2. Coloniality and its universal fictions

Latin American decolonial theorists have blazed a trail toward decoloniality by shining a bright light on coloniality (or coloniality of power) as the “main framework” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 170) of the modern/colonial world-system that has driven global political, economic, and cultural processes in the last 500 years. Coloniality is shorthand for “colonial matrix of power,” which is “a set of structural relations and flows” constitutive of the Eurocentric modern world-system whose rules have regulated “the life of the majority of the human species” since European colonialism began (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 114). As such, coloniality is “constitutive” of modernity (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2011, 3), which has been touted in the West as the pinnacle of human civilization. Coloniality’s fusion with modernity is such that it justifies considering coloniality/modernity as a “complex” concept that is united and separated at the same time (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 109). Although some may confuse “coloniality” with “colonialism,” they are distinct. Colonialism involves “an explicit political order” established in violent conquest and colonization of foreign territories (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 170). Colonialism ended at the end of the Second World War, as “classic colonies”Footnote ⁶ of empires have become nominally independent “Third World” states in the international arena. Coloniality, however, is a colonial form of domination and exploitation predicated on “colonial cultures and structures” in the modern/colonial world-system (Grosfoguel Reference Grosfoguel2007, 219). As the conjoined twin of modernity, colonialityFootnote ⁷ persists even after colonialism ended.

The primary form of coloniality is “cultural coloniality” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 169).Footnote ⁸ Culture is a distinct and complex historically accumulated semiotic system or structure shared by the members, comprising implicit and explicit symbolic resources and patterns embodied in institutions, norms, practices, interactions, and artifacts (Markus and Hamedani Reference Markus, Hamedani and Cohen2019).Footnote ⁹ Although culture is an overarching “supra-individual” system (Dimaggio Reference DiMaggio1997, 272), cultural resources – symbolic resources and patterns – are not merely tools to be used by the members to organize their experiences and behavior, but, more fundamentally, “constitutive” of psychological and behavioral dispositions of the members (Dimaggio and Markus Reference DiMaggio and Markus2010, 348). Hence, human perception, cognition, emotion, and motivation, while universally shared, are constituted differently by their respective cultures. Different cultural communities have their own cultural frameworks and schemata that facilitate different ways of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting for the members, as individual perception and cognition “rest on socially validated knowledge, theories, methods, and categories” (Turner et al Reference Turner, Oakes, Haslam and McGarty1994, 460). As a result, the members “think and feel and act in culture-specific ways – ways that are shaped by particular patterns of historically derived meanings, practices, products, and institutions” (Dimaggio and Markus Reference DiMaggio and Markus2010, 348). Humans portrayed by this conception of culture are inherently cultural beings. Yet, the members are not mere receptacles of cultural input but are “culturally shaped shapers” of different layers of culture – ideas, institutions, and interactions – with which they engage (Markus and Hamedani Reference Markus, Hamedani and Cohen2019, 15); they actively shape culture as they participate in social processes to foster meaningful cultural ways of life. Hence, culture is inherently dynamic, and the members are the primary agents of cultural dynamism.

Culture understood in this way encompasses not only ways of perceiving and knowing (epistemology) but also ways of being (ontology) and living (morality), comprising what Aníbal Quijano called “social totality” within the cultural community. Not only knowledge, but also ontology and morality are inherently intersubjective and cultural (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 172). Despite its cultural specificity, Eurocentric cultural coloniality has maintained and imposed on others “universal fictions” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 187) pertaining to epistemic, ontological, and normative categories. Let us examine how universal fictions operate in Eurocentric coloniality’s epistemology, ontology, and morality. Epistemically, Eurocentric coloniality involves “the European paradigm of rational knowledge” and is predicated on a dualism pertaining to “subject-object relation” in knowledge production (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 172). The rational subject is assumed to be isolated from the community of knowers and capable of transcending his contingent social location and personal idiosyncrasies to attain objective truths about mind-independent external reality. According to this formula, ontological objectivity of reality can be ascertained through “aperspectival objectivity” (Kukla Reference Kukla2006) in which the subject attains epistemic detachment from the object of inquiry. This is what decolonial theorists call “the zero point epistemology” (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2009, 160).Footnote ¹⁰ Modernity predicated on the zero point epistemology of the European Enlightenment became ascendant in the North-Western European empires of England, France, and the Netherlands, which launched the second phase of European colonization that spanned the entire globe. Consequently, this epistemology became modernity’s ideology that rationalized Europe’s conquest and colonization of the non-European world.Footnote ¹¹

The ontological aspect of the cultural framework pertains to a system of “distributions of properties among existing objects in the world” (Descola Reference Descola and Harvey2014, 79). Philippe Descola lists at least four different ontological frameworks among diverse human cultures: in “totemism,” members of the community consider “as yet unspecified alter,” whether human or non-human, as possessing elements of physicality and interiority analogous to themselves; in “analogism,” this object’s interiority and physicality are assumed to be entirely distinct from their own; in “animism,” the object is thought to have a similar interiority and a different physicality; and in “naturalism,” the object is viewed as devoid of interiority but possessing a similar kind of physicality (79). Since the Enlightenment, the European cultural framework gradually adopted naturalist ontology in which “culture” is “differentiated from nature” (87). This, Mignolo argues, is problematic,Footnote ¹² as life on earth involves “the relentless generation and the regeneration” in the solar system, and nature cannot be separated from the realm of humans. To carve nature out of this process is “an ontological fiction” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 158) predicated on Francis Bacon’s formulation of nature as “out there, separated from” humans. Eurocentric ontological coloniality, therefore, rests on culture-nature dualism in which humans, who are merely “a species of living/languaging organisms” that cannot exist outside of the life cycle (163), turned nature into “natural resources” to be possessed, extracted, and exploited (159).

