Power, Knowledge, and Epistemic Delinking

Abstract

In this paper I shall argue that radical epistemic delinking has a key role in liberation from the Colonial Matrix of Power as well as the change in the existing global power relations which are based in the colonialism and maintained through exploitation, expropriation and construction of the (racial) Other. Those power relations render certain bodies and spaces as (epistemologically) irrelevant. In order to discuss possible models of struggle against such condition, firstly I have addressed the relation between de-colonial theories and postcolonial studies, arguing that decolonial positions are both historicising and re-politicising the postcolonial theory. In my central argument I have focused on the epistemic delinking and political implications of decolonial turn. With reference to Grada Killomba I have argued for the struggle against epistemic violence through decolonising knowledge. Decolonising knowledge requires delinking form Eurocentric model of knowledge production and radical dismantling the existing hierarchies among different knowledge. It requires recognition of the ‘Other epistemologies’ and ‘Other knowledge’ as well as liberation from Western disciplinary and methodological limitations. One of the main goals of decolonial project is deinking from the Colonial Matrix of Power. However, delinking is not required only in the areas of economy and politics but also in the field of epistemology.