Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra
Abstract
This paper examines the notion of death as a philosophical and counter-hegemonic subject ‘erased’ from the imperialist cartography of knowledge. It revolves around three main points: the ‘loss’ of death from the imperialist epistemology of the global North, its subservient position towards the dominance of life in biopolitical discourses, and the instrumentality of death under the ongoing matrix of colonial/capitalist power. The paper challenges the hegemonic rationality of biopolitical discourses while proposing counter-hegemonic alternatives: they are hereby mainly situated in the critique of sovereignty exemplified by Achille Mbembe’s groundbreaking work on the politics of death. In what serves as an attempt to avert our gaze from the dominant viewpoint of epistemic imperialism, the paper invites us to ‘unlearn’ what we are supposed to be proud of. As a way to engage in the decolonizing processes, it pleads for self-liberation from the forms of knowledge that, in their claim to be ‘universal’, continue to pertain to the imperialist reason and its hegemonic matrix of power
