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Call for Publications
Theme: Decoloniality and Crisis
Publication: Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory
Date: Special Issue
Deadline: 4.1.2013
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If one concept defines the current “global” condition, it is the
concept of crisis. It is a politico-economic crisis, as manifest in
global protest movements from the Arab Spring through the indignados
of Europe to Occupy Walls Street; as well as an environmental one,
with the threat of global warming looming larger than ever. It is
also an epistemic crisis, with both the ongoing corporatization and
privatization of academic institutions and the various challenges to
the established borders of disciplinary knowledge production; and a
crisis of “spirituality,” with the destabilizing of the false
dichotomy between (premodern) religious fundamentalisms and (modern)
Western secularism. Broadly speaking, it is a crisis that is no
longer exceptional, temporary, or episodic, but rather seems to have
become the norm, a part of the fabric of social life.
In this special issue of the JCRT, we invite submissions by scholars
and activists who interrogate the concept/experience of crisis form a
decolonial perspective. Rooted in Latin American dependency theory,
Africana political though, Chicana feminisms, and Afro-indigenous
cosmologies, decoloniality proclaims the inseparability of Western
modernity from the processes of global coloniality, and calls for a
“delinking” from its political, economic, epistemic, and other
practices. While in conversation with postcolonial theory, decolonial
thinking also differentiates itself – specifically, decoloniality
focuses on the experience of the First Modernity (of Spain and
Portugal) as foundational for the second (of England, France, and
Holland); is more attentive to Latin America and the Caribbean than
to India (Spivak, Guha) or the Middle East (Said); and references
indigenous intellectuals and cosmologies rather than draw inspiration
from Western thinkers (Derrida, Foucault, Gramsci, Lacan).
By inviting submissions on the concept/experience of crisis from a
decolonial perspective, we are also raising the prospect of a certain
crisis in theory itself. While sharing a common concern over the
legacy of colonialism and imperialism, the decolonial and the
postcolonial are two different projects. This special issue is
interested in how the decolonial option may illuminate the
concept/experience of crisis in new and different ways, and in so
doing, demonstrate a genuine alternative in, and alternative future
for, cultural and religious theory.
Topics might include but are not limited to:
- Decoloniality the crisis of the political
- from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement
- the rise of indigeneity in Latin America and Southern Europe
- Decoloniality and (the limits of) Leftist Critique (Marxism,
anarchism)
- Decolonial vs. postcolonial theory
- Decolonizing knowledge production/decolonizing the
University-in-crisis
- Decolonizing “religion” and the secular-sacred divide
- Decoloniality, climate change, and the crisis of developmentalism
- Contributors already solicited include Enrique Dussel, Walter
Mignolo, Madina Tlostanova, and Manuel Vásquez.
Deadline: January 4, 2013
Contact:
Nikolay Karkov and Jeffrey W. Robbins
Email: [email protected] and [email protected]
Web: http://ww.jcrt.org
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