Beyond Conservatism and Radicalism? A Decolonial Glimpse into the Post-truth World

Abstract

Decolonial critique of modernity/coloniality emerged at the end of the Cold war when the happy image of globalization was launched as the only option left for the humanity. Decolonial thought instead came up with the idea of decoloniality as an alternative possible world with a specific epistemology, ethics and politics. This decolonial model has gradually become attractive worldwide against the failure of the positive phase of neoliberal globalization epitomized in the Covid-19 crisis. The binaries of conservatism and radicalism as well as right and left, democracy and authoritarianism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism are outdated products of the previous model of knowledge unable to describe the present social and political reality in which conservatism easily becomes radical and calling for change, whereas yesterday's radicals turn into supporters of status-quo who are nostalgic of the past. The present shift from neoliberal globalism to right-wing nationalism and populism essentially leaves the global coloniality intact and multiplies the number of the new dispensable defutured lives - human and other. It also adds additional angles of discrimination and dehumanization such as technological coloniality. Possible venues for decolonial re-existence are linked with relationality, refusal to compete for a better place in modernity or a tag of a victim, and working for "deep coalitions”, thus attempting to give the world back its future dimension. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021.