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Religion Without Redemption
Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America
Luis Martínez Andrade
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eBook - ePub
Religion Without Redemption
Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America
Luis Martínez Andrade
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About This Book
Latin America has been a place of radical political inspiration providing an alternative to the neoliberal model. Religion without Redemption looks at the sociology of religion, political philosophy and the history of ideas of the continent, in an attempt to show how Western understanding fails to come close to a correct analysis of how and why political and economic characteristics work as they do. It focuses on how the centrality of religion for the people of Latin America has influenced how they interact with the changes in the modern economic system. Capitalism has taken on religious characteristics: it has sacred places of worship, such as the shopping mall, as well as its own prophets. This book explains how this form of 'cultural religion' accompanies many aspects of life in a contradictory manner: not only does it fulfil the role of legitimating oppression, it also can be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling thus a subversive side to the status quo. Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory into the 21st century, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.
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Part One
Entelechies and Cathedrals
1
Civilising Paradigms and Colonial Atavisms: Power and Social Sciences
The sixteenth century shaped not only the identity of what would later become Latin America but also laid the basis for the emergence of the capitalist world-system (Wallerstein, 1999), the emergence of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and the advent of modernity (Dussel, 1994). These events profoundly influenced the endogenous and exogenous dynamics of different societies and human groups. In the late fifteenth century, and at the dawn of the sixteenth century, such transcendental phenomena were generated in everyday life around the world (Lebenswelt). The year 1492 represents a foundational moment in the collective imaginary of modern Western subjectivity, as it involved not only the concealment of the Other but also the pragmatic and specific denial of what is considered to be different (Dussel, 1994). Capitalism, modernity and coloniality arise simultaneously. The analysis – diachronic or synchronic – of the socio-historical form1 of one of these phenomena should not unravel the study of the civilisation triad. Coloniality, modernity and capitalism are intertwined phenomena that have shaped different relations of domination; various control mechanisms and multiple patterns of exploitation in favour of elite interests.
Throughout Latin American history, the phenomenon of colonialism has shown similar characteristics (domination, racism, humiliation, imposition and violence) with different paradigmatic nuances (Hispanisation, Eurocentrism, the American Way of Life). In this sense, we could say that colonialism is a geopolitically determined socio-historical form. The process of coloniality disrupts all levels of social reality, that is, its teleological dynamics can be seen in the field of culture, epistemology, politics, religion, education, etc.2 Therefore, the phenomenon of colonialism is embedded in various projects undertaken by the hegemonic dominant classes. The commodification of social life and the fetishisation of power need to be studied from a critical, negative outlook, since reality must be conceived as perpetual motion, constant disruptions and continuous explosions. Understanding (Verstehen) and explaining (Erklären)3 society implies recognising its conflicting and contradictory nature.
From the epistemic colonial difference4 – which is where we stand – we will analyse critically the horizons of civilising paradigms in Latin America. It is necessary to insist, however, first, that this work focuses on the process of neo-colonialism in Latin America. In this sense, we will not develop a historiographical argument but a socio-historical deconstruction of the colonial/modern/capitalist form. Second, it is evident that social relations are not homogeneous, much less static. We can, however, identify some common features (domination, resistance, struggle, conflict, etc.) that characterise Latin American societies5 as colonised societies. Finally, we argue that it is not reality that must conform to the theories, concepts or categories. On the contrary, the analytical tools used to perform critical analysis of the specific social form need to be appropriate.
Ego Conquiro and Modern Subjectivity
The year 1492 is significant in the formation of modern Western subjectivity since it marks the founding moment for what would evolve into its concrete symbolic conscience. On 6 January of that year, Boabdil (Muhammad XII) surrendered in Granada. On 15 February, Torquemada announced his project to commence the expulsion of the Jews from the peninsula. On 17 April, there was the signing of the Santa Fe Accords and on 31 July, the Jews began to leave Castile and Aragon by decree. On 12 October of that same year, there was an ‘encounter’ between two worlds that had previously been disconnected commercially and ideologically. It was against this backdrop, and from the socio-political and cultural upheaval of the Iberian world, that there arose myths of an inquisatorial, prophetic and apocalyptic modernity.
The ‘discovery’ of America is a myth constructed by a European narrative. The legend of the three ships,6 which sailed from the Canary Islands on 8 September 1492 led by one Genovese man, serves as an ideological substratum of a Western historiographical narrative. To affirm that Europeans were the first to reach the ‘New World’ only helps to consolidate what has been termed ‘one unique view of history’ (Benjamin, 1969). By this, with Walter Benjamin (2001), we are referring to an idea that stands alone in history, isolated from events unfolding around it; an event that is a representation of the past constructed by the dominant groups and classes of the time. The ‘discovery’ of America by Europeans was little more than recognition of cartographies that had already been drawn up. Enrique Dussel (1994) noted that the world map of Heinrich Hammer (also known as Henricus Martellus) had similarly revealed the presence of our continent as early as 1489.
