Zero-Point Hubris: Science, Race, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Latin America

Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also 'epistemic'. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The 'many forms of knowing' were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the Black, Indigenous, and mestizo peoples of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the 'castes'. Epistemic violence-and not only physical violence-is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

Author: Santiago Castro-Gómez
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 12/16/2021
Pages: 330
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9781786613776

About the Author
Castro-Gómez, Santiago: - Santiago Castro-Gómez is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Santo Tomás and the University Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. He has taught as Visiting Professor at Duke University and Pittsburgh University in the United States and the University of Frankfurt, Germany. His first book, Critique of Latin American Reason (1996) is now a classic text of Latin American philosophy. His many other publications include La hybris del punto cero (2005), Tejidos oníricos (2009), History of Governmentality, Volumes I & II (2010 & 2016) and Revolutions without Subject (2015).Ciccariello-Maher, George: - George Ciccariello-Maher is Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University. He is the translator of several books in Latin American philosophy and political theory including Enrique Dussel's Twenty Theses on Politics (Duke University Press, 2008). He has also translated works by Immanuel Wallerstein, Aníbal Quijano, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Ramón Grosfoguel, among others. He is the author of Decolonizing Dialectics (Duke, 2017), Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela (Verso: 2016), and We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution (Duke, 2013).Deere, Don T.: - Don T. Deere is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is the translator of León Rozitchner's 'Philosophy and Terror', published in Theory & Event (2017) and María Acosta's 'On the Violence of Positivity in Hegel's Early Theological Writings', in The Young Hegel and Religion (Peter Lang, 2017).