From decolonizing knowledge to postimperialism

Abstract

To open new disciplinary imaginings, we must reinvigorate the relationship between utopian and anthropological thought. This is already underway in efforts to decolonize knowledge. Though such efforts have different emphases, they are located within a field of ideological and utopian struggles that must be understood in the context of imperialism‐colonialism, of subalternized subject positions, and of the armed and cognitive struggles that imperialism‐colonialism has entailed. Based on my Latin American positionality, I analyze the decolonization of anthropological knowledge as part of this wider field and of the discipline's history of reexamining itself. In a critical dialogue with postcolonial and decolonial thought, I propose postimperialism as a framework that aims to deimperialize the world, overcoming the hierarchical positions between hegemonic and nonhegemonic anthropologies. Moreover, a postimperial research program would entail studying how global elites’ power affects those who struggle to end an unfair regime that is destroying the planet.

Response to Agier, Bueno and Ullberg

“…Many answers to our conundrums are also impregnated with the idiom of scale, such as when communitarian life (meaning life at local and sometimes regional levels of agencies) is presented as a solution. I am also in agreement with what underlies his question about the political uses of the social sciences in public debates and, more, I am increasingly convinced that the social sciences, willingly or not, are widely involved in political debates, especially in what I call ideological and political struggles (Ribeiro 2023).…”

An anti‐genealogical take on US anthropology and disciplinary reform

“…Debates about decolonizing the discipline are simultaneously about the past and the future (Ribeiro, 2023). These debates presume that by expunging old methods, ethics, and forms of representation, we can create a postcolonial anthropology that does not marginalize any voices, reproduce systemic violence, or inflict trauma.…”