Postcolonialism and Decoloniality. Resistance and Counter-conducts in the Current Neoliberalism

The editors are Sandro Luce (University of Salerno) and Serena Marcenò (University of Palermo).

Postcolonialism and decoloniality. Resistance and Counter-Conducts in the Current Neoliberalism

The category of ‘Colonial’ shares with others classic concepts of West Modernity some euristic issues. Indeed, the assumed universality of these concepts is a contested component of their meaning.

Between the 19th and 20th century the 85% of the Earth’s surface was covered with the “colonial” map. This human, political and geographical space was asserted, by the vast and heterogeneous world of post-colonial studies, to suggest a universal and secular vision of “human”; and, additionally, a “humanism” concurrently proclaimed and denied by the relationship between metropolis and colony, colonizer and colonized (Said).

The critique of colonial discourse has presented evidence of the theoretical bias implied in colonialism’s themes and universals, revealing the conditions through which colonialism arose, in the framework of capitalist mode of production: marginalization, obliteration of (divergent) knowledge systems, classification and hierarchization both of spaces and human beings (Chakrabarty).
Today, in the context of a pervading neoliberal governmentality, this wide process is rendered with an all new set of tools and discourses; this governmentality is able to take advantage of the coexistence of extremely different strategies. In this regard, Quijano speaks about ‘coloniality’, as a system of thought which can legitimize the inequalities that exist in societies, subjects and knowledge systems, even if colonialism as a political order has reached its end. This trend leads us to question some ‘classic’ categories, such as development, city/periphery dichotomy, environmental exploitation or identity construction; in fact, nowadays, they seem unable to describe contemporary capitalism’ s ability to grow from the coexistence of different modes of production.

In this monographic issue, Soft Power earnestly focus on the subjugation devices implied in differentiated work regimes production and post-development models. Both of these are concurrently, instrumental for Global Capitalism and for its counterbalance, i.e. subjectivation practices: fastening and rearranging differences of class, race, gender and age; furtherly, they generate the practices of resistance and counter-conducts, which are required to open escape routes within the contemporary mechanism of global exploitation.

Soft Power invites submissions of articles of 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes, concerning these themes:

Coloniality, Postcoloniality, Decoloniality, De-Development, Resistance, Counter-Conducts, Neoliberalism, Identity construction, New extractivism

Philosophical, theoretical, historical and interdisciplinary articles are welcome. All articles are peer-reviewed using a double-blind peer-review process. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. Abstracts and keywords must be in English as well as in Spanish in order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services.

Papers (with Name, Title, little Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com.

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by June 1st, 2020 (acceptance of the papers shall be communicated by July 31th 2020).

For any further information: info@softpowerjournal.com