Pomeranz (2004), Mignolo (2003) and Dussel (2004) have brought to the fore a number of political, economic and social factors that shaped Columbus’ adventure. It is worthy of note that, at the time, the mare nostrum was not known as the commercial ‘centre’ of the ‘inter-regional market’; at the time, the leading centre of trade was located between the East China Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Importantly, Europe needed China and, as Walter Mignolo (2001: 22) pointed out: ‘the Atlantic route emerges as a possibility following the Ottoman blockade of the route from China and India’. The role of China is critical to understanding Columbus and the formation of the world-system. Menzies (2003) and Dussel (2004) discuss how, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the Chinese had circumnavigated the planet. However, China abandoned its maritime domain in 1424 following a decision taken by the Ming emperors (1368–1644). This undoubtedly led to a vacuum of power and the growth of commercial shipping in the ‘market-world’, a fact that later benefited Europe in its endeavours. The measure taken by the empire excluded any possibility of China monopolising the Atlantic.
China was the ‘centre’ of the Euro-Afro-Asian market, and its technological, economic and military supremacy ensured that it was exempt from the need to reach across the sea; unlike the case in Europe.7 It was a simple commercial imperative for the Europeans to find a path to the East and, by relentlessly pursuing trade routes, European sailors inevitably came across a different continent, making the Atlantic theirs.
Walter Mignolo (2001) argues that the emergence of the Atlantic circuit in the sixteenth century had, among other things, two main consequences. It connected the trade circuit of Anahuac with that of Tawantinsuyu and, at the same time, connected them to the Western world market. The outcome was thus the genesis of a world-system. For Wallerstein (1999), the world-system was borne out of the sixteenth century with its inter-connecting world markets. The transatlantic perspective presented by Wallerstein is crucial to understanding the emergence of capitalism – and its dynamics – on a global scale. Seized by Spain and Portugal, hegemony over the Atlantic bestowed resources (such as labour and metal) upon Europe, contributing to the rise of the West. Yet, contrary to Wallerstein (1991), Dussel (2004) argues that hegemony over the Atlantic did not imply the centrality of Europe in the world-system, instead maintaining that it was not until the British Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century that this would come to fruition.
The emergence of the Atlantic route was fundamental to the origin of the world-system as it synchronised world markets that were previously disconnected. The genesis of the world-system was simultaneously the advent of the first colonial panorama, which involved the subjection of Indigenous forced labour. In a sense, the world-system was built on a geopolitically determined ‘racial division of labour’ (Quijano, 2001). Hence, we now make reference to a modern/colonial world-system. Enrique Dussel (1993) maintains that modernity is intimately linked to colonisation processes in Latin America and the Caribbean. For him, modernity is not an exclusively intra-European phenomenon8 and constitutes a relation to an Otherness denied, that of the (Cemanahuac) Indigenous world.
Modern subjectivity was established by the Conquest of America, since Europe had no effective self-consciousness of superiority prior to 1492. Europe demonstrated an awareness of the economic, intellectual and political superiority of the Muslim, Chinese and Ottoman worlds. Modern subjectivity is marked by violence that the Spanish imposed upon Indigenous peoples. The statement ‘God is in heaven, the King is far away, I am in command’, is a significant reflection of the founding moment of the modern Western ego. The ego conquiro (I conquer) precedes ego cogito (I think) (Dussel, 2013) – by nearly a century (and proposed by Descartes in 1636), therefore making it a ‘critical’ moment in awareness of Western superiority as it is the first sign of Europe’s will for power. The ratio as an instrument of domination, exclusion and suppression comprised a new ontology after 1492.
For Enrique Dussel, modernity holds certain ambivalence, with elements constantly in tension. While one is linked to the process of emancipation, that is, escaping the state of human immaturity, the other refers to the justification of an irrational praxis of violence.9 In this sense, the libertarian core ratio is accompanied by a constant drive towards the immolation of a different Otherness. From its birth, modernity perpetuated a constitutive ritual sacrifice to build the modern Western subjectivity. It is a liturgy that has been repeated over the past five centuries and one that has had immeasurable victims. Reason, progress and development stand as the pillars of colonial logos, with the messianic figure of modernity concealing the predator’s cruel and bloody face.
The crimes carried out by the ego conquiro of modern Western subjectivity should not be omitted in one single act of liberating deconstruction, as this would only strengthen the impunity of existing historico-cultural colonial discourses. Epistemic vigilance – to use a term employed by Bourdieu (2002b) – may not, in fact, be separated from memory; that is, beyond the pipe dream of ‘axiological neutrality’, we must recognise those interests involved in the configuration of social spaces across time.
