Eurocentrism, racism and knowledge : debates on history and power in Europe and the Americas and the Americas

This collection addresses key issues in the critique of Eurocentrism and racism regarding debates on the production of knowledge, historical narratives and memories in Europe and the Americas. Contributors explore the history of liberation politics as well as academic and political reaction through formulas of accommodation that re-centre the West. This collection is an interdisciplinary effort drawing on the work of international scholars and political activists. It addresses key questions in the critique of Eurocentrism and racism regarding debates on the production and sedimentation of knowledge, historical narratives and memories in Europe and the Americas. By conceiving Eurocentrism as a paradigm of interpretation, and race as the key principle of the modern order, the authors bring the relation between knowledge and power to the centre of debate. The book invites to consider institutionalized violence as pervading the regulation of the heterogeneity of (post- )colonial territories and peoples, and to see the politics of knowledge production as a struggle for power seeking profound change. At the heart of this collective endeavour is the long history of international and domestic liberation politics and thought, as well as academic and political reaction through formulas of accommodation that re-centre the West Front Matter....Pages i-xi Eurocentrism, Political Struggles and the Entrenched Will-to-Ignorance: An Introduction....Pages 1-22 Epistemic Racism/Sexism, Westernized Universities and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long Sixteenth Century....Pages 23-46 Violence and Coloniality in Latin America: An Alternative Reading of Subalternization, Racialization and Viscerality....Pages 47-64 Social Races and Decolonial Struggles in France....Pages 65-79 Towards a Critique of Eurocentrism: Remarks on Wittgenstein, Philosophy and Racism....Pages 80-92 How Post-colonial and Decolonial Theories are Received in Europe and the Idea of Europe....Pages 93-113 Africanist Scholarship, Eurocentrism and the Politics of Knowledge....Pages 114-135 Scientific Colonialism: The Eurocentric Approach to Colonialism....Pages 136-153 Secrets, Lies, Silences and Invisibilities: Unveiling the Participation of Africans on the Mozambique Front during World War I....Pages 154-177 Conceptual Clarity, Please! On the Uses and Abuses of the Concepts of ‘Slave’ and ‘Trade’ in the Study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery....Pages 178-191 Making the Teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture Compulsory: Tensions and Contradictions for Anti-racist Education in Brazil....Pages 192-208 Race and Racism in Mexican History Textbooks: A Silent Presence....Pages 209-228 Social Mobilization and the Public History of Slavery in the United States....Pages 229-246 Back Matter....Pages 247-257