Decolonize Latin America in search of your own epistemology
Introduction
Talking about critical theory in these times and in Latin America seems a successful exercise: it is necessary the way in which the system influences its understanding of the world.
Although critical theory is certainly born in the West, it arises in response to the need for transformation at a determining time, so it ends up being precise for the achievement of an epistemology of the southern or Latin American. For this reason, some key notes of Boaventura de Sousa Santos will be brought up in this writing as a starting point to evaluate the law site from the different approaches of the already appointed author.
Developing
Critical theory aims to explain the way in which modernity creates a system based on vertical relationships that involve correlations of power and subordination; So all sciences, knowledge and cultures tend in all their forms towards exploitation, inequality and domination. The first authors of critical theory observe that even science leaned towards studies focused on instrumental knowledge that served the logics of the system and capitalism, but not for knowledge and knowledge itself.
In addition to this, the West creates a plan for colonization and imposition of its predominant culture made vulnerable continents such as Latin America, a legacy that even after years of freedom is still in force through the system, social networks, and even in the thought of individuals. The question always points to the way to achieve emancipation to achieve equality, justice and fraternity among peoples; Ask that although it is not resolved below, it serves as an excuse to resume some key notes of the chosen author and reflect on the matter.
Boaventura points out that it must be left first of an epistemological, economic, social, political and cultural decolonization, since it is clear that Latin American peoples are bequeathed from the entire colonization process of the West; For this it is necessary to break with a whole set of practices that allow the passage to the consolidation of a southern thought.
The path to the construction of emancipatory critical thinking starts from breaking intercultural relations to be able to combat colonial sociability that permeates thought and life forms in the Latin American population; in second place to criticize the western colonial modernity that always intends the imposition and universalization of Western culture as a useful instrument for domination.
It is essential to demonstrate the need for global decolonization and tend to create spaces suitable for plurality, fraternal dialogue and encounter. Finally, the author points out the emergency for the consolidation of a new emancipatory political culture where all sectors of society are integrated in a broad, inclusive and participatory way in order to promote miscegenation, solidarity and interculturality.
However, although the way to achieve its own epistemology capable of liberating Latin America is sought, great conflicts appear that involve, on the one hand, sociology and on the other to law. In the first extent, Buenaventura indicates that modern thinking founds a way of thought that draws a marked distinction between obvious borders and others not so obvious, which puts reality into two diametrically opposite points: the colonial north, where everything is possible and the Living conditions of its population allow them to be imposed through mass media, science, technology and culture such as hegemony and example for all peoples, versus the oppressed south that assumes as their own culture imposed by the West, but that He faces conditions that do not allow him to have an even similar lifestyle.
What generates this difference is nothing more than an abysmal thought that causes a gap that must be sutured, to which Boaventura proposes as a post abysmal thought. The possible solution demands the constant questioning of the power relations that are being tense in society, the recognition of epistemological diversity as cultural wealth of peoples and the promotion of values of justice, democracy and cognitive solidarity.
Now it is important to locate the role of law in the midst of discussion. While the right is the son of the West, the current discussion has tried to notice that it tends to achieve justice and truth. The well -prepared current discourse of human rights easily attracts the attention of great contemporary thinkers who actively bet on introducing policies for the guarantee and exercise of them. In the same way, the population has sought strategies and mechanisms to be guarantor at least symbolically of the fulfillment of fundamental rights specifically in those populations that are usually actively involved with participation in political scenarios.
But for the author that western claims are brought up today, they have disguised their desire for domination after human rights discourses: element that radically changes the discussion scenario and that makes evaluate the certainty of such approaches. In addition, he affirms that for the discourse it is really effective, it is necessary to put them at the service of a culture against hegemonic of human rights, which would practically imply an adaptation to the concrete realities of the different cultures present throughout the Latin American territory of law and the application from the human rights.
To achieve this, it would also be necessary to create a space where even people who do not have the possibilities to understand specific theoretical aspects can access information about them without having legal knowledge. Obviously, it would be necessary to search for common spaces for dialogue and reflection in this regard, using popular education practices together with the establishment of alliances and resistance networks against the prevailing system.
conclusion
As a conclusion, it can be affirmed that Boaventura de Sousa reflects from elements that at the time provides critical theory, locates them in Latin America and ends with a position against the legal. In that sense, it leaves the feeling of perceiving law as the possibility of emancipation as long as an epistemology of the south is established first.
Part of taking a critical position against the hegemonic model imposed, subsequently recognizing the conditions of the territory, identifying the variety of cultures and appropriating them, and finally establishing speeches to which most of the population have access and can understand in a way simple for the achievement of a complete decolonization of the legacy of the West and the achievement of an appropriate Latin American identity and power and according to the possibilities and needs of individuals. His position ends up becoming an alternative application of what the great ideas of the Frankfurt School, at least in their first moment, intended to present.
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