Rethinking the Cartesian subject in Latin America and Spain: decolonial theory and María Zambrano's philosophy

Abstract

In this article, I argue that although María Zambrano's philosophy does not engage directly with decolonization as a historical process, her concept of “la razón poética” shares a similar concern with that expressed by recent decolonial theorists, regarding delinking subjectivity from an epistemology of power grounded in rationalist thought. Reading Zambrano's understanding of poetic language in tension with various strands of contemporary decolonial thought, such as Walter Mignolo's focus on the locus of enunciation as central to a Western production of a geopolitics of knowledge, or Aníbal Quijano's interest in a subject–object distinction that sustains a rationalist coloniality of power, the article explores the consequences of thinking about Zambrano's work as similarly invested in “epistemic delinking”. Within this context, Zambrano's focus on how metaphoric language relates to felt and experiential effects of power on individuals and communities that transcend place acquires new meaning. Through the poetic tropes of voids, secrets and metaphors, Zambrano broadens the seemingly transparent logic of the cogito ergo sum into a notion of self and community that includes affect and relationality with others and which may, at times, be viewed not only as what Alberto Moreiras calls “infrapolitical”, but also as decolonizing reason from within. Yet, as the article concludes, reading these thinkers’ works together in this way also reveals the discursive and material limitations of their intellectual projects.