Contesting the Colonial Logics of the International: Toward a Relational Politics for the Pluriverse

Abstract

In this article, I offer a critical historical analysis of modernity, identifying tensions between logics of modernity that rely on premises of colonial and capitalist modernity as a universalizing project, and those that instead propose an alternative decolonial project. As part of the latter, I outline the contours of an emergent and distinct political project premised on deep relational ontologies between humans, and humans and nature. I develop the analysis in three interrelated parts. I begin by critically reconstructing the justifications for the universal project of colonial and capitalist modernity and the “method of rule” through which it has been realized. In part two, drawing on case examples primarily from Latin America, I identify and discuss the opening toward an alternative political project of negotiating between worlds with the potential to challenge fundamentally the logics of universal modernity. In part three, I conclude with some critical insights into the colonial logics of modernity, emphasizing that they have always been contested. I argue that, given the inequalities and crises of modernity, there is an urgent need to reflect critically on the concrete possibilities afforded through an alternative political project, at the core of which are struggles for social justice without nature–culture distinctions. Ultimately, this project fractures the international and, instead, aspires toward the pluriverse. In a beautiful essay entitled “Our Sea of Islands,” Hau‘ofa (1994, 152) stated that “there is a world of difference between viewing the Pacific as ‘islands in a far sea’ and as a ‘sea of islands.’” The first perspective denotes “dry surfaces in a vast ocean” that are “far from the centers of power.” The second “is a more holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of their relationships” (Hau‘ofa 1994, 153). The first perspective, explains Hau‘ofa, was introduced by Europeans, and, …