The greatest myth of our time is the notion that we inhabit a postcolonial world – that when the Global South revolted against the horrors inflicted upon them by the colonial powers and victoriously proclaimed their independence, the economic, social, and political assault on the so-called developing world and its peoples ceased. In fact, what is clearly laid out here, in this extraordinary volume that honors the magnificent diversity of thought and being, that is reflected in the non-Western world, is the multiple ways in which colonial relations have and continue to persist and to endanger the lives of indigenous peoples and people of color across the globe. The symbolic violence that this volume emphasizes has assaulted the ontological and epistemological richness of non-Western peoples for hundreds of years resulting in cultural and linguistic erasures and a reprehensible ‘spirit murder’. We must not forget, though, that this symbolic violence is fruit to the multiple genocides that took the lives of millions of people across the Global South in the indefensible quest to claim indigenous lands and its riches and to conquer and enslave its peoples all for the purpose of capital accumulation.
The greatest myth of our time is the notion that we inhabit a postcolonial world – that when the Global South revolted against the horrors inflicted upon them by the colonial powers and victoriously proclaimed their independence, the economic, social, and political assault on the so-called developing world and its peoples ceased. In fact, what is clearly laid out here, in this extraordinary volume that honors the magnificent diversity of thought and being, that is reflected in the non-Western world, is the multiple ways in which colonial relations have and continue to persist and to endanger the lives of indigenous peoples and people of color across the globe. The symbolic violence that this volume emphasizes has assaulted the ontological and epistemological richness of non-Western peoples for hundreds of years resulting in cultural and linguistic erasures and a reprehensible ‘spirit murder’. We must not forget, though, that this symbolic violence is fruit to the multiple genocides that took the lives of millions of people across the Global South in the indefensible quest to claim indigenous lands and its riches and to conquer and enslave its peoples all for the purpose of capital accumulation.