Toward a Multicultural Ethics and Decolonial Meta-Identity in the Work of Fernando Sylvan

Abstract

This chapter seeks to flesh out Sylvan’s stance against Empire by interfacing his essayistic production with his poetry. For instance, in his O Racismo da Europa e a Paz no Mundo, written during the heightened period of anti-colonial struggle in Africa and Asia, Sylvan offers a theorization and cursory genealogy of European and European-American global hegemony, ranging from the European historicization of itself as ‘the standard civilization,’ the fantasy of European superiority, and its resignification of difference in order to retain the balance of global power. This chapter thus contextualizes Sylvan’s anti-imperial thought with that of postcolonial and decolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Enrique Dussel; in addition to elaborating the points where Sylvan’s thought further problematizes and contributes to the theorization of contemporary global power.