We have to talk about whiteness: widening the decolonial gates*

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recently, the Latin American decolonial perspective has been receiving growing attention, not only in academia, but also in other social, political, and cultural spaces, including in Brazil. Among other debates, decolonial thinkers have brought to light the continuity of coloniality in different dimensions (particularly, even if not only) of Latin American realities, long after the territorial colonization was over. Therefore, by highlighting, debating, and theorizing on the colonialities of power, knowledge and being from a decolonial perspective, scholars have been unmasking the vast, violent, and oppressive consequences of Western, Eurocentric, modern, colonial, capitalist, racist and patriarchal paradigms, which still (even if with adaptations) dominate our multiple realities. Race is at the center of the continuity of coloniality and colonial heritage, imposing ontological and epistemological hierarchies that have caused the never-ending racialization, marginalization and suffering of most Latin Americans for centuries. Still, some debates and dimensions related to race could (and, as I will argue, should) be further explored within the decolonial perspective. In this paper, I would like to present whiteness studies and scholars as potential contributors to these debates in Latin America, further widening the decolonial gates, allowing us to better comprehend and critically analyze the many forms of continued coloniality and their violent, oppressive, and terrible consequences.