In The End of the Cognitive Empire Boaventura de Sousa Santos further develops his concept of the "epistemologies of the South," in which he outlines a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical framework for challenging the dominance of Eurocentric thought. As a collection of knowledges born of and anchored in the experiences of marginalized peoples who actively resist capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, epistemologies of the South represent those forms of knowledge that are generally discredited, erased, and ignored by dominant cultures of the global North. Noting the declining efficacy of established social and political solutions to combat inequality and discrimination, Santos suggests that global justice can only come about through an epistemological shift that guarantees cognitive justice. Such a shift would create new, alternative strategies for political mobilization and activism and give oppressed social groups the means through which to represent the world as their own and in their own terms.
Review
"De Sousa Santos does a commendable job at providing a structured methodological guide for doing research pertaining to the epistemologies of the South and addresses pedagogical challenges anticipated with the advent of the proposed conceptual shift in the thinking of political change."― Dieunedort Wandji , International Journal of Francophone Studies
“ The End of the Cognitive Empire is an outstanding book that takes forward Santos’s previous Epistemologies of the South by providing a more practical guide replete with real-world examples and experiences, many of them firsthand.”
― Sam Halvorsen , Journal of Latin American Geography
“An extraordinary compilation of Sousa Santos’ theoretical and practical contributions, The End of the Cognitive Empire , is an addition to discussions about the epistemic foundations of social struggles across the globe. Divided into three parts, each is a profound reflection on how the knowledges questioning the North are articulated to advance an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-colonial agenda…. [This book is] off interest to researchers and students in the social sciences, humanities, postcolonial studies, and empirical philosophers of science….”― Leandro Rodriguez-Medina , Metascience
Review
“The result of many years of work, this book was written toward the possibility of what I would call ‘ una epistemología solidaria ,’ an epistemology in solidarity with those who want to change the world as it is hegemonically known. Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s political analysis in The End of the Cognitive Empire offers an alternative that steers political analysis away from the usual alternatives.” -- Marisol de la Cadena, author of ― Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds
About the Author
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author and editor of dozens of books, which include If God Were a Human Rights Activist and Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide.
Preface, Introduction: Why the Epistemologies of the South? Artisanal, Paths for Artisanal Futures, PART I. POSTABYSSAL EPISTEMOLOGIES, 1. Pathways toward the Epistemologies of the South, 2. Preparing the Ground, 3. Authorship, Writing, and Orality, 4. What Is Struggle? What Is Experience?, 5. Bodies, Knowledges, and Corazonar, PART II. POSTABYSSAL METHODOLOGIES, 6. Cognitive Decolonization: An Introduction, 7. On Nonextractivist Methodologies, 8. The Deep Experience of the Senses, 9. Demonumentalizing Written and Archival Knowledge, PART III. POSTABYSSAL PEDAGOGIES, 10. Gandhi, an Archivist of the Future, 11. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Participatory Action Research, and Epistemologies of the South, 12. From University to Pluriversity and Subversity, Conclusion: Between Fear and Hope, Notes, References, Index,
CHAPTER 1
PATHWAYS TOWARD THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF THE SOUTH
The main tools of the epistemologies of the South are as follows: the abyssal line and the different types of social exclusion it creates; the sociology of absences and the sociology of emergences; the ecology of knowledges and intercultural translation; and the artisanship of practices.
Abyssal and Nonabyssal Exclusions
I have been arguing that modern science, particularly modern social sciences, including critical theories, have never acknowledged the existence of the abyssal line (Santos 2007a: 45–89; 2014). Modern social sciences have conceived of humanity as a homogeneous whole inhabiting this side of the line and hence as wholly subjected to the tension between regulation and emancipation. Of course, modern science did acknowledge the existence of historical colonialism based on foreign territorial occupation, but it did not recognize colonialism as a form of sociability that is an integral part of capitalist and patriarchal domination, and which, therefore, did not end when historical colonialism ended. Modern critical theory (which expresses the maximum possible consciousness of Western modernity) imagined humanity as a given, rather than as an aspiration. It believed that all humanity could be emancipated through the same mechanisms and according to the same principles, by claiming rights before credible institutions grounded on the idea of formal equality before the law. At the very heart of this modernist imagination is the idea of humanity as a totality built upon a common project: universal human rights. Such humanistic imagination, an heir to Renaissance humanism, was unable to fathom that, once combined with colonialism, capitalism would be inherently unable to relinquish the concept of the subhuman as an integral part of humanity, that is to say, the idea that there are some social groups whose existence cannot be ruled by the tension between regulation and emancipation, simply because they are not fully human. In Western modernity there is no humanity without subhumanities. At the root of the epistemological difference there is an ontological difference.
