Colonialism and modernity are one and the same phenomenon.

Evidence

That colonialism is not merely a derivative of modernity but one that constitutes modernity’s very structures, resting squarely on what the semiotician Walter Mignolo called “colonial difference,” is a proposition that I take for granted. But it will not do to argue (as certain Latin American transmodernists have) that because modernity’s self-reproduction rests on the fabrication of its own exteriority through the process of dehumanizing the Other, the experience of the Other as a production of colonialism and Orientalism should become the axis for modernity’s critique. For such an argument is in effect tautological: colonialism and Orientalism, being processually productive of the Other par excellence, structure modernity because modernity is structured by colonialism and Orientalism! — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 44 (#expands, via linked claim)

Whatever dialectic between power and knowledge one may detect in Orientalism (39, 94), it is one that is judged by a chronological causality, not by a mutually dependent production of knowledge as power. That all paradigmatic modern knowledge is power and that its converse is equally true amount to a proposition that Said does not seem likely to accept: that if modernity with all its knowledge forms is inextricably predicated on colonialism, then colonialism defines modernity par excellence, for they are one and the same. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It is necessary to extricate oneself from the linkages between rationality/modernity and coloniality, first of all, and definitely from all power which is not constituted by free decisions made by free people. It is the instrumentalization of the reasons for power, of colonial power in the first place, which produced distorted paradigms of knowledge and spoiled the liberating promises of modernity. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 615 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonialism and capitalism form two sides of one continuous dispossession process. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 280; Modernity cannot be sustained without colonialism and genocide in all their forms; If modernity depends on colonialism, the two are inseparable — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 104 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonialism constitutes modernity itself rather than merely deriving from it #expands (0.97) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 44
• If modernity depends on colonialism, the two are inseparable #corroborates (0.92) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104
• Colonial power instrumentalized reason and thereby corrupted modernity’s promise #complicates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 615