The Places of Critical Universalism: Postcolonial and Decolonial Approaches in Context

This paper argues that the validity of universalism in the era of global capitalism does not imply a smooth, undifferentiated spatiality, in which particularity is eliminated. The contemporary systemic logic is reproduced in places where the universal and the particular are dialectized. This new dynamic raises the possibility of a critical universalism capable of evading the objection to Eurocentrism. In order to elaborate the conditions of critical universalism, I consider the debates on postcolonial studies, the proposed decolonial option in Latin America and the discussions that it raises.


Introduction
This chapter proposes ac ontemporaryd iscussion of universalism. It is argued that aconcept of 'critical universalism' allows us to understand decisive features of current debates on the legacyo ft he Enlightenment within ad ifferent historical framework defined by globalization.
The critical character of universalism does not refero nlyt oi ts re-composition after aprolongedperiod of rejection by acontext strongly influenced by particularistn otions. Also and abovea ll, it is aimed at showing its derivative,s econdary and reactivec haracter regardingauniversalo rder of domination that precedes it.This order is basedo nt he emergence and prevalence of ac apitalist logic that subsumes the contradictory lines structuringthe global world in which we live today.
The first section elaboratesthe notion of 'places of universalism' in order to show that the re-composition of universalism is not areturn to the old monological universalism. Iw ill not analyze whether the monologism attributedt ou niversalism as established from the Enlightenment is historicallya ccurate (although historical studies have provided ap anorama of differencesa nd nuances far from the flat Eurocentrismw ith which universalism wanted to be identified). Rather,tomoveforward more quickly, Iwill explain why criticaluniversalism cannot be adequatelyd eveloped without consideringi ts 'places'.
The second section shows the peculiarities of critical universalism, such as that it is comprehensible from the Latin Americana nd Latin Americanist receptions of postcolonial and decolonial theories. Ie xplore the tensions inherent in postcolonialism as arejection of Eurocentrism and the non-essentialist quest for acritical conception of universalism. One of the featuresofpostcolonialism as it has been receivedinLatin Americanculturalspaces is to exceed mere copying or translation without modification. The most well-known intellectual movement of the active reception attempts has been the so-called 'decolonial option'.R ather than enter into the studyoft he transformations operated by the decolonial perspective (of which Iwill nonetheless offer some analytical considerations), Iam interested in placing it in the series of an endless tension inherent in the rejection of universalism. That rejection can onlybeamoment of universalism itself. In other words, even beyond the fantasies of an 'own' thought, emancipated from Eurocentric intellectual oppression, the issues and problems presented by the decolonial option reveal the demands of ac ritical universalism. Ab rief visit to the considerations of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui will show that the debate is far from exhausted.
In the conclusion, Is uggest whyt he understanding of universalism in its 'places' requires bothaphilosophical approach that can conceive its logic (not accessibleo nlye mpiricallyo rs cientifically) and ah istoricalr econstructioni. e., ah istoriographical genealogy.

The places of universalism
Formanydecades, at least in this broad and ambiguous cultural spacecalled the West,universalism has been rejected. The re-evaluation of 'difference' or 'particularity',especiallyinthe postmodernist moment of thought,led to ablurringof positive evaluations of universalism. Universalism was seen as the more or less immediate expression of aprocessofdomination of the Other; of the subjugation of otherness to the Same.
It is not the aim of this discussion to subject to criticism this attribution to all universalism of an imperial and monological destiny. While some philosophies of history were constructed accordingtounilinealand evolutionary patterns, resultingi na ni ndisputable normativity that consecratedapath to the best without alternatives, it is equallyt rue that othera pproaches revised the oppressive pretensions evident in such historical-philosophical narratives. What is important is that the monological and colonial/imperial imagew as the one that governed, by opposition, the vindication of the particular before the oppression of the universal.
During the last quarter of the twentieth century,p articularism claimed the rights of aweakcritical thinking-a pensiero debole: first,thanks to the moderate relativism of culturalist and structuralist theoriese speciallya ctive after the second post-war period; then, since the late 1960s, in an ontological fragmentarism deployed by poststructuralism, in which the minor and the different hold the moment of validity.