An aspect of Eurocentric coloniality rarely discussed by decolonial theorists is its normative framework that promotes the ideal of the autonomous individual. The preeminent Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant is its principal proponent. Kant theorized that rational beings have the capacity to self-legislate a universal moral law applicable to anyone anywhere and argued that we ought to live in accordance with the self-legislated universal moral law without fail. Autonomy is the ability to transcend one’s contingent circumstances, whether one’s inclinations or external environment, to become a legislator of the universal moral law. Autonomy confers dignity on humans, and every rational being capable of autonomy should be respected as an end in itself (Kant Reference Kant1785/1964). The capacity for autonomy has become central to Eurocentric normative philosophy – liberalism. John Stuart Mill conceptualized “liberty” to encompass not only autonomy, but also individuality, reason, and progress; Mill argued that the full development of the capacities of the individual and of the species requires promotion and protection of individual liberty. In contrast, custom implies unfreedom and stagnation; therefore, conformity to custom is the great enemy of development. Mill argued that liberty is given greater scope in civilized societies of Europe, whereas custom rules in “the whole East”Footnote ¹³ (Mill Reference Mill1859/1978, 67) whereby human life has become “stationary” (69).

These Eurocentric fictions have been bolstered by the “pillars of the colonial matrix of power,” racism and sexism (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 157). Europeans first invented “race” within Europe against Jews and Muslims primarily in terms of religion; this was subsequently applied to inhabitants of the Americas and Africa whereby it morphed into biological differences; then, it was reapplied to the converted Jews and Muslims in biological terms (156).Footnote ¹⁴ Each reapplication of race solidified the presumption that non-Europeans were “lesser humans” (153) and rationalized “colonial differences” (158) that separate the colonized from the colonizers (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 171). Sexism is also a fiction. According to Maria Lugones, indigenous societies in the Americas did not subscribe to “the modern/colonial gender system” (2008, 1).Footnote ¹⁵ The colonizers considered egalitarian gender relations and the lack of gender hierarchy among the indigenous in the Americas as evidence of their barbarity, which rationalized their colonization and subsequent treatment as subhuman beings fit for exploitation and genocide (16; Lugones Reference Lugones2010, 743). Gradually, the colonized became both racialized and gendered through the brutal process of colonialism (Matallana-Peláez Reference Matallana-Peláez2020); gender hierarchy broke down solidarity between the colonized men and women by destroying their ties based on complementarity and reciprocity (Lugones Reference Lugones2007).Footnote ¹⁶ Hence, Ramón Grosfoguel characterizes the colonial world-system as not only racist but also “patriarchal” (Reference Grosfoguel2011).

3. Coloniality’s cultural specificity

Achieving decoloniality is predicated first and foremost on recognizing that we are in the grips of coloniality’s universal fictions and “liberating” ourselves from them (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 177); this is what Mignolo calls “disobedience” or “delinking” from Eurocentric coloniality (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018).Footnote ¹⁷ More on what this entails is discussed in section VI. Here, I discuss the cultural specificity of “universal” Eurocentric fictions, the evidence for which has been mounting in recent decades. World cultures can be divided into two broad types, individualist cultures of the West and collectivist cultures of the Rest. In recent decades, cultural psychologists have extensively discussed differences between individualist cultures of the West and collectivist cultures of East Asia regarding schemata for normatively appropriate relations between the self and others (Triandis Reference Triandis1995). In “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)” societies (Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010), the “foundational” schema is “independent,” which considers the self as separate, distinct, or independent from others, whose behavior is properly guided by the individual’s internal thoughts, feelings, and desires. In East Asia, the foundational schema is “interdependent,” which considers the self as connected to, related to, or interdependent with others, and takes proper behavior as predicated on taking others’ expectations and perspectives into consideration (Markus and Kitayama Reference Markus and Kitayama2010, 423).Footnote ¹⁸ Western or European – WEIRD – cultures where the independent schema is predominant are “individualist,” and Eastern cultures where the interdependent schema is predominant are “collectivist” (Triandis Reference Triandis1995). In their ground-breaking article, Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan (Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010) argue that differences in “self-concepts” between individualist WEIRD societies and collectivist cultures affect their members’ self-esteem, personal choice, motivation to conform, reasoning style, and moral reasoning (70). This confirms that basic elements of human psychology, while universal, are expressed in “strikingly different” manners in individualist and collectivist cultures (Dimaggio and Markus Reference DiMaggio and Markus2010, 349), entailing radically different and indeed incommensurable constructions of social worlds.

Following Mill, however, Eurocentric philosophers have interpreted cultural differences in terms of hierarchy or superiority. For example, they claim that collectivist cultures are inferior to Western individualist cultures because the former is gripped by the “illusion of a singular identity” (Sen Reference Sen2006, 8)Footnote ¹⁹ and rationalize “extreme inequalities that are morally arbitrary and indefensible” (Buchanan Reference Buchanan2004, 173). What recent research in cultural psychology demonstrates, however, is that differences among cultures cannot be viewed in terms of hierarchy or superiority, as different cultural schemata constitute psychological and behavioral dispositions of the members differently and facilitate for the members different ways of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting. Psychological and behavioral dispositions of the members of collectivist cultures, as inherently cultural beings, would be thoroughly constituted by the interdependent cultural schemata, which would lead them to conceive the self as inherently interdependent with others for whom a meaningful human life is inherently enmeshed with others’ lives. Yet this does not mean that a collectivist society coercively imposes on the members singular conceptions of personal identity or of the good life, as Eurocentric philosophers presume. Culture as a semiotic process allows for latitude and variability (Sewell Reference Sewell, Bonnell, Hunt and Biernacki1999, 51); even in the most tight-knit cultural groups, no member’s identity would be exactly like another’s (Roccas and Brewer Reference Roccas and Brewer2002) and “individuality and idiosyncrasy” would be the norm (Markus and Kitayama Reference Markus and Kitayama2010, 423). A “singular” cultural identity in collectivist cultures is, therefore, a Eurocentric colonial myth.

