The Neoliberal Foreclosure of Representation and the Habit of Coloniality

La intensificación del punto ciego de la modernidad: la colonialidad

Abstract

The present essay is an attempt to elucidate the “blind spot” in representation in relationship to coloniality and modernity. The latter, as it is based on the destruction of alterity and of nature, hides the habit of coloniality that normalizes such destruction. Articulating the notion of “fascism in representation” in current aesthetic and political practices, in this essay I seek to problematize the cultural specificities of “environmental struggles” or the struggles for survival of indigenous peoples in Mexico as a result of the habit of coloniality. It is urgent, I conclude, to take responsibility for the fact that the privileges of westernized urban and modern populations are based on the destruction of the commons and of originary peoples.