From the Eurocentric monologue to the teaching of the colonial difference: The žižek / mignolo debate

Abstract

For those who think that Eurocentrism was a "fashionable" problem that has already been overcome, this essay shows that it was not and that it is a thorny issue that is still open. In this sense, the dissections that make up these pages aim to reconstruct the debate between two of the most important thinkers of this time. The methodology is hermeneutical from the critical perspective of this essay, which not only draws on carefully reading the arguments and counter-arguments, but also on having questioned both positions from different movements of problematization. The resonances and deepening of these crosses can be observed, as well as the breakdown of their theoretical gestures. In the monologue of Eurocentrism, the persistence in the universalization of the European legacy proposed as a “unique” path to re-politicization, liberation or the solution of contemporary dilemmas can be noted, which has favorably allowed coloniality and strategies of re-westernization. On the other hand, the teaching of the colonial difference allows disbelief in the unique or universal paths that promise "paradise" at the cost of sacrificing the intercultural legacies of the rest of the non-European world. From this movement, a decolonial praxis of thinking is postulated that strives for the coexistence of situated universals, not abstract and devoid of any disciplinary tyranny. Finally, the question about the struggle for coexistence with a legacy that denies or interrupts others remains, while at the same time seeking to delineate forms of educational decolonization that recover and reconstitute collective memories