Coloniality of Power and the World-System
Immanuel Wallerstein coined the term modern world-system in order to depict the formation and composition of capitalist dynamics globally. Employing a transatlantic perspective, and influenced naturally by dependency theory, Wallerstein developed original analytic categories which allowed him to understand-explain the logic of capital.
Wallerstein maintains that, from its origins in the sixteenth century, the world-system produced structural inequalities among trading regions, starting with the extraction of resources in the Americas, allowing for the establishment and growth of unequal relations. In this sense, Latin America constituted Europe’s first periphery. We should bear in mind, nevertheless, that the centrality of Europe in the world-system does not congeal until the eighteenth century (Dussel, 2004).
For Latin America and the Caribbean, the emergence of the modern world-system marked the advent of the first colonial horizons. Portuguese-Spanish domination created the conditions for what Aníbal Quijano describes as the coloniality of power. In fact, world-system and coloniality of power are collaterally synchronic. The pattern of domination between the colonisers and the colonised was organised on the principle of ‘race’.10 The practical consequences of the categorisations were not only the dispossession of peoples from their lands but also the dispossession of identities, that is, Aztecas, Incas, Mayas, Araucanos, Aymaras and so on became Indians. The coloniality of power ran parallel to the establishment of a new cognitive pattern. The evangelisation of Indigenous peoples resulted not only in the penetration of their imaginary ethical-mythical core but also the reconfiguration of their epistemologies.
To this Aníbal Quijano (2000) adds that: ‘America, modernity and capitalism were all born on the same day.’ This reiterates that the imposition of the first colonial panorama is coeval with the formation of sixteenth-century Spanish America. The emergence of historical capitalism, therefore, cannot be divorced from the colonial spectre of Latin America and the explosions of constellations which imply ruptures of power.
The idea of race, Quijano (1998) tells us, had been formed during the wars of ‘Reconquest’ on the Iberian peninsula, given that in those wars the Christians of the Counter-Reformation amalgamated in their perception religious differences with those of phenotypes. How else does one explain the requiring of Certificates of Blood Purity, which the victors established for the Muslims and Jews? The concept of race was born with America, modernity and the (modern) world-system, and appears as the centrepiece of social and cultural relations founded upon biological differences.
With the creation of racial classifications came the practices of social domination, control and socio-ethnic exploitation. The fateful conditions of labour and slavery exterminated the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean11 almost entirely and undermined considerably the native populations of the continent. For this reason, the Crown of Castile decided to move from slavery to servitude, as its most prized possession – the Indigenous workforce – were in danger of extinction. The Spaniards invented new forms of forced labour, like the encomienda, which became a mode of production within capitalism.12 In fact, ‘from this mode a systematic racial division of labour was imposed’ (Quijano, 2000: 204).
The racial organisation of labour was being articulated in the dynamics of capital. The rate of Indigenous mortality brought the Europeans to import a workforce through the slave trade.13 The workforce (of Indigenous and Black populations), objectified in the products that were exported to European markets, and therefore inscribed into world-system logic, did not earn salaries. Nevertheless, it is known that the Spaniards and Portuguese (the dominant races) were the judges of that right, and the racially differentiated social pyramid was born.
The coloniality of power, as a pattern of domination-exploitation, was configured upon a racial organisation of labour. In this sense, starting from the sixteenth century, race/labour founded not only asymmetric but also somatically differentiated social relations.14 According to Katzew (2004), the depictions of castes are particularly exemplary, as these participate in the construction of racial identities linked to social stratification through visual representation. For Katzew, the paintings of castes suggest a basic principle: White or Spanish blood implied a degree of civilisation, while Black blood expressed backwardness and depravity. It is important to keep these notations in mind, as they are still part-and-parcel of the Latin American imaginary.
The world-system and the coloniality of power are coeval in the formation of modern subjectivity, given that its hegemonic logos is mediated by social relations of control, domination and exploitation. The coloniality of power, as a critical concept, considers historic-structural dependency and the specific characteristics of Latin America. The uniqueness of original peoples was violently subjected to Western absolute15 universality. Throughout this process of identification and classification, Indigenous people never ceased to struggle16 and resistance to colonialism certainly remained constant. Nevertheless, since the Conquest of the Americas, a new power relationship has been implemented, not only socially but at an epistemic level as well.
Edgardo Lander (2000) points out that it was through the separations or partitioning of reality that Western epistemology came into being. The rupture between subject and object is correlated to the Hellenic-Christian17 separation between God, man and nature. In this sense, the colonisers-evangelisers sha...