Our argument is that this debate is of mediation, a meeting where decision making takes place. The knowledge produced here will determine which trajectory our politics will go.

Our knowledge and our subjectivity does not have a neutral starting point. It is marked by racial, gender, class, and cultural hierarchies. By stripping ourselves of these subjectivities, Western knowledge produces an unbiased account of truths that locate us in the subaltern knowledge.

Grosfoguel, Professor of Diversity Studies at UC Berkeley, 2011

(Ramon, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality, TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, pg.4-5 MR)

The first point to discuss is the contribution of racial/ethnic and feminist¶ subaltern perspectives to epistemological questions. The hegemonic Eurocentric¶ paradigms that have informed western philosophy and sciences in the¶ “modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system” (Grosfoguel 2005; 2006b) for¶ the last 500 hundred years assume a universalistic, neutral, objective point of view.¶ Chicana and black feminist scholars (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983; Collins 1990) as¶ well as Third World scholars inside and outside the United States (Dussel 1977)¶ reminded us that we always speak from a particular location in the power structures.¶ Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual, linguistic, geographical, and¶ racial hierarchies of the “modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system“. As¶ feminist scholar Donna Haraway (1988) states, our knowledges are always situated.¶ Black feminist scholars called this perspective “afro-centric epistemology” (Collins¶ 1990) (which is not equivalent to the afrocentrist perspective) while Latin American¶ Philosopher of Liberation Enrique Dussel called it “geopolitics of knowledge” (Dussel¶ 1977) and, following Fanon (1967) and Anzaldúa (1987), I will use the term “bodypolitics of knowledge.”¶ This is not only a question about social values in knowledge production or the¶ fact that our knowledge is always partial. The main point here is the locus of¶ enunciation, that is, the geo-political and body-political location of the subject that¶ speaks. In Western philosophy and sciences the subject that speaks is always¶ hidden, concealed, erased from the analysis. The “ego-politics of knowledge” of¶ Western philosophy has always privilege the myth of a non-situated “Ego”.¶ Ethnic/racial/gender/sexual epistemic location and the subject that speaks are¶ always decoupled. By delinking ethnic/racial/gender/sexual epistemic location from¶ the subject that speaks, Western philosophy and sciences are able to produce a myth¶ about a Truthful universal knowledge that covers up, that is, conceals who is speaking as well as the geo-political and body-political epistemic location in the¶ structures of colonial power/knowledge from which the subject speaks.¶ It is important here to distinguish the “epistemic location” from the “social¶ location.” The fact that one is socially located in the oppressed side of power¶ relations does not automatically mean that The disembodied and unlocated neutrality and objectivity of the ego-politics of¶ knowledge he/she is epistemically thinking from a¶ subaltern epistemic location. Precisely, the success of the modern/colonial worldsystem consists in making subjects that are socially located in the oppressed side of¶ the colonial difference, to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions.¶ Subaltern epistemic perspectives are knowledge coming from below that produces a¶ critical perspective of hegemonic knowledge in the power relations involved. I am not¶ claiming an epistemic populism where knowledge produced from below is¶ automatically an epistemic subaltern knowledge. What I am claiming is that all¶ knowledges are epistemically located in the dominant or the subaltern side of the¶ power relations and that this is related to the geo- and body-politics of knowledge.¶ is a Western myth.

Thus, Michelle and I propose confronting and delinking from the colonial matrix of power. Embrace the 1ac as an act of epistemic disobedience

This debate is about epistemology- our starting point is critical highlighting how modernity homogenizes subaltern perspectives

Mignolo 2002 [Walter D. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference

The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 101, Number 1, Winter, pp. 57-96 (Article)

Both Quijano and Dussel have been proposing and claiming that the starting¶ point of knowledge and thinking must be the colonial difference, not¶ the narrative of Western civilization or the narrative of the modern world system.¶ Thus transmodernity and coloniality of power highlight the epistemic¶ colonial difference, essentially the fact that it is urgently necessary to¶ think and produce knowledge from the colonial difference. Paradoxically,¶ the erasure of the colonial difference implies that one recognize it and think¶ from such an epistemic location—to think, that is, from the borders of the¶ two macronarratives, philosophy (Western civilization) and the social sciences¶ (modern world-system). The epistemic colonial difference cannot be¶ erased by its recognition from the perspective of modern epistemology. On¶ the contrary, it requires, as Bernasconi clearly saw in the case of African¶ philosophy, that epistemic horizons open beyond Bacon’s authoritarian assertion¶ that ‘‘there can be no others.’’ The consequences of this are gigantic¶ not only for epistemology but also for ethics and politics. I would like to¶ conclude by highlighting some of them in view of future discussions.