Zero-Point Hubris

Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also epistemic. Santiago Castro-Gmez argues that toward the end of the 18th century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The many forms of knowing were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the blacks, Indians, and mestizos of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gmez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the castes. Epistemic violenceand not only physical violenceis thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.