Modernité/Colonialité sans “Impérialité”? Le Chaînon Manquant du Virage Décolonial

Abstract

In an adaptation of the postcolonial argument for Latin America, the giro decolonial [decolonial shift] suggests that coloniality is the hidden and constitutive face of modernity. By critically claiming that the problem of imperialism is under developed by its main theorists, I would like to ask the following series of questions: can the relationship between coloniality and modernity be considered without the dynamic of “imperality”? How can the reproduction of new forms of colonialism be accounted for without a consideration of the new forms of imperialism? In order to address such questions, I therefore propose the concept of imperality as a void hindering an explanation for the mechanisms propagating coloniality. By understanding it as the logic of imperialism, which is an integral part of, and directly related to, coloniality, I further observe that the strategies of decolonization should be targeted at “imperiality” rather than modernity itself. The informality, invisibility, and nebulosity of the contemporary mechanisms of imperiality reproduce an empire-less imperialism in the global context by means of government-less governance.