In one of his programmatic texts Delinking. The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality (Cultural Studies, 21:2, 2007) Walter Mignolo explained some of the key ideas developed in a project that began at Duke University in the late 1990s. Critical to this work has been to highlight how modernity was naturalised as a universal global process, which conceals its inherent ‘darker side’, namely the constant reproduction of coloniality. Drawing on the writings of Franz Fanon, Mignolo and others postulate that in order to uncover the perverse logic underlying the philosophical conundrum of modernity/coloniality and the political and economic structure of imperialism/colonialism, one needs to consider how to decolonize the ‘mind’ and the ‘imaginary’ – that is, knowledge and being. Critical to this project of decolonisation is the idea of delinking: changing the terms of the conversation in order to contest, dislodge, and destabilise Western categories of thought – Christianity, Enlightenment, Reason, Liberalism, Democracy, Individualism, Progress, etc. Still assuming that the logics of modernity and coloniality globalised and universalised these categories, Mignolo has more recently embarked on an inquiry of the geopolitics of sensing, knowing and believing. Entitled Decolonial Aesthesis, this collective project has been based on collaboration between academics, artists, curators, and intellectuals, who developed a framework and space within which diverse creative forms and practices would help affirm the existence of multiple and transnational identities in contestation of global imperial tendencies to homogenize and to erase differences. Decoloniality, decolonial aesthetics and the liberation of sensing and sensibilities promote the re-creation of identities that were denied and silenced by the discourse of modernity and postmodernity, and celebrate inhabiting the margins as a position of aesthetic, political, and epistemological criticism.

Walter Mignolo joined us in May 2019 for several days in a block seminar. In preparation, we read some of the key texts on coloniality, delinking, and decolonial aesthetics/aesthesis. We explored some of the artistic, cultural and political projects by artists, scholars and intellectuals, who have been involved in and contributed to the Decolonial Aesthesis collective. Based on these readings and aesthetic engagements, we conceptualised and planned the block seminar with Mignolo together.

Walter Mignolo gave a public lecture entitled Epistemic/Aesthetic Reconstitution: Decolonial Aesthesis One Decade Later on Tuesday 21 May | 18:15 | Alte Universität Basel Rheinsprung 11