Walter D. Mignolo is an important contributor and influencer to the field of curriculum studies, serving in a variety of academic appointments at Duke University: Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies, Professor of Literature, and Professor of Cultural Anthropology.

Mignolo’s contribution to the field has been evidenced in the interdisciplinary understanding of relationships between decoloniality and coloniality , where his “research has been and continues to be devoted to exposing modernity/coloniality as a machine that generates and maintains un-justices and to exploring decolonial ways of delinking from the modernity/coloniality” (Mignolo, n.d.). Mignolo’s work in decoloniality functions in the field of educational research through Truth and Reconciliation in education, with connections to the work of philosophers Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Sylvia Wynter.

Crisis of Modernity

A great deal of Mignolo’s research can be found in Mignolo’s 2007 piece titled, “Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality.” Mignolo begins by noting a tension between modernity, coloniality, and decolonization, asserting that modernity is rooted in Western exceptionalism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and democracy. Mignolo notes that modernity and modernization are “being sold as a package trip to the promised land of happiness… a crooked rhetoric that naturalizes ‘modernity’ as a universal global process and point of arrival hides its darker side, the constant reproduction of ‘coloniality’” (p. 450). In Mignolo’s (2018) book chapter, “the Conceptual Triad, modernity/coloniality/decoloniality”; Mignolo explains that modernity, coloniality, and decoloniality are inextricably entangled; “simultaneously, since the sixteenth century, divided and united” (p. 139). Mignolo goes on to explain that the slash “/” divides and connects this triad, implying that there is no modernity without coloniality, and that decoloniality is not necessary without coloniality (p. 139).

Delinking and Decoloniality

Mignolo makes a case that there is a need to delink “the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality” from concentrated epistemological assumptions rooted in Western civilization often regarded as “the way the world works,” where the success of capitalism has been derived from colonialism through industrial “progress.” Mignolo articulates the work of delinking as a “means to change the terms and not just the content of the conversation” (2007, p. 459), and to displace “hegemonic ideas of what knowledge and understanding are… what economy and politics, ethics and philosophy, technology and the organization of society should be” (p. 459), but instead “create alternatives to modernity and neo-liberal civilization (p. 492).”

This displacing of hegemonic ideals requires a societal willingness to go against epistemic assumptions in a post-structural sense as coloniality is rooted in institutionalized power of Enlightenment ideals. Mignolo describes the need to “fracture the[se] hegemon[ic] structures [of] … theo-logical and ego-logical politics of knowledge and understanding” (p. 459), which have remained largely unchallenged because of modernity’s role of liberating and emancipating those deemed “oppressed” by other ways of knowing and being. Mignolo (2007) asserts that emancipation and liberation are two sides of the same coin, the coin of modernity/coloniality, where those “colonized do not have epistemic privileges” (p. 459). Instead, Mignolo makes a case for society to embrace decoloniality, which is“first and foremost [a] liberation of knowledge (2018, p. 146),” where society works “toward a vision of human life that is not dependent upon or structured by the forced imposition of one ideal of society over those that differ” (2007, p. 459).

An Option instead of a Mission

In a 2014 interview with curriculum scholar Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez on decolonization and decoloniality, Mignolo describes decolonial thinking as an “option,” distinguishing from decolonization associated with the emancipation of those colonized through independence movements, or the expulsion of colonizers from states by Indigenous peoples (p. 197). Mignolo’s emphasis on decoloniality as an option stems from a desire to avoid decoloniality being considered a dogmatic “mission,” similar to missions throughout history to “civilize” and “modernize” peoples in the New World according to assumed universal truths, thereby perpetuating hegemonic values of modernity.

Implications for Educators

Curriculum scholar Vanessa Andreotti (2014) provides a practical application of Mignolo’s examination of modernity in the context of teaching and learning to ultimately problematize the universalization of modernity. Andreotti points out the facade of modernity represented that has largely contributed to the plethora of the world’s issues. In an effort to problematize the universalization of modernity, Andreotti (2014) has come up with an acronym “HEADS UP” to aid in the detection description of problematic patterns of systemic knowledge production: hegemony, ethnocentrism, ahistoricism, depoliticization, salvationism, un-complicated solutions, and paternalism (p. 5-6) that are grounded in modernity’s grammar of universalisms.

In Andreotti’s closing, emphasis is placed on a series of throughline questions aimed at having members in the field of curriculum studies ponder how these deeply rooted issues and complicated contextual particularities can be taken up by educators and curriculum scholars alike as a form of actionable curriculum theory.

References

Andreotti, V. (2014). Actionable curriculum theory: AAACS 2013 closing keynote. Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 10(1), 1-10. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/187728

Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2014). Decolonial options and artistic/aestheSic entanglements. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(1), 196-212. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/21310

Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 449-514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647

Mignolo, W. D. (2018). The conceptual triad: Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality. In W. Mignolo, & C. E. Walsh (Eds.), On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics praxis (pp. 135-152). Duke University Press.

Mignolo, W. D. (n.d.). Scholars@Duke: Walter Mignolo. Duke University Directory. https://scholars.duke.edu/person/walter1654

Suggested Readings for Further Study

Akenakew, C., Andreotti, V., Cooper, G., & Hireme, H. (2014). Beyond epistemic provincialism: De-provincializing Indigenous resistance. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 10(3), 216-231. https://doi.org/10.1177/117718011401000302

Andreotti, V. (2014). Conflicting epistemic demands in poststructuralist and postcolonial engagement with questions of complicity in systemic harm. Educational Studies, 50(4), 378-397. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2014.924940

Bang, M., Curley, L., Kessel, A., Marin, A., Suzukovich, E. S., & Strack, G. (2014). Muskrat theories, tobacco in the streets, and living Chicago as Indigenous land. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.865113

Janson, E. E., & Paraskeva, J. M. (2015). Curriculum counter-strokes and strokes: Swimming in non-existent epistemological rivers. Policy Futures in Education, 13(8), 949-961. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210315579981

Mistry, J. (2021). Decoloniziing processes in film education. Film Education Journal, 4(1), n.p. https://doi.org/10.14324/FEJ.04.1.01