In this regard, Frantz Fanon is an unavoidable presence. He eloquently denounced the abyssal line between metropolis and colony, as well as the kinds of exclusions that the abyssal line creates. He also formulated, better than anyone else, the ontological dimension of the abyssal line, the zone of nonbeing it creates, the thing into which the colonized is transformed, a thing that only "becomes man during the same process by which it feels free" (Fanon 1968: 37). Inspired by Fanon, Maldonado-Torres proposes the concept of coloniality of being as side by side with the concepts of coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge: "colonial relations of power left profound marks not only in the areas of authority, sexuality, knowledge and the economy, but on the general understanding of being as well" (2007: 242). "Invisibility and dehumanization are the primary expressions of the coloniality of being. ... The coloniality of being becomes concrete in the appearance of liminal subjects, which mark, as it were, the limit of being, that is, the point at which being distorts meaning and evidence to the point of dehumanization. The coloniality of being produces the ontological colonial difference, deploying a series of fundamental existential characteristics and symbolic realities" (2007: 257).
The abyssal line is the core idea underlying the epistemologies of the South. It marks the radical division between forms of metropolitan sociability and forms of colonial sociability that has characterized the Western modern world since the fifteenth century. This division creates two worlds of domination, the metropolitan and the colonial world, two worlds that, even as twins, present themselves as incommensurable. The metropolitan world is the world of equivalence and reciprocity among "us," those who are, like us, fully human. There are social differences and power inequalities among us that are prone to creating tensions and exclusions; in no case, however, do these question the basic equivalence and reciprocity among us. For this reason, the exclusions are nonabyssal. They are managed by the tension between social regulation and social emancipation as well as by the mechanisms developed by Western modernity to manage it, such as the liberal state, the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. The struggle for social emancipation is always a struggle against social exclusions generated by the current form of social regulation with the objective of replacing it by a new and less excluding form of social regulation.
By the same token, the colonial world, the world of colonial sociability, is the world of "them," those with whom no equivalence or reciprocity is imaginable since they are not fully human. Paradoxically, their exclusion is both abyssal and nonexistent as it is unimaginable that they might ever be included. They are on the other side of the abyssal line. The relations between us and them cannot be managed by the tension between social regulation and social emancipation, as happens on this side of the line in the metropolitan world, nor by the mechanisms pertaining to it. These mechanisms, such as the liberal state, the rule of law, human rights, and democracy may be invoked but only as a form of deception. On the other side of the line, the exclusions are abyssal, and their management takes place through the dynamics of appropriation and violence; the appropriation of lives and resources is almost always violent, and violence aims directly or indirectly at appropriation. The mechanisms at work have evolved over time but remain structurally similar to those of historical colonialism, that is to say, those mechanisms involving violent regulation without the counterpoint of emancipation. I mean the colonial and neocolonial state, apartheid, forced and slave labor, extrajudicial elimination, torture, permanent war, the primitive accumulation of capital, internment camps for refugees, the dronification of military engagement, mass surveillance, racism, domestic violence, and femicide. The struggle against appropriation and violence is the struggle for total liberation from colonial social regulation. Contrary to the struggle for social emancipation on the metropolitan side of the abyssal line, the struggle for liberation does not aim at a better and more inclusive form of colonial regulation. It aims at its elimination. The priority given by the epistemologies of the South to abyssal exclusions and the struggles against them is due to the fact that the epistemicide caused by the Eurocentric modern sciences was far more devastating on the other side of the abyssal line, as colonial appropriation and violence were converted into the colonial form of social regulation. Modern critical theories recognized the different degrees of exclusion but refused to consider qualitatively different types of exclusion and were therefore totally unaware of the abyssal line. This is not to say that nonabyssal exclusions and the struggles against them are not equally important. Of course they are, if for no other reason than because the success of the global struggle against modern domination cannot be achieved if it does not include the struggle against nonabyssal exclusions. If the epistemologies of the South do not grant any epistemological privilege to nonabyssal exclusions, it is only because the latter benefited from much cognitive investment and because the struggles against them for the past five hundred years have been far more visible politically. From the perspective of the epistemologies of the South, nonabyssal exclusions and the struggles against them gain a new centrality once the existence of the abyssal line is recognized. The political agenda of the groups struggling against capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal domination must then accept as a guiding principle the idea that abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions work in articulation, and that the struggle for liberation will be successful only if the different struggles against the different kinds of exclusion are properly articulated.