Cultural members with their more or less varying personal identities, however, are bound to interpret various aspects of their culture differently. This would generate intracultural disagreements and contestations regarding interpretations of their cultural community’s diverse elements, including how the community should be organized and governed, leading to what I call intracultural pluralism. The inevitability of intracultural pluralism in all cultures necessitates social and political mechanisms to peacefully manage intracultural pluralism, adjudicate conflicts, and promote the common good. Collective self-determination (CSD) as advocated by indigenous peoples worldwide, as in, for example, the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, refers to such mechanisms. The aim of CSD is not to retain or restore some nonexistent cultural essence frozen in time but rather to enable the members to “critically” reinterpret cultural values, traditions, and institutions necessary to revitalize the community under contemporary circumstances (Coulthard Reference Coulthard2014, 156). When a community is able to manage intracultural pluralism peacefully and to the satisfaction of the majority of the members, then its CSD is legitimate. One crucial prerequisite for legitimate CSD is a communal recognition of and respect for certain membership entitlements – we might call them basic “rights”Footnote ²⁰ – for all adult and sane members of the community. If there are internal channels by which (1) rank-and-file members can express their complaints and opposition to dominant interpretations without fear of their basic rights being violated, and (2) those in power, or the authorities, are obliged to address the members’ complaints and opposition conscientiously, then the community’s CSD is legitimate. Through CSD, the cultural community may avoid “extreme inequalities that are morally arbitrary and indefensible,” and the members may bring about necessary changes to maintain the community’s stability, efficiency, and legitimacy. Culture as a semiotic system is malleable, resilient, and self-correctable through CSD (Sewell Reference Sewell, Bonnell, Hunt and Biernacki1999, 51).

Yet, the invention of “race” in particular has facilitated the Eurocentric notion that the colonized are not merely different but “inferior, by nature.” Their racialized bodies were conceived to be closer to nature and incapable of rationality or autonomy and, therefore, reducible to “objects of knowledge” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 174). By inventing race as a biological trait, European colonizers transformed it “as the basis of the worldwide division of labor and of trade” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007b, 52), which subordinated the racialized individuals in a hierarchical international division of labor and rationalized their domination and exploitation (Quijano Reference Quijano2000, 555). This attitude toward racialized individuals is then extrapolated to the culture of the colonized: “only European culture is rational, it can contain ‘subjects’ – the rest are not rational, they cannot be or harbor ‘subjects’” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 174). Or, to use Mill’s words, they are “backward” societies of “barbarians” where custom rules; this justifies “despotism” as “a legitimate mode of government” in such societies (Mill Reference Mill1859/1978, 10). Colonialism is precisely the kind of despotism that Mill thought was necessary for non-Western societies. Mill rationalized colonialism, claiming that civilizing despotism in such societies can be implemented better by an already civilized nation – such as England (McCarthy Reference McCarthy and Buckinx2015, 163). Similarly, the Hegelian idea of “society as a macro-historical subject, endowed with a historical rationality” gave rise to the idea of history as an “evolutionary continuum” from the primitive to the civilized; from the traditional to the modern; from proto-capitalism to capitalism. In this process, Europe was conceived as “the advanced form of the history of the entire species” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 176). In a time-warping logic, all contemporary non-Europeans could be placed on this historical continuum as “pre-European,” which must in time be Europeanized or modernized in the name of progress (Quijano Reference Quijano2000, 556; see also Mies Reference Mies, Shiva and Mies1993).

Predicated on such prejudices, Eurocentric cultural coloniality has promoted its particular individualist cultural framework as universal and imposed it on colonized cultural communities. This coercive process has severely disrupted, if not annihilated, the internal dynamic of culture in many communities of the colonized. Although such disruptions are harmful in all cases, Quijano argued that the Americas – the focus of decolonial theorists – suffered the most horrendous and prolonged forms of European colonization.Footnote ²¹ Regarding the colonized world, coloniality has manifested as “a radicalization and naturalization of the non-ethics of war” and has subjected the colonized to a constant state of vanquishment (Maldonado-Torres Reference Maldonado-Torres2007, 247). The European repression of indigenous collectivist cultures in the Latin American context brought about distortions of indigenous cultural ways; consequently, the previously high cultures of America were turned into “illiterate, peasant subcultures condemned to orality” and “deprived of their own patterns of formalized, objectivised, intellectual, and plastic or visual expression” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 170). Then, the colonizers began to impose their own cultural framework on the colonized, and the process of “cultural Europeanisation” began. European cultural framework was made “seductive, as it gave access to power” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 169). Eventually, not only European epistemology was promoted as “a universal paradigm of knowledge” (172), but also European ontology and morality were promoted as the universal model for all humanity. Ever since, the European cultural framework has taken hold of the subjectivities of not only descendants of the colonizers, but also of the colonized. The “universal fictions” of the European cultural framework have “an aesthesic power, affecting our senses, driving our emotions and desires” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 187, original emphasis). In this way, Eurocentrism has colonized “the imagination of the dominated” and “acts in the interior of that imagination” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 169).Footnote ²² When the universal fictions are installed in the imagination of individuals, they operate as “realities” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 188, original emphasis). Ramón Grosfoguel (Reference Grosfoguel2007) therefore cautions us to distinguish the “epistemic location” and the “social location.” The fact that one is socially located on the oppressed side of power relations does not mean that they are thinking from a subaltern epistemic location. The success of Eurocentric coloniality implies that socially oppressed subjects may think, evaluate, and act like those with the dominant positions (213).

