IMMORTALIZING THE SPIRIT OF THE COLONIZER
type: CreativeWork
description: "European colonial expansion has institutionalized and simultaneously normalized, at the global level, the supremacy of a class, of an ethno-racial group, of a particular type of state organization, spirituality, an epistemology, a particular kind of institutionalization, a production of knowledge, language, pedagogy, and an economy oriented toward the accumulation of global capital. To understand these processes we cannot separate them from each other. In fact, even the word ""capitalism"" is misleading because it leads us to think of an economic system, when in reality it is a hegemonic system that transcends economic relations and includes race, sex, gender, spiritual, linguistic, pedagogical, epistemological relations, all articulated in a colonial of power that establishes the biological and/or cultural superiority of populations of European origin. The central feature of the modern regimes of power in all its variety, both historically and geographically, is derivative of the colonialism that started in the fifteenth century. I describe the inequalities (ethnic, racial, sexual, social, epistemic) created in the colonial system, which remained after nominal independence, as coloniality. European thought and creation, placed at the top of humanity, has been considered biologically and culturally superior. European phenotypic characteristics and cultural production has been established as the benchmark for humanity, and has thus imposed itself as the universal paradigm, with disastrous effects."
abstract: "European colonial expansion has institutionalized and simultaneously normalized, at the global level, the supremacy of a class, of an ethno-racial group, of a particular type of state organization, spirituality, an epistemology, a particular kind of institutionalization, a production of knowledge, language, pedagogy, and an economy oriented toward the accumulation of global capital. To understand these processes we cannot separate them from each other. In fact, even the word ""capitalism"" is misleading because it leads us to think of an economic system, when in reality it is a hegemonic system that transcends economic relations and includes race, sex, gender, spiritual, linguistic, pedagogical, epistemological relations, all articulated in a colonial of power that establishes the biological and/or cultural superiority of populations of European origin. The central feature of the modern regimes of power in all its variety, both historically and geographically, is derivative of the colonialism that started in the fifteenth century. I describe the inequalities (ethnic, racial, sexual, social, epistemic) created in the colonial system, which remained after nominal independence, as coloniality. European thought and creation, placed at the top of humanity, has been considered biologically and culturally superior. European phenotypic characteristics and cultural production has been established as the benchmark for humanity, and has thus imposed itself as the universal paradigm, with disastrous effects."
author: Lombardi, Maximiliano
keywords: Immortalizing, Colonial Expansion, Europe, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology
date published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:56:40Z
provider: City University of New York - City College
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: City University of New York - City College