A Critique Of Coloniality

This translation of Rita Segato's seminal book La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos offers an anthropological and critical perspective on the coloniality of power as formulated by the Peruvian thinker Anibal Quijano. Segato begins with an overview of Quijano's conceptual framework, emphasizing the power and richness of his theory and its relevance to a range of fields. Each of the seven subsequent chapters present scenarios in which a persistent colonial structure or form of subjectivity can be identified. These essays address urgent issues of gender, sexuality, race and racism, and indigenous forms of life. They set the decolonial perspective to work, and are connected by two central preoccupations: the critical analysis of coloniality and the effort to reimagine anthropology as anthropology on demand, answerable and useful to the communities previously regarded as the objects of ethnographic thought. A Critique of the Coloniality makes an important and original contribution to the understanding of colonial and decolonial processes, drawing the author's experience of feminist and antiracist issues and struggles for indigenous and human rights. This book will appeal to students and scholars working in anthropology, Latin American studies, political theory, feminist and gender studies, indigenous studies, and anticolonial, post-colonial, and decolonial thought.