Mario Senz criticizes Dussels Levinasian interpretation of Marx, and Linda Martn Alcoff indicates how the use of some of Michel Foucaults work might help Dussel elude his critics. The final essay in the volume is Dussels response to these various engagements with his work.