Poetry and otherness: The criticism of modernity as the genesis of decolonial theories

Abstract

Octavio Paz's critique over the meaning of modernity for Latin American countries, based on a poetic vision and a perspective granted for being an author from otherness, who postulated the need for Reason will recover his abandoned critical spirit from the attempt to imposing it as a hegemonic way of thinking about the present, past and future of all humanity, sent the basis for what we know today as theories of decoloniality. However, the reflection of the Mexican poet is ignored by the academic chapels that have thought about modernity, as by the thinkers who have assumed decolonialism as a way of imagining the future of our societies. This paper presents several of Octavio Paz's contributions to the discussion, concluding that his work should be considered as a member of the genealogy of decolonial thinking.