Anibal Quijano

‘Modernity/coloniality’ is a concept first used by Aníbal Quijano It refers to the way in which the
concepts (modernity and coloniality) are inseparable –two sides of the same coin. Like many post
colonialists , decolonialists seek to draw attention to the relation between colonialism and the narrative
of modernity ,through which much of the world’s history has come to be understood. Modernity, then,
is viewed as an epistemological frame that is inseparably bound to the European colonial project.

Quijano argues that there was relation of direct, political, social and cultural domination which was
established by the Europeans over all the conquered continents which he called as Eurocentered
colonialism.

The colonial structure of power was based on social discriminations i.e ‘racial’, ‘ethnic’, ‘anthropological’
or ‘national’. It is very clear that the large majority of the exploited, the dominated, the discriminated
against, are precisely the members of the ‘races’, ‘ethnies’, or ‘nations’ into which the colonized
populations, were categorized in the formative process of that world power, from the conquest of
America and onward.