You are viewing the new revised edition of Vistas of Modernity, published by Jap Sam Books. This edition includes a new foreword (by Gloria Wekker) and epilogue (by Walter Mignolo). The first (2020) and second (2021) prints of Vistas of Modernity were commissioned and published by Mondriaan Fund with Jap Sam Books as publishing partner. Edited by Rosa te Velde, with a foreword by Eelco van der Lingen (Director Mondriaan Fund). Translation of the foreword by Mari Shields. Final editing by Mirjam Beerman and Carmen Muskee.
We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Importantly for decolonial thought we are all located in relation to the colonial difference that structures our modern/colonial order. It is only from an awareness of our positioned realities that we can enter in relation with each-other, that we can listen to each-other and learn each-other. About the author: Rolando Vázquez is co-organizer of the Middelburg Decolonial Summer School. He is associate professor of Sociology at University College Roosevelt and Cluster Chair at University College Utrecht, Utrecht University in the Netherlands. ‘Vistas of Modernity – Mondriaan Fund Essay 14’ is a new title in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund.