Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

178 reframing latin america
what “is” is someone asserting what there “is.” The undeniable fact is the
assertion itself, whether or not the content of the assertion corresponds to
what the assertion asserts. I do believe, consequently, that the glass is indeed
half full as it is half empty.
However, there is another caution to the assertion that “there is no
such a thing as inside and outside.” What the proposition asserts is that we
should eliminate dichotomies from our vocabulary. And in this principle
I do believe, since colonial discourse was one of the most powerful strategies
in the imaginary of the modern/colonial world system for producing
dichotomies that justifi ed the will to power. Historically, that is that. It is
fi ne with me to assert that there is no inside and outside, out there in the
world. It is fi ne for me to eliminate dichotomies, or at least to try. What is
more difficult to achieve is forgetting or eliminating the historical dichotomies
that colonial discourse and epistemology imposed upon the world by
inventing colonial differences.
I am not so much interested here in a logical as I am in pursuing a historical
argument. If you talk about interior and exterior borders (e.g., exteriority)
in the modern/colonial world system, you are in some ways presupposing
that there is indeed an outside and an inside. If you assert, furthermore,
that “Occident” is the overarching metaphor of the modern/colonial world
imaginary, you are somewhat asserting that “Occident” defi nes the interior
while you are also presupposing that there is an exterior, whatever that exterior
may be. Of course, you can say that the “totality” is the sum of the
interior and the exterior of the system and, therefore, there is no outside
of the totality. That is fi ne, but it is historically dangerous and irrelevant.
Historically, and in the modern/colonial world, the borders have been set by
the coloniality of power versus colonial difference.
Historically, and in the frame of the modern/colonial world system, I
hear today assertions equivalent to the logico metaphysical “there is no outside
and inside.” It so happens that such an assertion is pronounced by colleagues
who are clearly placing themselves “inside” and, by so doing, being
oblivious to the “outside.” I have heard, on the other hand, colleagues (more
clearly colleagues in some corner of the Third World) who do believe in the
inside/outside distinctions. Now, one could explain this fact by saying that,
it is unfortunate, but they are theoretically behind, underdeveloped, as they
do not know yet that the last discovery in the humanities in the metropolitan
research centers is that truly there is no such thing as inside and outside.
It would be nice to have such an explanation, except that it counters the
facts. Colleagues in the Third World asserting vehemently the distinction
between inside and outside (which is made in the form of center and periphery,
or center and margin, or First and Third World) are the ones who are