An incursion into the lived experience of abyssal and nonabyssal exclusion may help to clarify what has been stated. Following the end of historical colonialism, the abyssal line persists as colonialism of power, of knowledge, of being, and goes on distinguishing metropolitan sociability from colonial sociability. These two worlds, however radically different, coexist in our postcolonial societies, both in the geographical global North and in the geographical global South. Some social groups experience the abyssal line while crossing between the two worlds in their everyday life. In what follows, I present three hypothetical examples that are all too real to be considered a mere figment of the sociological imagination.
First example: In a predominantly white society, a young Black man in secondary school is living in a world of metropolitan sociability. He may well consider himself excluded, whether because he is often avoided by his schoolmates or because the syllabus deals with materials that are insulting to the culture or history of peoples of African descent. Nonetheless, such exclusions are not abyssal; he is part of the same student community and, at least in theory, has access to mechanisms that will enable him to argue against discrimination. On the other hand, when the same young man on his way back home is stopped by the police, evidently due to ethnic profiling, and is violently beaten, at such a moment the young man crosses the abyssal line and moves from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability. From then on, exclusion becomes abyssal and any appeal to rights is no more than a cruel façade.
Second example: In an overwhelmingly Christian society bearing strong Islamophobic prejudices, a migrant worker holding a work permit inhabits the world of metropolitan sociability. He may feel discriminated against because the worker next to him earns a higher salary, even though they both perform the same tasks. As in the previous case, and for similar reasons, such discrimination prefigures a nonabyssal exclusion. However, when he is assaulted in the street just because he is a Muslim and therefore immediately deemed to be a friend of terrorists, at that particular moment the worker crosses the abyssal line and moves from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability. In this way, exclusion becomes radical because it focuses on what he is rather than what he says or does.
Third example: In a deeply sexist society, a woman with a job in the formal economy inhabits the world of metropolitan sociability. She is the victim of nonabyssal exclusion to the extent that, in violation of employment labor laws, her male coworkers receive a higher salary to perform the same tasks. On the other hand, when she is returning home and is a victim of gang rape or is threatened with death just because she is a woman (femicide), at that particular moment, she is crossing the abyssal line and moving from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability.
The crucial difference between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusion is that only the former is premised upon the idea that the victim or target suffers from an ontological capitis diminutio for not being fully human, rather a fatally degraded sort of human being. It is therefore unacceptable or even unimaginable that the said victim or target be treated as a human being like us. As a consequence, the resistance against abyssal exclusion includes an ontological dimension. It is bound to be a form of reexistence. As long as the three modes of modern domination (capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy) are in force and act in tandem, large social groups will experience in their lives and in a systematic way, however differently in different societies and contexts, this fatal crossing of the abyssal line. Modern domination is a global mode of articulation between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions, an articulation that is both uneven, as it varies according to societies and contexts, and combined at the global level. Following historical colonialism, the elusiveness of the abyssal line and the consequent difficulty in recognizing these two types of exclusion are due to the fact that the ideology of metropolitanness, as well as all the juridical and political apparatuses that go with it, hovers above the world of colonial sociability as the ghost of a paradise promised and not yet lost. The end of historical colonialism produced the illusion that the political independence of the former European colonies entailed strong self-determination. From then on, all the exclusions were considered to be nonabyssal; accordingly, the only struggles considered to be legitimate were those that aimed at eliminating or reducing nonabyssal exclusions. This powerful illusion contributed to legitimate struggles that, while attenuating nonabyssal exclusions, aggravated abyssal exclusions. Throughout the twentieth century, European workers achieved significant victories, which amounted to a compromise between democracy and capitalism, known as the European welfare state and social democracy; nevertheless, such victories were earned, in part at least, by intensifying the violent appropriation of human and natural resources in the colonies and neocolonies, that is to say, at the cost of aggravating abyssal exclusions.