The postmodern moment of thoughtc ontained the main themes against a universalism stripped of anyemancipatory aspiration and identifiedwith ah idden or manifest oppressive will. Postmodern slogans are well known and it is unnecessary to reiterate their main topics. Instead, Iwant to recover the postmodernist challengeo ft he whole, or of totality.I ndeed, the main objection against the totality in thatorder of reasons consists in attributing to it asystematic connection with the oppression of the totality on the parts.
Of course, it is possibletosubmit to the sieveoflogical consistency the postmodernstatement of particularity,and to show how it is possible onlyincontradistinction to ar egretted totality.I no ther words, how differencea nd 'the other' are unthinkable without the shadowofwholeness.This was perceptible from the beginning in Jean-François Lyotard'sbook on ThePostmodern Condition (1979), a 'condition' thathappened to the one wherethe modern condition had prevailed. It was observed on numerous occasions thatthe postmodern rejectionoftotality and its solidary terms (Sense, History,Evolution) implied aphilosophyofhistory.
The theoretical weakness of postmodernismt hen lies in the absenceo fa theory of its own possibility,s ince particularism leads to ar elativism by which both the aspirations of modernity and thoseofpostmodernism are undermined. However,l ogical inconsistencyd oes not invalidatet he discursive and cultural existenceo fp ostmodernism.
It wasF redric Jameson (1991) who best placed its reality and its historical reason. By postulating it as "the culturall ogic of late capitalism," Jameson allowed us to represent the true aspects and false aspectsofpostmodernismwithin an enriched explanatory framework. Postmodernism thus ceased to be amistake or adeclineinradical relativism to constituteamoment of the expansion of capitalism in its most novel phase.
With globalization, theoretical 'actuality' reaches an ew challengeb ecause we can understand, in the face of the failure of the analytical capacities provided by postmodernism to account for what is happening,the need for ar e-composition of an understanding to which totality and particularity do not constitutean irreducible opposition.
My thesis is that postmodernism prevents the development of an active and comprehensive thinkingo ng lobalization. This is certainlyn ot the time to at-tempt adescription, however succinct,ofwhat globalization is, but Ioffer some general features to follow in my argument.
Iunderstand by globalization amulti-dimensionalhistorical process of global interconnection mediated by the world market.I nastricter sense, it is the world market that constitutes globalization. It is not by chance thatglobalization has attained ac learer intelligibility aftert he collapse of the Soviet Union and China'sdefinitive passageinto the market economy: globalization was made possible by the victory of the capitalist market in expandingtofullycover the globe. Idonot think that the so-called 'reallyexistingsocialism' (Kurz, 1994) freed itself from the internal pressures of the capitalistm arket, but Iwant to highlight that since the events of 1989 -91,the continuous development of the mercantile dynamic has advanced by leaps and bounds. Thisdynamic is not onlyeconomic. It is crucial to neutralise anye conomic reductionism.
Globalization is also internallyi nterwoven between its economic aspects, culturaldimensions, communications and wars, with political and migratory expressions.T he common thread, as Ih avem entioned, is mercantile mediation. But if such mediation is possible, it is due to the reproduction of ag lobal subject,w ithout will or consciousness-ap urelya utomatic subject, which is what Marx called 'the logic of capital'.
It is importantt on ote that the logic of capital is not onlyeconomic, and in that sense the concept of globalization is enriching because it fare xceeds the economicist reduction of capital. As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out (although in his time he did it in debate with the economism of 'historical materialism'), there are 'capitals' in other orders,s uch as social and cultural. Bourdieu (1986) perceived, in his sociological and anthropological inquiries, the flexibility of ac apitalist logic thatl ong agoe xceeded the competition for monetary accumulation.
In his analysis of postmodernism, Jameson pointst oa nother trait,l ater taken up in an anti-dialectical approach by authors such as Antonio Negri, who modifies the notion of Fordist society in the expansive period of capitalism (Negri and Hardt, 2000): the flexibilityand structured destructuring of capitalist production, wheretotality and part,identity and difference, are no longer incompatible.The social decomposition by the end of full employment,the fracture of identities, the flows of people and goods, the mixtures of subjects and the defensive reactions to the loss of as table sense of reality form av ery different experience than the one forgedduringthe nineteenth centuryand the first two thirds of the twentieth century.T hat is preciselyw hat postmodernismc annot think: that al ogic of domination is particularist and totalist at the same time. It deprivesi tself of something more than its formalist rejection of totality:i tr ests on amistaken or,rather,a ntiquated social theory,f or it supposest he determin-istic framework of Fordist capitalism as the antithesis of ar adicallyf ragmented and disconnected actuality.Onthe other hand, the intellectual challengebehind the crisis of the alternativesp osed to capitalism in the twentieth century is to think that the complexity and globality of the planet follow al ogic that encompasses them, and that makes their contradictions the engine of their conflictive growth.