4. Three forms of epistemic injustice relevant to coloniality

That the imposition of Eurocentric cultural coloniality on the colonized is unjust is indisputable. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Reference Thiong’o1986) analogizes this state to having been thrown a “cultural bomb,” which “annihilate[s] a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves” (3). Although this injustice has multiple layers – epistemic,Footnote ²³ ontological, moral – and manifests in different social dimensions – political, social, legal, economic – this section focuses on epistemic injustice, which is the focus of Veli Mitova, who argues that FAEJ can promote “Decolonising Knowledge Here and Now” (2020). One of the most obvious ways in which European colonialism commits epistemic injustice is by disrupting, if not destroying, the indigenous epistemic framework of the colonized and imposing epistemic coloniality. Rajeev Bhargava (Reference Bhargava2013) argues, for example, that if the destruction of an epistemic framework is extensive enough to warrant the term “epistemicide,” then, it is unjust in depriving the survivors – most likely young members – of the colonized community of their indigenous epistemic framework. Even when a sufficient number of adult members survive the violent onslaught of colonialism and are able to maintain their epistemic framework, the continued impact of coloniality may, first, reduce it to an inferior option to epistemic coloniality, and, second, marginalize or transform its core aspects to a degree quite alien to its original form (414). As Bhargava states, the troubling aspect of this process is not that the framework has changed, as culture is inherently dynamic, but rather that the change has been brought about, coercively and often violently, by cultural outsiders with little, if at all, understanding of the inner dynamic of the framework of the colonized.

This somewhat broad characterization of colonial epistemic injustice seems intuitively sound. Yet, this generic description of epistemic injustice is not what Mitova has in mind when she argues that FAEJ may provide “a useful conceptual toolbox” for thinking about epistemic decolonization (Reference Mitova2020, 198). To assess the argument that FAEJ can “decolonize knowledge,” it is essential to clearly understand the idea of “epistemic injustice” discussed in FAEJ, which is “distinctly epistemic” in wronging someone in her capacity as a knower (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 1). First, let us begin with Fricker’s two conceptions of epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice. Testimonial injustice, on one hand, occurs when a speaker’s testimony is given less credibility than it normally would because of the “credibility deficit” (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 21) that the speaker suffers due to “negative identity prejudices” based on stereotypes prevalent in society (35). Stereotypes are not inherently bad, as these are necessary “heuristics” to help hearers assess their interlocutor’s credibility (16). Yet, if the stereotype embodies a prejudice working against the speaker’s social identity – “identity prejudice” (27) qua social type – which leads the hearer to make “an unduly deflated judgement” of the speaker’s credibility, then this “wrongfully undermines” the speaker’s capacity as a knower (17). This is testimonial injustice that inflicts on the victim the “primary” harm of degrading her qua knower and even qua human (44) and ultimately inhibiting “the development of an essential aspect of” her identity (54).

Hermeneutical injustice, on the other hand, is the injustice of “having some significant area of one’s social experiences obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource” (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 155). Hermeneutical resources are “our shared tools of social interpretation” (6) prevalent in the “collective social imagination” that regulates the members’ perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and motivations. These resources are cultural resources examined earlier (section II) and enable us to understand oneself and communicate with others in the epistemic community. Conceptions of social identity are also governed by these resources, and when some power operates predicated on such shared conceptions of social identity, then “identity power” is at work (14). Testimonial injustice is an instance of the wrongful operation of identity power whereby the hearer unjustifiably undermines the speaker’s credibility based on identity prejudices. Hermeneutic injustice, in contrast, is predicated on “hermeneutical marginalization” whereby the members of socially disadvantaged groups have “some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding” (158). Unlike testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice is “purely structural” without a culprit;Footnote ²⁴ it arises when someone who is hermeneutically marginalized makes “some actual attempt at intelligibility” but fails (159). This is because the dominant hermeneutical repertoire lacks or distorts the hermeneutical tools that would help the marginalized make sense of her experiences because the members of her marginalized social group have been “unjustly excluded from participating in the social practices wherein hermeneutical tools are created and implemented” (Falbo Reference Falbo, Sylvan, Steup, Sosa and Dancy2025). The primary harm of hermeneutical injustice is not just that the marginalized is “unfairly disadvantaged by some hermeneutical lacuna” but, more seriously, that she is “prevented from becoming” who she is because of such a lack (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 168).

In addition to Fricker’s two kinds of epistemic injustice, a third type of epistemic injustice in FAEJ relevant to Mitova’s discussion of decoloniality is Kristie Dotson’s “contributory injustice” (Reference Dotson2012). Contributory injustice is a variation of hermeneutical injustice that results in epistemic harm to a knower’s epistemic agency that is caused by other epistemic agents’ “willful hermeneutical ignorance” (31).Footnote ²⁵ Dotson argues that contributory injustice is predicated on premises that are ignored in Fricker’s framework: first, although Fricker assumes a single set of collective hermeneutical resources for a community of knowers, Dotson argues that there are “alternative epistemologies, countermythologies, and hidden transcripts” shared by the members of “hermeneutically marginalized communities” (31) that epistemic agents outside of those communities “could utilize” but “willfully” refuse (32). Second, the reason that marginalized knowers are harmed by contributory injustice is not that they find their experiences unintelligible, contrary to the marginalized knowers in situations of hermeneutical injustice; rather, the marginalized knowers can “readily articulate their experiences,” but these articulations “fail to gain appropriate uptake” in the larger community due to the prevalence of “biased hermeneutical resources” (32). Dotson’s critique of Fricker’s framework is that its failure to register contributory injusticeFootnote ²⁶ leads to its inability to apprehend the pervasiveness of “epistemic oppression” understood as persistent “epistemic exclusion” that infringes on the epistemic agency of knowers and reduces their ability to participate in a given epistemic community (24).

Dotson goes on to argue that the three types of epistemic injustices also differ in the kinds of changes minimally required for mitigating the injustices involved (26). Since a knower is harmed in testimonial injustice by not being seen as a credible source of knowledge, Fricker advocates developing a testimonial sensibility that “has been suitably reconditioned by sufficient corrective experiences so that it now reliably issues ready-corrected judgments of credibility” (Reference Fricker2007, 97). Such changes are first-order changes that would render people’s credibility judgments more accurate but do not “challenge the value of credibility” (Dotson Reference Dotson2012, 28). In that sense, these changes are minimal and meant to make the current socioepistemic – what I’ve called “cultural” – structure more efficient. Despite Fricker’s recognition that hermeneutical injustice is structural, Fricker’s proposal for mitigating it is likewise individualist and involves cultivating the individual virtue of hermeneutical justice (Reference Fricker2007, 169-75). The relentlessly individualist bias of Fricker’s epistemic framework has been criticized by many critics (Ayala Reference Ayala2016; Doan Reference Doan2018). Dotson seems to concur with these critics and correctly points out that addressing this injustice calls for reforming the socioepistemic structures that create and sustain hermeneutical marginalization. She calls such changes second-order because they apply at the level of structures and schemata that “generate shared meanings or frames of reference” with the aim of modifying them (Dotson Reference Dotson2012, 30). Overcoming contributory injustice is more challenging, according to Dotson, and requires third-order changes, which involve the ability of individuals to “shift hermeneutical resources” based on their “fluency in differing hermeneutical resources” (34). Still, “transconceptual” fluency is not easily acquired, Dotson admits, and it could “take decades to become truly fluent in an alternative set of hermeneutical resources” (35).

Although Dotson recognizes the necessity of structural changes to overcome hermeneutical and contributory injustice, it is unclear that Dotson goes beyond Fricker’s individualist approach, as she also seems to confer the primary responsibility of preventing/redressing these types of epistemic injustice on individuals, especially (potential) offenders. For example, in addition to urging individuals to develop transconceptual fluency, Dotson states that individuals should “remain constantly aware that there is always more to say and remain sensitive to the inevitability of damaging oversights” (Reference Dotson2012, 42). More recently, Dotson repeats this proposal in terms of “epistemic reflexivity” – the ability to detect the limits of one’s epistemic framework as the cause of epistemic oppression (Berenstain et al Reference Berenstain, Dotson, Paredes, Ruíz and Silva2022, 291). Although I’m not opposed to holding individuals responsible for perpetrating epistemic injustice, this strategy may have limitations regarding structural types of epistemic injustice. If Saray Ayala is correct that individuals in speech acts are immersed in structures and their skillful responses to “affordances” involve “unreflective norm-following,” then hermeneutical or contributory injustice may result from people merely being “skilled practitioners of a sociocultural practice” (Reference Ayala2016, 886).Footnote ²⁷ If so, then perpetrators of these types of injustice may often be unconscious of the impact of their actions, let alone “willful” in acting unjustly.Footnote ²⁸ Under these circumstances, expecting individuals to be always sensitive to the impact of their behavior and vigilantly modifying it to avoid injustice seems to involve an overestimation of individual epistemic capacities. Accordingly, urging individuals to account for their behavior that results in hermeneutical or contributory injustice may not be as effective as Dotson seems to think. This is not to say that hermeneutical or contributory injustices are not serious wrongs; they are. Yet Dotson’s individualist solution of transconceptual fluency may not be the correct remedy for epistemic injustice at the structural level. What may be necessary are structural changes at the cultural level. Unfortunately, Dotson seems silent on this crucially important issue of structural changes.Footnote ²⁹

5. Application of feminist epistemology to decoloniality

How do ideas of FAEJ apply globally? According to Veli Mitova (Reference Mitova2020), “coloniality” involves different stages,Footnote ³⁰ and feminist epistemological ideas relevant to each stage are different (200): The first stage is the violent conquest resulting in “epistemicide” attendant on “linguicide,” which exterminates knowledge and ways of knowing of the conquered. A Frickerian tool central to theorizing epistemicide, Mitova claims, is the idea of hermeneutical injustice. As an example of “targeted hermeneutical injustice,” epistemicide deprives the colonized of her own hermeneutical resources and leaves her at “a permanent disadvantage as the eternal second-language speaker” (202). Consequently, the colonized “lacks the epistemic resources that would enable her to make sense of her experiences or communicate them to others,” which, according to Mitova, is a case of hermeneutical injustice (202).

This characterization of colonial conquest, however, is misleading. Let us recall that Fricker’s hermeneutical injustice occurs because the members of a socially disadvantaged group experience hermeneutical marginalization whereby some significant area of their social experience is obscured from collective understanding of the epistemic community; this is due to the fact that the members of marginalized groups have been blocked from contributing to the evolution of the dominant hermeneutical repertoire, which therefore lacks the hermeneutical tools that would help them make sense of their experiences. Here, it is crucial to recognize that hermeneutical injustice is inflicted on members of the same epistemic or cultural community who, by and large, share the social imaginary of the community. The paradigmatic example of the hermeneutically marginalized are the members of disadvantaged social groups, such as women, people of color, the disabled, and the LGBTQ.