As a consequence of the invisibility and confusion concerning different kinds of exclusion, social groups that are the victims of abyssal exclusion are tempted to resort in their struggles to the means and mechanisms proper to the struggle against nonabyssal exclusion. The current model of aid to development is a good example of how an abyssal exclusion can be disguised (and worsened) by treating it as if it were nonabyssal. The persistence of the invisible abyssal line, and the difficulty in disentangling abyssal from nonabyssal exclusions, makes the struggles against domination even more difficult. However, from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South, liberation is premised upon building alliances between abyssally excluded groups and non–abyssally excluded groups, thereby articulating struggles against abyssal exclusions and against nonabyssal exclusions. Without such an articulation, nonabyssal exclusions, when viewed from the other side of the abyssal line (the colonial side), look credibly like privileged forms of social inclusion. Conversely, abyssal exclusions, when viewed from this side of the abyssal line (the metropolitan side), are alternatively considered as the product of fate, of self-inflicted harm, or of the natural order of things. By the same token, abyssal exclusions are never seen on this side of the line (the metropolitan side) as exclusions, but rather as a fatality or the natural order of things. Historically, social groups excluded by abyssal forms of exclusion have been forced to resort to means of struggle adequate only for fighting against nonabyssal exclusions. No wonder there has been a lot of frustration.
Alliances and articulations are a demanding historical task, not only because different struggles mobilize different social groups and require different means of struggle but also because the separation between struggles against abyssal exclusions and against nonabyssal exclusions overlap with the separation between struggles that are considered to be primordially against capitalism or against colonialism or against patriarchy. Such separation gives rise to contradictory kinds of hierarchies among struggles and among collective subjectivities carrying them out. Thus a struggle conceived of as being against capitalism may be deemed successful to the extent that it weakens a struggle that conceives of itself as being against colonialism or against patriarchy. The opposite is likewise possible. Of course, there are differences between kinds of struggles, but such differences should be mobilized to potentiate the cumulative effect of the struggles and not to justify reciprocal boycotts. Regrettably, reciprocal boycott is what has happened more frequently.
The difficulties in establishing alliances cannot be ascribed to the myopia of social leaders alone, or to the different histories and contexts of the struggle. Between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions there is a structural difference that affects the struggles against them. Unlike the struggles against nonabyssal exclusions (which fight for change in terms of the logic of regulation/emancipation), the struggles against abyssal exclusions entail a radical interruption of the logic of appropriation/violence. Such an interruption entails a break, a discontinuity. Fanon's insistence that violence is necessary in the decolonization process must be interpreted as an expression of the interruption without which the abyssal line, even if it shifts, goes on dividing the societies into two worlds of sociability: the metropolitan world and the world of coloniality. Interruption may manifest itself in either physical violence or armed struggle, on the one hand, or in boycott or lack of cooperation, on the other (more on this below). Recognizing the abyssal line entails acknowledging that alliances between the struggles against the different kinds of exclusion cannot be built as if all exclusions were of the same kind. Eurocentric critical thought was built upon a mirage, namely that all exclusions were nonabyssal. However vehement the statements against liberal political theory, to think that the struggles against domination can be conducted as if all exclusions were nonabyssal is a liberal prejudice.
