Decoloniality

Decoloniality is term used principally by an emerging Latin American movement which focuses on understanding modernity in the context of a form of critical theory applied to ethnic studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic and practical “options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo 2011: xxvii); it has also been referred to as a kind of "thinking in radical exteriority" (Vallega 2015: x). As such it can be contrasted with coloniality which is “the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today,” a logic that was the basis of historical colonialisms, although this foundational interconnectedness is often downplayed (Mignolo 2011:2). This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power or coloniality of power.