Capitalist globalization replaces in new terms the denouncedu niversalism. If it is true that,asAlain Badiou (2003) proposed in his interpretation of the origins of universalism at ac ertain point in Christianity,ah istory of universalism can be traced in the longue durée,i ti sadiscontinuous history.What is interesting to note here is that at the end of the twentieth century we experienced the fall of the universalism proper to the 'bourgeois world' thate mergeda round 1800 in much of the world, with very different historicalf igures.The emergence of 'the rights of man',with its lights and shadows, was an expression of that universalism thatw as rational and emancipatory.
The present moment of universalism is not merelyacontinuation of its modern episode.I ti sc ertainlyhistoricallylinked to it,but not its immediate derivation. If, on the one hand,t he universalism raised by globalization is incomprehensible without the modern erao ft he 'bourgeois world',o nt he other hand it constitutes anovel phase. In order for the transition to be not arbitrary,itshould be considered as as elf-transformation of capital in its unsurpassed crisis that has draggedo ns ince the mid-1970sa nd the factualn ovelty of its triumph over bureaucratic socialism.
The novelty of the universalism of the twenty-first centuryg lobal order (at least in what we can see in its initial stages) lies in its reconversion of the national constitution of the real that prevailed duringt he nationalist framework of world-market configuration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It should be made clear that while nationalisms affirmed the substantive and non-transferable character of each national experience,t he state-based nation was am odern invention.
Today, it is not that national boundaries have ceased to exist,o rt hat they lack ad ecisive role in the construction of economic-social and political-cultural systems. It happens thatt hey are organized differentlyi nthec oncert of global flows of greater vigour.How?T oclarify this is the task of, to put it in Foucault's terms,a no ntology of our actuality ( Foucault,1984).
It is preciselyh ere thatt he question of universalism is presented as an impulse of thought.I rreducible to the alreadyo bsolete theoretical coordinateso f postmodernism, an ontology of the present time requires an account of the decisive tendencies of globalization and its systemic orientations. The aspect of these tendencies that Ih avep roposed to analyze is the situation of auniversalism that requires to be conceivedo fa sachapter of globalization.
To movet ot he more 'localized' phase of my argument,Iwill summarize in just af ew lines (for reasons of space) why, in my opinion, the thematization of universalism as it is todayisstill possibletoelucidatethrough areinterpretation of Marx'sc ritical legacy.
It is beyond dispute thatt he capitalists tructure studied by Marx in Capital has as an empirical referenceahistoricallyc onstituted logic. This generates a real problem in the reconstruction of the validity or relevance of the Marxist critique of capital as an alienated subject when its social condition has changed. Indeed, Marx'sc apitalism is very close to its initial formations among which, for example, cartelization is in its infancy.The 'intervening' state plays amarginal role compared to the one it willh avei nt he next century.
Again, summing up an idea thatw ould merit further development,Iargue that the logic of the expanded reproduction of capital is still valid in the epoch of globalization-or more precisely, by its extension to ag eopolitical order different from that in forceinMarx'stime, that the logic of capital endures its transformation. The concept of its re-composition is the metamorphosis and not the radical rupture towards apostcapitalistr eality.Capital does not entail a specificallyeconomic reason in its monetary empirical figure, but the generation of 'the social as such',with its manyfacets,includingthe seemingly moresubtle and immaterial.
The universality of capital preserves the political-cultural universalities that have usually been considered by political philosophya nd by philosophy tout court. Democracy as an empty place of power that must be endorsed periodically by the citizens' vote as separate atoms,the constitution of individuals as subjects of rights and the formationofapublic sphere in unlimited expansion are among other terms of the universality thathas been maintained, despite the fact thatthe advance of global capitalism has alsob een accompanied by ap rivatizingt endency.