In The End of the Cognitive Empire Boaventura de Sousa Santos further develops his concept of the "epistemologies of the South," in which he outlines a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical framework for challenging the dominance of Eurocentric thought. As a collection of knowledges born of and anchored in the experiences of marginalized peoples who actively resist capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, epistemologies of the South represent those forms of knowledge that are generally discredited, erased, and ignored by dominant cultures of the global North. Noting the declining efficacy of established social and political solutions to combat inequality and discrimination, Santos suggests that global justice can only come about through an epistemological shift that guarantees cognitive justice. Such a shift would create new, alternative strategies for political mobilization and activism and give oppressed social groups the means through which to represent the world as their own and in their own terms.
Review
"De Sousa Santos does a commendable job at providing a structured methodological guide for doing research pertaining to the epistemologies of the South and addresses pedagogical challenges anticipated with the advent of the proposed conceptual shift in the thinking of political change."― Dieunedort Wandji , International Journal of Francophone Studies
“ The End of the Cognitive Empire is an outstanding book that takes forward Santos’s previous Epistemologies of the South by providing a more practical guide replete with real-world examples and experiences, many of them firsthand.”
― Sam Halvorsen , Journal of Latin American Geography
“An extraordinary compilation of Sousa Santos’ theoretical and practical contributions, The End of the Cognitive Empire , is an addition to discussions about the epistemic foundations of social struggles across the globe. Divided into three parts, each is a profound reflection on how the knowledges questioning the North are articulated to advance an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-colonial agenda…. [This book is] off interest to researchers and students in the social sciences, humanities, postcolonial studies, and empirical philosophers of science….”― Leandro Rodriguez-Medina , Metascience
Review
“The result of many years of work, this book was written toward the possibility of what I would call ‘ una epistemología solidaria ,’ an epistemology in solidarity with those who want to change the world as it is hegemonically known. Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s political analysis in The End of the Cognitive Empire offers an alternative that steers political analysis away from the usual alternatives.” -- Marisol de la Cadena, author of ― Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds
About the Author
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author and editor of dozens of books, which include If God Were a Human Rights Activist and Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The End of the Cognitive Empire
The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South
By Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2018 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4780-0000-6
Contents
Preface,
Introduction: Why the Epistemologies of the South? Artisanal,
Paths for Artisanal Futures,
PART I. POSTABYSSAL EPISTEMOLOGIES,
1. Pathways toward the Epistemologies of the South,
2. Preparing the Ground,
3. Authorship, Writing, and Orality,
4. What Is Struggle? What Is Experience?,
5. Bodies, Knowledges, and Corazonar,
PART II. POSTABYSSAL METHODOLOGIES,
6. Cognitive Decolonization: An Introduction,
7. On Nonextractivist Methodologies,
8. The Deep Experience of the Senses,
9. Demonumentalizing Written and Archival Knowledge,
PART III. POSTABYSSAL PEDAGOGIES,
10. Gandhi, an Archivist of the Future,
11. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Participatory Action Research, and Epistemologies of the South,
12. From University to Pluriversity and Subversity,
Conclusion: Between Fear and Hope,
Notes,
References,
Index,
CHAPTER 1
PATHWAYS TOWARD THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF THE SOUTH
The main tools of the epistemologies of the South are as follows: the abyssal line and the different types of social exclusion it creates; the sociology of absences and the sociology of emergences; the ecology of knowledges and intercultural translation; and the artisanship of practices.
Abyssal and Nonabyssal Exclusions
I have been arguing that modern science, particularly modern social sciences, including critical theories, have never acknowledged the existence of the abyssal line (Santos 2007a: 45–89; 2014). Modern social sciences have conceived of humanity as a homogeneous whole inhabiting this side of the line and hence as wholly subjected to the tension between regulation and emancipation. Of course, modern science did acknowledge the existence of historical colonialism based on foreign territorial occupation, but it did not recognize colonialism as a form of sociability that is an integral part of capitalist and patriarchal domination, and which, therefore, did not end when historical colonialism ended. Modern critical theory (which expresses the maximum possible consciousness of Western modernity) imagined humanity as a given, rather than as an aspiration. It believed that all humanity could be emancipated through the same mechanisms and according to the same principles, by claiming rights before credible institutions grounded on the idea of formal equality before the law. At the very heart of this modernist imagination is the idea of humanity as a totality built upon a common project: universal human rights. Such humanistic imagination, an heir to Renaissance humanism, was unable to fathom that, once combined with colonialism, capitalism would be inherently unable to relinquish the concept of the subhuman as an integral part of humanity, that is to say, the idea that there are some social groups whose existence cannot be ruled by the tension between regulation and emancipation, simply because they are not fully human. In Western modernity there is no humanity without subhumanities. At the root of the epistemological difference there is an ontological difference.
