Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is one of the leading figures in contemporary Latin American decolonial thought. She strongly critiques the hegemony of Western epistemology and the political economy of knowledge embedded in academia, as well as Western academic postcolonialism. In contrast, she posits local forms of knowledge based on the experiences and cosmovisions of Indigenous Bolivians. From the perspective of the colonized, history loses its linear character, which is based on the culturally dominant Western narrative. In line with native understandings of space-time, history is seen as cyclical, marked by various forms of (neo)colonial oppression and resistance. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s vision of anti-colonial struggle connects Indigenous experience with the practices of early 20th-century Bolivian anarcho-syndicalists. This involves creating and linking subversive, autonomous micro-spaces within which a wide range of shared everyday practices can be transformed into instruments of political emancipation. Cusicanqui refers to the knowledge emerging from this anti-systemic everyday as low-intensity theory. This text examines Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s thought, focusing on key concepts in her decolonial theory and practice: the decolonization of space-time, the critique of nationalism and internal (internalized) colonialism, and the concept of ch’ixi identity. The article also briefly addresses the universal relevance of these ideas

Decolonization · Hegemony · Indigenous · Latin Americans · Nationalism · Oppression · Perspective (graphical · Politics · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Politics and Society in Latin America