2018-06-18T16:07:00-07:00
Dialogue with Ramon Grosfogel: On the impossibility of separating Eurocentric modernity from colonialism – Translated by: Al-Bashir Abdel Salam
Moderated by: Francisco Fernandez
*** Why do you think that modernity was born in a colonial path?
This is a topic that will take a long time to explain, because it has many dimensions, not only – so to speak – at the level of the institutional dimension, but there are spiritual, epistemological, pedagogical, economic and political dimensions. From the beginning, modernity had multiple dimensions, and here is the point. As for when did it begin? Modernity project? The answer will be different depending on the location of the question, and through it a multiple genealogy of the origin of modernity is drawn. For example, if you are talking to a Frenchman or someone whose authority on modernity is French, it is certain that his origin will be traced back to the year 1789, that is, to the French Revolution against the old regime, even if you talk to a Briton. He will tell you that it began with the revolution of 1648 in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia, and all of these narratives are considered narratives to beautify modernity.
*** What is the role of these cosmetic narratives?
– It seeks to hide the ugly face of modernity. If we look at the issue from the perspective of Latin America and the countries of the South, we will find that the path of modernity began with the colonial expansion of the Catholic royal family in 1492. The value of defining the beginning of modernity with the end of the fifteenth century and the entire sixteenth century lies in that. Spain was the center of the new international order at that time. At that time, all issues of modernity were approached without hiding its dark face, as would happen later with the discourses of the Enlightenments, who would celebrate modernity as a liberal discourse, covering its ugly and distorted face of colonialism. There was a public debate during the sixth century. Ten about everything that was hidden and ashamed of later, after the center of the international system shifted from the Iberian Peninsula towards the north-east of Europe in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War, and the Netherlands subsequently turned into the axis of this center, and there began another path seeking divorce with the century. The sixteenth and the role of Spain in creating modernity/colonialism, and in parallel with that developing cosmetic narratives about modernity, which deliberately concealed its ugly colonial face, which in reality is the essence of Eurocentric modernity. The fuel of the Dutch control during the seventeenth century will begin a series of narratives advancing the South. Europe as a region inhabited by inferior races, and thus the Iberians will be subjected to the same racist classifications that they used during the sixteenth century against Africans and indigenous people in America, Muslims and Al-Yahoud, and their plot will return to their throats in Spain and Portugal, and this last racist act was necessary in order to Disavowal – from within the Northeast – of the origin and history of modernity.
*** I will ask you later about the narratives that were written about southern Europe, but let me ask you now about the topics that were approached during the sixteenth century?
During that period, the debate on international law began in Spain, and there was also a great debate on topics that Europe later became aware of. I mean the Valladolid debate about whether the indigenous people have a soul or not, which is a racist debate, and Sepulveda’s position falls within the scope of Biological racism, which believes that the indigenous people do not have a soul, and therefore, according to Allah’s logic, there is no harm in enslaving them and committing all crimes against them, and they must be considered as if they were cows, donkeys or horses, who do not enter the circle of work except by force. This is on the other side of the debate. We find Las Casas, who says that the indigenous people are barbarians who must be Christianized, and therefore we are here before two discourses, both of which are racist, the first with a biological cover and the second with a cultural cover, and they are the ones who will determine the nature of racism and its manifestations later. But during the nineteenth century, with the secularization of power and knowledge in a false direction, the discussion moved from talking about “peoples without a soul” to “peoples without human DNA,” meaning that they are peoples who do not have special human genes that qualify them to delve into the biological sciences. And naturalism, and so on, with the development of the social and anthropological sciences, there was a transition from the discourse of “Las Casas” about barbaric peoples who must be Christianized to the discourse of primitive peoples who must be civilized. By looking at the two speeches in the Valladolid debate, we understand contemporary racism, and how modernity was founded in a relationship with contempt. Racist to other peoples. This was discussed clearly during the sixteenth century, but in the wake of the shift of the center of the international system based on colonialism towards the northeast, this century and Spain were jumped on, and all the discussions that followed after the War of the Restoration were forgotten, and in short, everything related to the emergence of modernity, Even the idea of modernity is promoted as a liberation project, but from an anti-colonial point of view, modernity is a civilizing project that, since its inception in the sixteenth century, was an genocidal, colonial, and Eurocentric project. On another note, even European thought was founded on readings of the Jesuit philosophers of the sixteenth century. For example, Descartes read Suarez, Locke read the debates of Sepulveda and Las Casas, and even Grote, who is considered the greatest theorist of political geography in the Netherlands, was an avid reader of the Jesuit philosophers. Hence, the influence of Spain was intense, and all of these people were drinking from the source of the Spanish sixteenth century, which was later disavowed in an attempt to start modernity from a new point in time and place, and for the possibility of creating a cosmetic discourse for modernity as a liberation project that presents Europe as a region that achieved its own efforts through its efforts. The special privilege of achieving this wealth that you possess, these freedoms that you enjoy, and this autonomy. With this discourse about individual rights, wealth through work, and personal initiative, it seems that modernity has not witnessed control, exploitation, and contempt for other peoples.