In this regard, Frantz Fanon is an unavoidable presence. He eloquently denounced the abyssal line between metropolis and colony, as well as the kinds of exclusions that the abyssal line creates. He also formulated, better than anyone else, the ontological dimension of the abyssal line, the zone of nonbeing it creates, the thing into which the colonized is transformed, a thing that only "becomes man during the same process by which it feels free" (Fanon 1968: 37). Inspired by Fanon, Maldonado-Torres proposes the concept of coloniality of being as side by side with the concepts of coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge: "colonial relations of power left profound marks not only in the areas of authority, sexuality, knowledge and the economy, but on the general understanding of being as well" (2007: 242). "Invisibility and dehumanization are the primary expressions of the coloniality of being. ... The coloniality of being becomes concrete in the appearance of liminal subjects, which mark, as it were, the limit of being, that is, the point at which being distorts meaning and evidence to the point of dehumanization. The coloniality of being produces the ontological colonial difference, deploying a series of fundamental existential characteristics and symbolic realities" (2007: 257).
The abyssal line is the core idea underlying the epistemologies of the South. It marks the radical division between forms of metropolitan sociability and forms of colonial sociability that has characterized the Western modern world since the fifteenth century. This division creates two worlds of domination, the metropolitan and the colonial world, two worlds that, even as twins, present themselves as incommensurable. The metropolitan world is the world of equivalence and reciprocity among "us," those who are, like us, fully human. There are social differences and power inequalities among us that are prone to creating tensions and exclusions; in no case, however, do these question the basic equivalence and reciprocity among us. For this reason, the exclusions are nonabyssal. They are managed by the tension between social regulation and social emancipation as well as by the mechanisms developed by Western modernity to manage it, such as the liberal state, the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. The struggle for social emancipation is always a struggle against social exclusions generated by the current form of social regulation with the objective of replacing it by a new and less excluding form of social regulation.
By the same token, the colonial world, the world of colonial sociability, is the world of "them," those with whom no equivalence or reciprocity is imaginable since they are not fully human. Paradoxically, their exclusion is both abyssal and nonexistent as it is unimaginable that they might ever be included. They are on the other side of the abyssal line. The relations between us and them cannot be managed by the tension between social regulation and social emancipation, as happens on this side of the line in the metropolitan world, nor by the mechanisms pertaining to it. These mechanisms, such as the liberal state, the rule of law, human rights, and democracy may be invoked but only as a form of deception. On the other side of the line, the exclusions are abyssal, and their management takes place through the dynamics of appropriation and violence; the appropriation of lives and resources is almost always violent, and violence aims directly or indirectly at appropriation. The mechanisms at work have evolved over time but remain structurally similar to those of historical colonialism, that is to say, those mechanisms involving violent regulation without the counterpoint of emancipation. I mean the colonial and neocolonial state, apartheid, forced and slave labor, extrajudicial elimination, torture, permanent war, the primitive accumulation of capital, internment camps for refugees, the dronification of military engagement, mass surveillance, racism, domestic violence, and femicide. The struggle against appropriation and violence is the struggle for total liberation from colonial social regulation. Contrary to the struggle for social emancipation on the metropolitan side of the abyssal line, the struggle for liberation does not aim at a better and more inclusive form of colonial regulation. It aims at its elimination. The priority given by the epistemologies of the South to abyssal exclusions and the struggles against them is due to the fact that the epistemicide caused by the Eurocentric modern sciences was far more devastating on the other side of the abyssal line, as colonial appropriation and violence were converted into the colonial form of social regulation. Modern critical theories recognized the different degrees of exclusion but refused to consider qualitatively different types of exclusion and were therefore totally unaware of the abyssal line. This is not to say that nonabyssal exclusions and the struggles against them are not equally important. Of course they are, if for no other reason than because the success of the global struggle against modern domination cannot be achieved if it does not include the struggle against nonabyssal exclusions. If the epistemologies of the South do not grant any epistemological privilege to nonabyssal exclusions, it is only because the latter benefited from much cognitive investment and because the struggles against them for the past five hundred years have been far more visible politically. From the perspective of the epistemologies of the South, nonabyssal exclusions and the struggles against them gain a new centrality once the existence of the abyssal line is recognized. The political agenda of the groups struggling against capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal domination must then accept as a guiding principle the idea that abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions work in articulation, and that the struggle for liberation will be successful only if the different struggles against the different kinds of exclusion are properly articulated.