Does the injustice experienced by the members of colonized communities in the first stage of coloniality count as hermeneutical injustice, especially when they are in the throes of a violent conquest? The answer is no. The colonized at the time of the conquest are not members of the same cultural group as the colonizers; their own epistemic framework may be incommensurable with that of the colonizer, especially at the time of the initial confrontation. In the process of a violent conquest, the colonized who survived the genocide are painfully aware of such differences and would be unable to comprehend the foreign framework of the colonizer, let alone express themselves in it. The injustice they suffer is not epistemic in the sense that they are wronged in their capacity as a knowerFootnote ³¹ ; rather, it is one of the most horrendous forms of moral injustice in that they are wronged in their very humanity; not only have their lives and bodily integrity been savagely assaulted but their cultural community and social world have been annihilated by brutal conquerors with no just cause.

There is, however, a second stage of colonization, that of “continued coloniality” (Mitova Reference Mitova2020, 203); Mitova includes in this stage the present moment in history. As discussed above, FAEJ are not applicable to the first stage, as the first generation of the colonized do not belong to the same epistemic community as the colonizers. Yet the colonized who survived the initial colonial assault and were forced to live in the post-conquest settler colonial society as subalternsFootnote ³² can be characterized as members – albeit marginalized – of the same epistemic community. At this stage, the relevant feminist epistemological idea, according to Mitova, is Kristie Dotson’s epistemic oppression (Reference Dotson2014). This refers to the “persistent epistemic exclusion” understood as the unwarranted infringement of a knower’s epistemic agency to competently use “shared epistemic resources within a given community of knowers” to participate in knowledge production and, if necessary, to revise those same resources (2014, 115, added emphases). Recall that Dotson distinguishes three types of epistemic injustice relevant to epistemic oppression based on the order of change necessary for a community’s shared epistemic schemata to mitigate the relevant epistemic exclusion of the marginalized epistemic agents: the first type does not require any change to the schemata itself; the second type calls for some modification of the schemata; the third type necessitates a fundamental restructuring of the schemata (118-9). Mitova claims that the types of epistemic oppression relevant to decolonization are the second and third, both of which occur because the community’s epistemic schemata are insufficient for rectifying epistemic oppression experienced by the colonized (Reference Mitova2020, 203). The third type of oppression, in particular, calls for “from-without critiques of coloniality” (204), which requires one to “get outside of the dominant paradigm” (205).

The global application of FAEJ to the second stage of coloniality may seem to work better. Let’s be clear, however, that the members of the colonized have their own collectivist epistemic framework inherited from their forefathers. Nevertheless, they are at the same time members of the colonizer epistemic community, although marginalized in varying degrees,Footnote ³³ and are in principle capable of utilizing and revising the individualist colonial epistemic framework from within. In case this cannot be done, Dotson’s third-order changes seem compatible with a more radical restructuring.

Upon closer inspection, however, Dotson’s idea of contributory injustice is not applicable in the context of coloniality. To see this, we must first understand why epistemic oppression experienced by the colonized cannot be overcome within the colonizer’s epistemic framework by tinkering with its various aspects. It is because of the incommensurability between the colonized community’s collectivist epistemic framework and the dominant “WEIRD” society’s individualist epistemic framework. As examined previously, the epistemic frameworks of collectivist and individualist cultures constitute the members’ psychological and behavioral dispositions differently, which results in radically different social worlds. An example of this incommensurability can be found in the conception of land “as family” to which many indigenous communities subscribe, which is at odds with the conception of land as property in the dominant modern national and international legal systems (Townsend and Townsend Reference Townsend and Townsend2021, 152; see also, Tsosie Reference Tsosie2012; Tuck and Yang Reference Tuck and Yang2012).Footnote ³⁴ The source of colonial epistemic injustice under such circumstances is the coercive imposition of the individualist epistemic framework of the colonizer society on the colonized whose epistemic framework is collectivist. Therefore, the “tools” necessary to overcome the epistemic oppression of the colonized may not be available within the colonizer’s epistemic framework.

Let us come back to why Dotson’s contributory injustice is not applicable in the context of coloniality. There are at least two reasons to support this conclusion: first, Dotson’s paradigmatic example of the epistemically marginalized individual suffering from contributory injustice – the “fettered person on the farthest left” in a Platonic caveFootnote ³⁵ – does not represent a member of the colonized. Recall Dotson’s own characterization of how this individual gains her insight about the contributory injustice inflicted on her: the fettered person on the farthest left has a unique experience of sensing mobile persons interacting with one another and thereby realizes that there is “a fuller world than Shadowland epistemic resources may allow.” She even “knows very well how to articulate her position.”Footnote ³⁶ Her testimony of this fuller world, however, is “rejected as nonsensical” by other fettered persons. Apparently, she is the only individual who has had an awakening about the true state of affairs (130). This, however, does not describe how members of the colonized, such as indigenous peoples, grasp the “fuller world.” They come to comprehend the existence of an alternative epistemic framework--their own collectivist indigenous culture–and the structural epistemic injustice they experience not through individual epiphanies. Rather, as enculturated members of their cultural and epistemic community, their awareness of colonial epistemic injustice faced by their community and its members reflects shared experiences and consciousness of their community members. Second, while Dotson speaks of “alternative epistemologies, countermythologies, and hidden transcripts” shared by the members of “hermeneutically marginalized communities” (Reference Dotson2012, 31) as relevant to contributory injustice, these do not include the collectivist culture of the colonized. Rather, these are subcultures of the individualist culture of the colonizer society. This is evident in Dotson’s examples: Dotson takes the debate between Barbara Smith and Deborah Chay – the first being “a proponent of high theorizing” and the second representing “a grassroots intellectual” – as exemplifying contributory injustice (32). Although epistemic frameworks involved in this example may be initially unrecognizable and unfamiliar to those on the opposite sides, they are nevertheless sub-epistemic frameworks of the colonizer society’s individualist epistemic framework.