The devaluation of mass politics, the particularization of communication through the Internet,t he multiplication of media and networks that mediate even sexual and affective relations, transform the ideals of universality thati n the eighteenth century had as trongi mprint provided by Antiquity.T here are no exemplary models for conceiving contemporary universality.Studies of globalization have convincingly shown that this process is not as implification of what was once complex. On the contrary,i ng lobalization the success of the globalizingdynamic comes from its ability to mutate in the particular and return to the global by incorporating,ormetabolizing, the particularity as asingularity of the globallyv alid.
Ir eturn to what Ih ad begun to unfold in regard to the exhaustion of postmodernism. The theoretical and philosophical challenges of our daycan no longertake refuge in the seemingly radical agenda of the proliferationofdifference, nor can they be addressed naively now that the differenceh as been shown as incorporable to the logic of self-valorization (aesthetic, political, economic, geopolitical)o fc apital. Hencei ti su nfeasible to renounceu niversalism in order to define as iteo fr esistancei nt he particular.I ti si mportant,r ather,tor ethinka n opposition that mayh aveb een inadequatelye lucidated.
Once the universal and the particulara re dialectized by globalization, the universal is no longer onlyu nique, but multiple. In his discussion of universalism, from which Ihaveadopted the notion of 'critical universalism',Etienne Balibar (2012)continues to analyse the pluralization of universalism as adistancing from self-reproduction of the same. Balibar defends the idea of the passagefrom a universum to a multiversum. However,this distance is obscured by the very singular materiality of global capitalism, where 'glocalities' are deployed. It is here that the supposedlyr adical alternativeso ft he partial or peculiar, devalued by assuming an old idea of social domination, are wrecked: they defend the particular as aspace of resistancewhen that same particularity is no longer confronted with globality,b ut is insteadp roducedf or this and in this.
The universality of capital continues to provide the social fabric of theoretical, juridical, philosophical and conceptual universalisms,but modulates them accordingtothe 'places' of the universal. In this sense, the critical promise of the 'place of culture' proposed by Homi Bhabha (1994) is 'put' and neutralized by the logic of capital, which makes the localization of cultureaninput of its valorization.
The universalism that for twoc enturies, from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century,foundedits emancipatory promises in the removal of the particulara saplace of tradition, of hierarchies and continuities of the past, is todayr evealed as possibleo nlya saproduct of the contradictions of the universald omination of capital. The critical universalism that Iw ant to support in this text is not ar egulative ideal nor the vindication of an essence mutilated by globalization, but the radicalization of some perspectivese nabled by the same global domination of capital.
The particularity can not be, in this conceptual context,adefensive or evasive refuge,because it is crossed by auniversality that incorporatesinto its own logic that which in previous centuries appeared as the greatest danger: the positivity,the irreducible. In globalization thereare no positivities that threaten the capitalist empire. However,that empire is not completelyself-regulated. The contradictions of globalization do not emerge from acollision between the universal and the particular,but from the wayofp lacing itself, in its various places,with its consequent specificities, in the materiality of situated universality.
Ileave here the broader theoretical considerations to interpolateatransition towards what Ipropose to elaborate in the following section: the definitionofa critical theory of globalization. The re-composition of the relation between universalism and particularisma samoment of globalization itself enables 'negative' interstices that emerge on the very contradictions of the tension inherent in the global capital and defined in its 'places'.These places constitute 'the subjects' in the discussion that Ih aveb een carryingo ut.
Ashortcoming of the notions presented so far is that they lack subjectivities, wills and traditions, knowledge and desires,f eelingsa nd politics, as well as emotional and cultural orientations.Thisi ntroduces the possiblep laces of the universalized in their contexts. Todayi ts eems unworkable to rethink universalism withouti ts 'places'.

Situated receptions of postcolonial and decolonial "theories"
The efficacy of the places of universalism must be evaluated in different situations. HereIwill concentrate on the places that are most familiar to me, relative to the 'south' and especiallyt ot hat southern complex spacec alled Latin America. First,h owever,Ineed to look at Indian postcolonial studies.
