The de-colonial project in Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo: towards an epistemology other of Social Sciences in Latin America

Abstract

Nowadays the multiple folds of sense opened when interpreting present and past social events, indicate that history is neither linear nor evolutionary, that social sciences can and must show their innovations beyond positivism or extreme empiricism and that politics mutates constantly to assume unexpected forms, far removed from universal democratic models. From a line of thinking fighting its own decolonization, these circumstances underlie the production of a critical position deeply attentive to the mediations between political practice and theoretical reflection. Recognizing mutual implications, an attempt is made here to recover specific cultural potentials in order to get to know, think and operate the social domain, in a movement not only reserved for intellectuality. The purpose of this text is to focus this reflexive approach along the theoretical, methodological and epistemological thoughts of Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo, whose respective contributions to political philosophy and literary critique viewpoints, currently feed some of the fundamental analytical categories of this contemporary critical theory of Latin-American origin