Thinking Past the Zero-Point: Santiago Castro-Gómez and Places of Critique in Decolonial Philosophy

The critique of zero-point epistemologies has been a core development in decolonial philosophies, yet this critical move too easily falls back on an over-determination of place, fixing the thinker in their spot. This article argues that decolonial critique should move beyond zero-point theorizing without resorting to spatial or geographic determinism. This article illustrates the risks of this dualistic model by analyzing eighteenth-century Enlightenment discourse in Latin America and Europe in the period where geography establishes itself as a science. In this context, the racial determination of geography marks white European subjects as uniquely capable of reaching zero-point indetermination while non-white subjects are determined irreducibly by their geography and unable to achieve epistemic standing. Beyond this dualism, this article develops a pluralistic account of places of decolonial critique where the critical thinker is situated but not fixed in place. This article employs Santiago Castro-Gómez’s concept of heterarchy to articulate such an open conception of critical place by charting the intersections between local, regional, and global spaces.