The fundamentallyh istorical researchi dentifiedw ith postcolonial studies had aG ramscian beginning,a nd soon incorporatedF oucaultian and Derridian perspectives. The essence of theirh istoriographical profile did not reside in these intellectual influences but in the conviction thatmaterials from Indian colonial and postcolonial history required particular theoretical and methodological precaution. European historiographical schools werei nadequate for problems arising in India after the Independence of 1947a nd its historical background.
The postcolonial studies approach, as earlya st he early1 980s, prioritized the 'subaltern classes',a nd theire xperiences and resistances, both in the colonial period and in the nationalist state-buildingprocess of anation. The peasantry,the communities and workingclass making werethe issues of theirhistorical accounts. Aspecificity of postcolonial studies layinthe theoretical sensitivity of their concepts and procedures, which called into question the seemingly universal historiographical traditions of the West. By the early1 990s postcolonial studies became a 'postcolonial theory' that had repercussions even on the faculties of the universities of humanities and social sciencesoft he Global North. With this theoretical legitimacy (i. e., universal validation), it entered in the spectrumo fL atin American conceptual options, to the point that a 'Latin AmericanS ubaltern Studies group' brieflyemerged(Latin AmericanP ostcolonial Studies Group, 1993). After af oundational manifesto, these postcolonial studies vanished after producing some works,p erhaps the most relevant of which is the Peasanta nd nation by Florence Mallon (1995).
The deferred translation effect of the subaltern studies came from the Latin Americanand Latin Americanist reinterpretations known todayasthe 'decolonial option',with authors such as Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano, Edgardo Lander,E nrique Dussel and Catherine Walsh. Arturo Escobar (2002) organized the clearest exposition of the project of ac ritique of coloniality,o ne aspect of which is particularlyrelevant for what Iamdiscussing here: the epistemological dimension.
The decolonial option calls for ahistory of thought,organized chronologically and politically,prior to thatoutlined by postcolonial studies. It argues that the paradigm of universal reason was constituted by anon-rational subject in America, from 1492:the local cultures reducedt ot he incomprehensible or in need of acculturation. The Western subject is then the product of ac olonial operation that has lasted for centuries and somehow continues today. In fact,f or Mignolo (2005) the decolonial option implies arewritingofthe Frankurtian critical theory beyond its European-universalist cleavages.
The Bolivian intellectual Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, who playedaprominent role in the first diffusion of postcolonial studies in Latin America (Barragán and Rivera Cusicanqui, 1997), has objected to the definition of anew decolonial theory generated and legitimized from the academicplaces of the Global North.
The most interesting aspect of Rivera Cusicanqui'sa pproach, which is connected with some precisions of the decolonial option (despite her political-academic objections to auniversity hegemonythat speaks for subordinate subjects) is thati td oes not resulti naparticularistic variant.A si np ostcolonial studies, and with the conceptual emphasis of DipeshC hakrabarty (2000), it is by no means aquestion of opposing an uncontaminated essence to Eurocentric universalism. Rather,i ti sabout negotiating the relevant aspects of universalism in its liberatings trands (for example through the very 'Western' demand for 'rights', autonomous communities,w omen'sa gency,e tc.), with local implementations that involvel ong and located traditions of social power building.The centrality of the Bolivian case referred to in citing the above-mentioned author is important because it not onlye xceeds the nationalist argument,but alsop uts into debate the multiple levels, scales and temporalities of global places.Inthat sense, it anticipates issuest hat will have ah ugep resencei nt he coming.
ForR iveraC usicanqui, modernity is present in the same experience of the 'indigenous world',e veni fi ti sn ot within av ision of linear or teleological history.What happens to the universalism inherited from the French Revolution and the Enlightenment?HereIwould like to cite some passages from Rivera Cusicanqui: Today, the rhetoric of equality and citizenship becomes acaricaturethat conceals tacit political and culturalp rivileges, notions of common sense that makei nconsistencyt olerable and allow the reproducing of structures of Colonial oppression. (2010,p .5 6-57).