6. Feminist epistemology and programs for decoloniality

The potential for FAEJ’s contribution to decoloniality may be assessed further by examining its compatibility with two – negative and positive – programs for decoloniality: the negative program involves “disobeying” (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2009) or “delinking” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018) from Eurocentric coloniality’s fictions. Yet recognizing the importance of disobedience is “only the first step” towards decoloniality (125) and must be accompanied by a positive program of “relinking to something else” (120). This “something else” is “cultural praxis of living” (220) in a cultural community, which is consistent with the conception of humans as inherently cultural beings examined earlier. In other words, the positive step of decoloniality calls for the subaltern community members to freely “produce, criticize, change, and exchange culture and society” (Quijano Reference Quijano2007a, 178). This is CSD, which is aptly described in the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as involving a collective right to “freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (Article 3), “practise and revitalise their cultural traditions and customs” (Article 11), and “live in freedom, peace, and security as distinct peoples” (Article 7) without being “subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture” (Article 8).

According to decolonial theorists, agents of CSD are first and foremost Latin American subaltern – indigenous and Afro-descendent peasant and rural – communities.Footnote ³⁷ In relation to the two incommensurable cultural systems discussed earlier, subaltern cultures of Latin America exemplify collectivist cultures. In the Latin American context, CSD has been pursued under the banner of “autonomia (autonomyFootnote ³⁸ ),” which is the indigenous peoples’ right to “govern themselves according to their own customs and traditions” (Eber and Kovic Reference Eber and Kovic2003/2013, 9; Forbis Reference Forbis2003, 234). As communities devastated by colonial and neoliberal policies administered by their states as agents of Eurocentric hegemons, such as the U.S., their pursuit of autonomia is predicated on disobeying the European individualist cultural framework, including the capitalist economy, that undergirds neoliberal globalization’s “destruction of [their] communal worlds” (Escobar Reference Escobar2018, 174). Autonomia, therefore, promotes sustaining “noncapitalist and nonliberal” social relations, forms of organization, values, and principles (179) predicated on “the communal system” of indigenous communities as the relevant unit. In the communal system, the entire system is “controlled by the collectivity” whether economically or politically: its economic assets are collectively owned, although distributed and utilized privately (Patzi Paco 2004, cited in Escobar Reference Escobar2018, 180). In politics, power is not delegated but exercised by the collectivity directly through a variety of forms of authority; the representatives rule according to the mandate “to rule and obey at the same time” (“Mandar obedeciendo”)Footnote ³⁹ first articulated by the Zapatistas.Footnote ³⁹ Indigenous women have also defended the indigenous right to self-determination and actively participated in the indigenous struggle for autonomia alongside their men (Hernandez Reference Hernández2006, 64; Speed Reference Speed2008, 133; Bastian Duarte Reference Bastian Duarte2012, 159; Sierra Reference Sierra2013, 57).Footnote ⁴⁰ Julieta Paredes’s “communitarian feminism” is an example of this (Berenstain et al Reference Berenstain, Dotson, Paredes, Ruíz and Silva2022).

Despite the remarkable example set by the Zapatistas, whom many consider a paradigmatic agent of CSD, decolonial theorists argue that there is “no master plan” nor “privileged actors for decoloniality.” Since different communities have not only been affected differently by coloniality but also have different forms of indigenous collectivist culture, they “must enact decoloniality accordingly.” The Zapatistas’ formulation of autonomia is not the only acceptable interpretation (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 125). Autonomia or CSD is a “connector,” which is a place of “encounters of diverse epistemic principles” for organizing communal life (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2002, 257). Decoloniality’s positive program is therefore “pluriversality” (Mignolo and Walsh Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018, 147). First elucidated in 1995 by the Zapatistas, pluriversality represents a world where “all communities and languages fit, where all steps may walk, where all may have laughter, where all may live the dawn” (EZLN 1996). In other words, pluriversality envisions “a world composed of multiple worlds, the right to be different because we are all equals” (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2002, 263) whereby all cultural, including subaltern, communities in the colonized world are empowered to exercise CSD free from fear of domination and oppression by external hegemons. This is the sense in which autonomia is “a theory and practice of interexistence and interbeing, a design for the pluriverse” (Escobar Reference Escobar2018, 175). Pluriversality as the positive proposal for decoloniality rejects universality understood as “an abstract universal grounded in a mono-logic” that Eurocentric coloniality has hitherto imposed on subaltern communities (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2002, 262). Pluriversality, however, is not opposed to universality per se. Indeed, pluriversality is itself “a universal project” (263) based on “interconnections from a subaltern perspective” (264) beyond the panopticon of Eurocentric coloniality.Footnote ⁴¹

Can FAEJ promote decoloniality’s two programs of delinking from coloniality and pluriversality? Unfortunately, FAEJ’s toolbox cannot promote either. The reason is simply that it is a product of the individualist cultural framework of Eurocentric coloniality. Certainly, it attempts to promote epistemic justice within the colonizer society by enabling members of disadvantaged social groups, such as women, people of color, the disabled, and the LGBTQ, to overcome marginalization. Yet, this does not require overcoming epistemic coloniality of the colonizer society, which is predicated on an individualist epistemic framework broadly construed. Decoloniality’s negative program of disobeying or delinking from individualist epistemic coloniality altogether is not one of FAEJ’s aims. The aim is rather to make the individualist epistemic framework flexible enough to incorporate the individualist aspirations of marginalized individuals. The limitations of FAEJ regarding decoloniality can be demonstrated by examining whether FAEJ’s tools to overcome hermeneutical injustice and contributory injustice – the types of epistemic injustice Mitova considers the most relevant to coloniality – can promote decoloniality’s positive program of pluriversality.