*** How then can we reveal the features of these cosmetic narratives of modernity?
– All of these narratives are considered an attempt to consider modernity as a project of liberation and to raise the standard of living and the wealth of that part of the world, but they ignore how this was achieved. They ignore Europe’s control and exploitation of the rest of the world, including the American continent. If we start from the year 1492, we will not find an escape. To hide the dark side of the path of modernity linked to its parallel with colonialism, everything called the “modernity project” began with what was called the discovery of the New World, and the wealth and capital accumulation that it left behind on the global level, which began with Spain and then later moved to the rest of Europe, to the point that The rest of the empires only followed Spain’s footsteps and imitated the path that it began during the sixteenth century, and this adventure that Spain embarked on was emulated by England, the Netherlands, and France a century later. But returning to your question, the discourse of decorating modernity was modified. In the rest of the world, it is viewed as a natural event and a European privilege without noting the economic and epistemological exploitation in it.
*** Where does this epistemological plunder appear?
They stole knowledge and science from other peoples, then recycled it and attributed it to themselves on the basis that science was something specific to them and by their nature as Europeans, even though Europe, until the fifteenth century, was a dark village marginalized by the rest of the world. The knowledge and development of the continent came thanks to civilizations. Other, it came from the civilization of the Indians in America and from the Chinese, Islamic, Indian and African civilizations, and all of these regions experienced huge economic, political, social and scientific development, while Europe was marginal and poor compared to the others, and I would add that it was reactionary and Obscurantism. At a time when the Inquisition was fighting science there, the Islamic world was excelling in astronomy, biology, and philosophy, but all of this was withheld in favor of beautification of Eurocentric modernity. Therefore, there is no modernity without colonialism and without control and exploitation of the rest of the world, and Without its economic and cognitive plunder, modernity is not a liberation project. It is like that only for 20% of the world’s population, who enjoy the privileges and benefits of this project, and even on the European continent, some receive only crumbs from the “racially superior” about them, meaning that it is historically They benefited from their plunder of the rest of the world. If you look at modernity as the British, French or Germans describe it, you will see something similar to the democracy of Athens, but on a global level, these freedoms are for limited people, who are only entitled to enjoy democracy and wealth, and the rest of the world must be left outside the walls of Athens. . Of course, the rest of the world is the condition for the possibility of this democracy because it is the source of its wealth. The benefits of modernity are in the hands of a minority, but instead of telling you: We have these privileges because we stole from others, they will tell you that they obtained this because they are rational, and they are active and work diligently with each other. Some or because they have scientists who discovered knowledge and science.
***What about economic plunder?
Look, for example, at the British Industrial Revolution. It is a big deception, first of all because the first industrial revolution in history did not happen in Europe. China and India were advanced in the field of industry and textiles before Europe and before England, so what did the British do? They dismantled India’s factories during its colonization, destroyed the entire manufacturing base, stole technology, and reinstalled it in Liverpool, London, and Manchester, and then what happened after that? What happened is that the victor was the one who wrote history and he was the one who told us the myth of the industrial revolution and the centrality of Europe in it. Then they presented to us a series of scientists as English geniuses, and until now we still read in history books the list of scientists who invented such-and-such machine or the other. While these people only dragged the machines they had stolen from India to Britain and developed them, and this development was primarily motivated by the British monopoly on the global market, especially with the destruction of their competitor’s manufacturing base and the theft of its technology, and thus they deluded the world that the industrial revolution began with them, and precisely in England, in other words, the industrial revolution occurred because the genius of the British surpassed the rest of the world’s population, and that is why the British were able to invent all these machines…and yet China remained a problem for them until the nineteenth century, so they launched the famous Opium War against it, where the British would destroy the manufacturing base that It remained, under the pretext of protecting freedom of trade, and then they later invented a historical narrative about the path of industrialization, hiding the ugly face of it, just as they concealed that it was a path that was built on the shoulders of the slaves of North America and the Caribbean. Otherwise, where did the cotton come from? Is it not from the plantations of the southern United States? Where did the sugar come from so that the workers could keep working 16 hours a day? Isn’t he from the Caribbean? And who was doing this work? Isn’t he an African slave? This is what they do not tell us when talking about modernity. Instead, they say that industrialization in Europe was the result of European geniuses with no relation to the rest of the peoples of the world, and this is what is common until now.
*** We return to the point I mentioned at the beginning: What is the nature of the narratives that were told about the European South?
In the middle of the seventeenth century, after the Thirty Years’ War with the Netherlands, you Spaniards lost your starring role, and since then you have become a nation subject to and racially despised by the Northern Europeans, and now with the financial crisis they say that you are lazy and corrupt and that this is the reason for your crisis. They do not speak. That plundering and stealing the financial center is the cause of the crisis, rather the reason is your nature as slaves, and it is the same as their rhetoric towards the Third World. You have lived the “hope” of Europe for twenty-five years, and now the hope has ended, and this “hope” in Europe was not possessed by the generations that preceded Spain’s entry into the European Union. These people were well aware of the truth, not only because they immigrated there, but also because of poverty. What they suffered in Spain because of the North, and the racist rhetoric that accompanied it towards them, but unfortunately today’s youth took the bait, and thought that they too were Europeans and part of the rich continent, until they have now woken up to the same racist rhetoric towards them that was popular in the middle of the century. The seventeenth and up to the beginning of the eighties, but this speech that appeared against you four years ago was practiced for 500 years against the global south, which is witnessing a stifling financial crisis that has been imposed for five centuries.