DECOLONIAL REFLECTIONS ON HEMISPHERIC PARTITIONS: From the “Western Hemisphere” to the “Eastern Hemisphere”

In the late 20th century I explored the meaning of the ‘Western Hemisphere’ in the colonial horizon of modernity. Today, in the first decades of the 21st century, the economic and political fields of power are rapidly being re-oriented. The expression is more than metaphorical. First, ‘orientalism’ is being superseded, not reversed. Superseded because the ‘Orient’ (from East to South Asia and to South East Asia) are no longer voiceless places and people subjected to Western Orientalists. Second, because Hegel’s narrative in his well-known lesson in the philosophy of history has taken a very paradoxical shift: Spirit - tired of Europe and the U.S. where Hegel anticipated it will move (and it did) - is returning to the East (cf. Lectures).

Duke Scholars

Author Walter D. Mignolo Literature