Catherine Walsh is known as an educator of decoloniality. Decoloniality thinking and practice questions the centrality of Eurocentric hegemonic thinking (modernism, postmodernism, critical theory, postcolonial studies) and initiates a critique of hegemonic Eurocentric thinking facing the challenge of thinking from other subjects, from other places (margins and borders) and other conceptions of the world.
It questions the neomarxists (eco-socialism) and the limits of postmodernism anchored in the Eurocentric centrality.
Proposals “Decolonize” intellectual production from its margins and borders. How to decoloniazr the thought and how to add the contribution of the social movements, especially the indigenous and Afro-descendent movements. How to use thought and practice to create a decolonial utopia with power.
In On Decoloniality (2018) Katerine Wlash and Walter Mingnolo develop the principles of the concepts of Decoloniality. They start from the analysis of the matrix of colonial domination based on the development of power over bodies and over space. This is always a relationship of violence (on coprpos and knowledge) that originates from racism and colonialism. In colonialism there is a usurpation of space by violence following the delimitation of property, imposing a model of organization of relations of violence (over work, over the body).
Decolonial education or decolonial pedagogy starts from the intertwining between pedagogical theory for the autonomy of being through the awareness of oneself and others in context, with emancipatory pedagogical practices that are based on local life histories and perspectives of social struggle for affirmation of human rights and dignity.
The conceptual and analytical dynamism of decolonial forms of living and thinking, as well as the creative force of resistance and re-existence, imply a detachment from the colonial power matrix and its “universals” of Western modernity and global capitalism, and engages with arguments and struggles for dignity and life against death, destruction and civilizational despair.
Some books by Chaterine Walsh
• Interculturality, State, society. Colonial (de) luchas of another time, OTROS, Quito, Andean University Simón Bolívar / Abya-Yala, 2009, 254 p. , format: 21 x 15 cm, ISBN: 978-9978-22-809-8
• Latin American Cultural Studies: Straight from and about the Andean Region, OTROS, Quito, Andean University Simon Bolivar / Abya-Yala, 2003, 326 p. , format: 15 x 21 cm, ISBN: 978-9978-19-050-0
• Critical thinking and colonial (de) matrix: Latin American reflections, OTROS, Quito, Andean University Simón Bolívar / Abya-Yala, 2005, 302 p. , format: 15 x 21 cm, ISBN: 9978-19-103-8
• Undisciplinary social sciences. Geopolitics of knowledge and coloniality of power: perspectives from the Andean, OTROS, Quito, Andean University Simon Bolivar / Abya-Yala, 2002, 248 p. , format: 15 x 21 cm, ISBN: 9978-19-042-2
• The pedagogical and the decolonial: Entretejiendo caminos, Querétaro, Mexico: En cortito que pa pa ‘broad, 2014.
• No guarantees. Trajectories and problems in cultural studies. Stuart Hall, E. Retrepo, C.Walsh, V. Vich (edits.), Second Extended Edition, Popayán, University of Cauca y Envión, 2014. ISBN: 978-9587-32-148-7.
• Decolonial Pedagogies. Insurgent practices of resisting, (re) existing and (re) living. Tome I (publisher), Quito, Abya-Yala, 2013. ISBN: 978-9942-09-169-7.
• Critical and (de) colonial interculturality. Ensayos from Abya Yala, Quito, Abya-Yala / Scientific Institute of Indigenous Cultures, 2012. ISBN: 978-9942-09-122-2.
• Building critical interculturality (with J. Viaña and L. Tapia). La Paz, Andrés Bello Convention, 2010. ISBN: 978-99954-785-1-3.