An incursion into the lived experience of abyssal and nonabyssal exclusion may help to clarify what has been stated. Following the end of historical colonialism, the abyssal line persists as colonialism of power, of knowledge, of being, and goes on distinguishing metropolitan sociability from colonial sociability. These two worlds, however radically different, coexist in our postcolonial societies, both in the geographical global North and in the geographical global South. Some social groups experience the abyssal line while crossing between the two worlds in their everyday life. In what follows, I present three hypothetical examples that are all too real to be considered a mere figment of the sociological imagination.
First example: In a predominantly white society, a young Black man in secondary school is living in a world of metropolitan sociability. He may well consider himself excluded, whether because he is often avoided by his schoolmates or because the syllabus deals with materials that are insulting to the culture or history of peoples of African descent. Nonetheless, such exclusions are not abyssal; he is part of the same student community and, at least in theory, has access to mechanisms that will enable him to argue against discrimination. On the other hand, when the same young man on his way back home is stopped by the police, evidently due to ethnic profiling, and is violently beaten, at such a moment the young man crosses the abyssal line and moves from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability. From then on, exclusion becomes abyssal and any appeal to rights is no more than a cruel façade.
Second example: In an overwhelmingly Christian society bearing strong Islamophobic prejudices, a migrant worker holding a work permit inhabits the world of metropolitan sociability. He may feel discriminated against because the worker next to him earns a higher salary, even though they both perform the same tasks. As in the previous case, and for similar reasons, such discrimination prefigures a nonabyssal exclusion. However, when he is assaulted in the street just because he is a Muslim and therefore immediately deemed to be a friend of terrorists, at that particular moment the worker crosses the abyssal line and moves from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability. In this way, exclusion becomes radical because it focuses on what he is rather than what he says or does.
Third example: In a deeply sexist society, a woman with a job in the formal economy inhabits the world of metropolitan sociability. She is the victim of nonabyssal exclusion to the extent that, in violation of employment labor laws, her male coworkers receive a higher salary to perform the same tasks. On the other hand, when she is returning home and is a victim of gang rape or is threatened with death just because she is a woman (femicide), at that particular moment, she is crossing the abyssal line and moving from the world of metropolitan sociability to the world of colonial sociability.
The crucial difference between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusion is that only the former is premised upon the idea that the victim or target suffers from an ontological capitis diminutio for not being fully human, rather a fatally degraded sort of human being. It is therefore unacceptable or even unimaginable that the said victim or target be treated as a human being like us. As a consequence, the resistance against abyssal exclusion includes an ontological dimension. It is bound to be a form of reexistence. As long as the three modes of modern domination (capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy) are in force and act in tandem, large social groups will experience in their lives and in a systematic way, however differently in different societies and contexts, this fatal crossing of the abyssal line. Modern domination is a global mode of articulation between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions, an articulation that is both uneven, as it varies according to societies and contexts, and combined at the global level. Following historical colonialism, the elusiveness of the abyssal line and the consequent difficulty in recognizing these two types of exclusion are due to the fact that the ideology of metropolitanness, as well as all the juridical and political apparatuses that go with it, hovers above the world of colonial sociability as the ghost of a paradise promised and not yet lost. The end of historical colonialism produced the illusion that the political independence of the former European colonies entailed strong self-determination. From then on, all the exclusions were considered to be nonabyssal; accordingly, the only struggles considered to be legitimate were those that aimed at eliminating or reducing nonabyssal exclusions. This powerful illusion contributed to legitimate struggles that, while attenuating nonabyssal exclusions, aggravated abyssal exclusions. Throughout the twentieth century, European workers achieved significant victories, which amounted to a compromise between democracy and capitalism, known as the European welfare state and social democracy; nevertheless, such victories were earned, in part at least, by intensifying the violent appropriation of human and natural resources in the colonies and neocolonies, that is to say, at the cost of aggravating abyssal exclusions.
