Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality

Maldonado-Torres
“<strong>Outline</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Ten</strong> <strong>Theses</strong>”
by trying to become masculine or feminine in the way that these terms have been already
defined. The challenge is to create new meanings, new concepts, and new forms <strong>of</strong> being human.
One challenge for this imperative <strong>of</strong> creation or re-creation is that while there is space for
a degree <strong>of</strong> movement and transformation in the relation between body and consciousness, and
that <strong>of</strong> one’s first person perspective and the perspective that others have <strong>of</strong> us, as well as
between masculinity and femininity in the modern/colonial world, the relation between the zone
<strong>of</strong> humanity and the zone <strong>of</strong> sub-humanity, and therefore the relationship between the colonized
and the colonizer is fundamentally non-dialectical. This means that the line between being
human and not being human enough is meant to be solid, even if some subjects or groups are
located in different positions with regards to it and even though some groups are able to change
positions after a certain time. What persists is the line <strong>of</strong> differentiation itself, as well as its logic
and organizing framework, which tends to be anchored on specific peoples and bodies. For
example, when the Movement for Black Lives calls for an end to the war on Black people the
movement makes evident that Black people have remained as one <strong>of</strong> the most consistent
references to maintain the line <strong>of</strong> differentiation between the human and the sub-human. The
word “nigger,” in fact, is perhaps the most, or one <strong>of</strong> the most, direct terms in English
vocabulary to make anyone appear as belonging to the hell <strong>of</strong> sub-humanity (Wynter 2003). As
Gordon notes “‘Nigger’ points to the fatalism <strong>of</strong> the ultimate Other. ‘Niggerness’ is the lowest
denominator; it robs itself <strong>of</strong> most human possibilities—freedom, value, self-awareness” (1995,
105). The term has an immediate metaphysical violence. It tries to place a human in a zone
where s/he/they is susceptible to denigration and a constant target <strong>of</strong> the violent dimensions <strong>of</strong>
perpetual war.
In summary, metaphysical catastrophe and perpetual war shape time, space, subjectivity,
as well as many other areas including the conditions for producing knowledge, the criteria for
truth and validity, aesthetics and the criteria <strong>of</strong> aesthetic value, morals, and politics, etc.,
including the possibilities <strong>of</strong> change. Metaphysical catastrophe creates new coordinates for the
unfolding <strong>of</strong> being and nonbeing and changes the conditions for any kind <strong>of</strong> dialectical change,
making such change a perpetual postponement and a formal impossibility with regards to the
relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.
Thesis Four
Fourth thesis: The immediate effects <strong>of</strong> modernity/coloniality include: the naturalization <strong>of</strong>
extermination, expropriation, domination, exploitation, early death, and conditions that are
worse than death, such as torture and rape
“Colonialism cannot be understood without the
possibility <strong>of</strong> torturing, <strong>of</strong> violating, or <strong>of</strong>
massacring. Torture is an expression and a means <strong>of</strong>
the occupant-occupied relationship.”
Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution
“The Algerian woman is at the heart <strong>of</strong> the combat.
Arrested, tortured, raped, shot down, she testifies to
the violence <strong>of</strong> the occupier and to his inhumanity.”
Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism
16