Ramón Grosfoguel

Grosfoguel’s work advances a radical critique of the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system, arguing that global power is not merely defined by economic exploitation but by a foundational epistemic hierarchy. Central to his research is the transition from 'colonialism' to 'coloniality,' a process where the racial, gendered, and Eurocentric social structures of the colonial era persist long after the disappearance of colonial administrations. He posits that the long 16th century initiated a series of four epistemicides - against Jews and Muslims in Al-Andalus, Indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africans through the middle passage, and women in Europe (the witch hunts), which effectively institutionalised Western male-centric (Christian) knowledge as the only valid form of universal truth. To counter this, Grosfoguel advocates for epistemic decolonisation, which requires a shift from universalism to pluriversality. This framework rejects the point zero perspective - the Western myth of a neutral, objective observer - and instead emphasises 'locus of enunciation,' or the geopolitical and body-political location from which one speaks. By analysing the intersectionality of what he calls the 'global coloniality of power,' his research demonstrates how modern phenomena - ranging from international migration patterns to global Islamophobia - are not aberrations but necessary components of a world-system that privileges 'Westernised' life while delegitimising non-Western ontological and cosmological realities.