Differences of Inequality: Tracing the Socioeconomic, the Cultural and the Political in Latin American Postcolonial Theory

Abstract

It is far from obvious which theories are the most promising ones for the task of critically addressing interdependent inequalities in Latin America as well as global forms of inequality that affect Latin American countries. In this working paper, I look at Latin American postcolonial theories in this respect. Following Nancy Fraser’s analytic distinction of socioeconomic, cultural and political aspects of injustice, and affirmative as well as transformative remedies against them, I undertake a two-sided operation. In a first step, I use Fraser’s framework to shed light on the accounts of inequality that we can gain from the work of Aníbal Quijano, María Lugones and Walter Mignolo. In a second step, I tease out in which ways these accounts transcend and thus challenge the framework used on them.