Fricker’s proposal for overcoming hermeneutical injustice is the “corrective” individual virtue of hermeneutical justice to be sensitive to our interlocutor’s difficulty in communicating intelligibly due to a gap in collective hermeneutical resources (Reference Fricker2007, 169). The “collective exercise” of the virtue may lead to the “eradication” of hermeneutical injustice experienced by those suffering negative identity prejudices (174). Let us assume that Fricker’s confidence in this virtue is justified within a single cultural and epistemic community. Colonial epistemic injustice, however, involves two incommensurable epistemic frameworks, one individualist and the other collectivist, and the coercive imposition of the colonizer’s epistemic framework on the colonized, whose culture is incommensurable with it. Since humans are inherently cultural beings whose psychological and behavioral dispositions are constituted by their particular cultural schemata early in life, it may be beyond the normal capacities of humans to develop the requisite sensibilities to recognize and rectify their individualist epistemic biases, unless one is simultaneously a member of the colonized and colonizer communities. Most members of the individualist colonizer society may be committing colonial epistemic injustice by merely being “skilled practitioners of a sociocultural practice” (Ayala Reference Ayala2016, 886). Due to a clash between incommensurable epistemic frameworks involved in colonial epistemic injustice, cultivating the virtue of epistemic justice sensitive enough to detect colonial epistemic injustice, although not impossible, may be too taxing for ordinary people.Footnote ⁴² Hence, the solution to overcoming colonial epistemic injustice that involves incommensurable cultural frameworks cannot be the development of the individual virtue of epistemic justice, as being sensitive to someone’s difficulty in communicating intelligibly due to her collectivist cultural framework may exceed normal epistemic capacities of human beings enculturated in an individualist cultural framework.

Does Dotson’s proposal for overcoming contributory injustice fare better? There are at least three reasons for doubting this, which have been intimated before: first, if humans are inherently cultural beings whose psychological and behavioral dispositions are constituted by their particular cultural schemata early in life, then requiring of them “epistemic reflexivity” to perceive the limits of their colonial epistemic framework may be beyond their normal epistemic capacities, unless one is simultaneously a member of the colonized and colonizer communities. Second, Dotson’s “alternative epistemologies, countermythologies, and hidden transcripts” that may be resources for bringing about third-order changes are subcultures of the individualist culture of the colonizer community.Footnote ⁴³ Hence, the kinds of third-order change that Dotson envisions, should they occur, may change the content of the individualist culture, but would not alter the individualist framework itself.Footnote ⁴⁴ This is not to say that collectivist subcultures are non-existent in Western settler colonial states. So, why can’t Dotson’s third-order changes include pluriversality? Answering this leads to a third reason for my skepticism: recall that Dotson’s “fettered person on the farthest left” in a Platonic cave – as representative of the epistemically marginalized person facing contributory injustice – comes to realize alternative epistemic frameworks through some sort of individual epiphany. As was pointed out, this is simply not how someone becomes aware of and can “articulate” a collectivist epistemic framework incommensurable with the individualist epistemic framework of the dominant society: typically, these abilities are predicated on enculturation in the collectivist epistemic framework shared with other community members and are attained only by bicultural individuals immersed in both cultures. Otherwise, even an “epistemically reflexive” individual may fail to be sensitive towards, let alone be fluent in, epistemic frameworks incommensurable with one’s own.Footnote ⁴⁵ For these reasons, Dotson’s individualist solution to overcoming contributory injustice replicates Fricker’s error of “conceiving of epistemic injustice in individualistic terms” (Doan Reference Doan2018, 11, original emphasis) and cannot promote the project of decoloniality.

7. Conclusion: what does decoloniality require?

After identifying the core of colonial epistemic injustice as the coercive imposition of the colonizer’s individualist epistemic framework on the colonized, whose collectivist culture is incommensurable with it, this paper has argued that FAEJ cannot promote decoloniality because their tools to mitigate testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and contributory injustice are inadequate for rectifying colonial epistemic injustice. The reason is that alleviating these types of epistemic injustice leaves intact the individualist epistemic framework of the colonizer society. Decoloniality as pluriversality envisions “a world composed of multiple worlds, the right to be different because we are all equals” (Mignolo Reference Mignolo2002, 263). This is a world where all cultural, including subaltern and colonized, communities are empowered to shape their culture and community in ways that the majority of members see fit. This is predicated on their ability to exercise their collective right to self-determinationFootnote ⁴⁶ free from domination and oppression by external hegemons. To make this possible, it is not sufficient that individual members of the colonizer society are sympathetic to pluriversality and develop requisite “corrective” virtues; it calls for structural changes. As a first step towards these, the dominant colonizer society must change “the background legal, political, and economic framework of the colonial relationship itself” (Coulthard Reference Coulthard2014, 41). This may seem compatible with what Nancy Fraser calls “transformative remedies” to “correct unjust outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying generative framework” (Fraser Reference Fraser1997/2014, 23). Yet, the underlying generative frameworks amenable to transformation would be legal, political, and economic, but not cultural,Footnote ⁴⁷ as cultural frameworks of the colonizer and the colonized are incommensurable.Footnote ⁴⁸ Decoloniality as pluriversality calls for “an end to the hegemony of any [cultural] system” (Escobar Reference Escobar2018, 181); this requires recognizing the integrity and value of incommensurable cultures, especially collectivist cultures of the colonized, and respecting the collective right of the members to self-determination.Footnote ⁴⁹ Therefore, the most urgent task for overcoming colonial epistemic injustice, I believe, is a radical transformation of the common legal, political, and economic systems, whether at the state or international levels, towards genuine respect for the collective right to self-determination of colonized communities with collectivist cultures.