As a consequence of the invisibility and confusion concerning different kinds of exclusion, social groups that are the victims of abyssal exclusion are tempted to resort in their struggles to the means and mechanisms proper to the struggle against nonabyssal exclusion. The current model of aid to development is a good example of how an abyssal exclusion can be disguised (and worsened) by treating it as if it were nonabyssal. The persistence of the invisible abyssal line, and the difficulty in disentangling abyssal from nonabyssal exclusions, makes the struggles against domination even more difficult. However, from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South, liberation is premised upon building alliances between abyssally excluded groups and non–abyssally excluded groups, thereby articulating struggles against abyssal exclusions and against nonabyssal exclusions. Without such an articulation, nonabyssal exclusions, when viewed from the other side of the abyssal line (the colonial side), look credibly like privileged forms of social inclusion. Conversely, abyssal exclusions, when viewed from this side of the abyssal line (the metropolitan side), are alternatively considered as the product of fate, of self-inflicted harm, or of the natural order of things. By the same token, abyssal exclusions are never seen on this side of the line (the metropolitan side) as exclusions, but rather as a fatality or the natural order of things. Historically, social groups excluded by abyssal forms of exclusion have been forced to resort to means of struggle adequate only for fighting against nonabyssal exclusions. No wonder there has been a lot of frustration.
Alliances and articulations are a demanding historical task, not only because different struggles mobilize different social groups and require different means of struggle but also because the separation between struggles against abyssal exclusions and against nonabyssal exclusions overlap with the separation between struggles that are considered to be primordially against capitalism or against colonialism or against patriarchy. Such separation gives rise to contradictory kinds of hierarchies among struggles and among collective subjectivities carrying them out. Thus a struggle conceived of as being against capitalism may be deemed successful to the extent that it weakens a struggle that conceives of itself as being against colonialism or against patriarchy. The opposite is likewise possible. Of course, there are differences between kinds of struggles, but such differences should be mobilized to potentiate the cumulative effect of the struggles and not to justify reciprocal boycotts. Regrettably, reciprocal boycott is what has happened more frequently.
The difficulties in establishing alliances cannot be ascribed to the myopia of social leaders alone, or to the different histories and contexts of the struggle. Between abyssal and nonabyssal exclusions there is a structural difference that affects the struggles against them. Unlike the struggles against nonabyssal exclusions (which fight for change in terms of the logic of regulation/emancipation), the struggles against abyssal exclusions entail a radical interruption of the logic of appropriation/violence. Such an interruption entails a break, a discontinuity. Fanon's insistence that violence is necessary in the decolonization process must be interpreted as an expression of the interruption without which the abyssal line, even if it shifts, goes on dividing the societies into two worlds of sociability: the metropolitan world and the world of coloniality. Interruption may manifest itself in either physical violence or armed struggle, on the one hand, or in boycott or lack of cooperation, on the other (more on this below). Recognizing the abyssal line entails acknowledging that alliances between the struggles against the different kinds of exclusion cannot be built as if all exclusions were of the same kind. Eurocentric critical thought was built upon a mirage, namely that all exclusions were nonabyssal. However vehement the statements against liberal political theory, to think that the struggles against domination can be conducted as if all exclusions were nonabyssal is a liberal prejudice.
(Continues...) Excerpted from The End of the Cognitive Empire by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Copyright © 2018 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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