In Rivera Cusicanqui'sview,the Bolivian, liberal, populist,postmodern and even postcolonial elites share this rhetoric. From abroad multiculturalism, the notion of the indigenous people as 'minorities' is imposed, in an approach that domesticates and displaces the pachakuti,the radical change. Thus, the indigenous demands of 'the issues of modernity' (las lides de la modernidad)are excluded and they are confined as peculiarities and stereotypes close to the 'noble savage'. They are deprivedoftheir statusasmajorities and of the possibilityofachieving a 'state effect' (2010,p.60), i. e., they continue to be 'represented'.They are subordinated as a 'multicultural adornment of neoliberalism' (2010,p .5 9). Rivera Cusicanqui distinguishes between the 'modernizingd iscourse' of the elites and the variegatedmodernity of indigenous productive activities. Decolonial scholars then reiterate in the epistemologicalfield the 'internal colonialism' that subalternizes indigenous knowledge and especiallypractices.I tisanew colonization in the speakingand knowing by others that they are without voice and whose practices are not effective nor produce reality.
The Aymarat erm ch'xi means the mixed, variegated in the sense elaborated by the Marxist sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado.R iveraC usicanqui clarifies that, "it raises the parallel coexistence of multiple culturald ifferencest hat do not merge,b ut antagonize or complement each other" (2010,p .7 0). It moves away from the masculine notions of identity that are hardly accessible to the tejido (fabric) thatcharacterizes the attitude of the women of the communities.For Rivera Cusicanqui, the genre is introduced as adifference of the manifold within the variegatedm odernity to neutralise the temptation of identity.R ather than a counter-oranti-modernity,itwould be aquestion of building amodernity of the tejido, "more organic and self-sufficient" than that drivenbyelites with Western categories.
Finally, Rivera Cusicanqui proposes another geopolitics of knowledge than that suggested by the decolonial option.She aims for asouth-south dialogue in-stead of the hierarchical and neocolonial north-south connection, of which the aforementioned option would be am asked form.
These debates,outlinedhere, suggest that contemporary elaborations are situated within an order of reasons where the pure difference has been displaced by ar ecomposition of the question for universalism in mixture with the particular.O nce all access to an authentic and uncontaminated nucleus is no longer possible, the theoretical conceptions in the times of globalization are oriented towards what Ic all ac ritical universalism.
It is an analytic of the actuality underpinning the recognition of the mercantile framework and the complexity of the contradictions that inhabit it,wherethe values of the Enlightenment are not absolutelydenied. The question is not about the stageo fm odernization at which ag iven national state or community finds itself, but about how they are settled in aconcrete situation, with their histories, traditions and conflicts;u niversal themess uch as citizenship,r ecognition or rights, become unthinkable without their places and subjects. Ah istoriographical sensitivity,f reed from the unifying and evolutionary trends of an ationalist historical narrative,i st hen required to grasp the genealogies of actuality.

Conclusion
With globalization, we witness the re-emergence of universalism, but not in terms of arestoration of its previous figures.Universalism returns as aproblem, and in critical terms,a sa na spect of the social domination that prevails in the new globalo rder.C ritical universalism is characterized not by the unlimited unity of aclear and distinct set of principles, but by the wayinwhich global hegemonyhappens in local terms,overcoming an opposition between the universal and the particular.
This re-composition thatIcall acritical universalism does not have ageneral formula. It requires an insertion of incorporated local histories (not without antagonisms) into an indisputable integration of the globe. This integration is not that of an absolute spirit that 'posits' its particular features as moments of upward evolution, but of one that posits them as crises, tensions, projects and alternatives. These are not derivedf rom an uncontaminated alterity,b ut from the very contradictions of the global process thatm ust deal infinitelyw ith the subjects, situations and impossibilities immanent to ag lobalization without command.
This means that viable universalism is not the product of an authentic meaning.I ti st he internal and troubled reaction of the possibilitiess timulated by a blind and generalized universality that we call globalization; au niversality that is incomprehensible without ac onception of the 'new spirit of capitalism'. In anycase, it arises as aset of reactions situated with respect to adominantuniversalt hat finds its general explanatory keyi nt he logic of capital-one which still finds in the mature approach of Marx its most convincing basic explanation.
Critical universalism is not then the mere external repulsion of aglobal domination structured in the flexible flows of capitalism, but the reverse of such flows. Or,m ore accurately, it is the set of dilemmast hatt he same domain generatesi ni ts contradictory dynamics. It opens the spacef or ar econsideration of emancipatory possibilitiesw ithin ac ritical universalism that demands philosophical reflections,b ut also inquiries of the tejidos,i nw hich local histories are linked to the new global history that dominatesuniversallythe contemporary experience.