Linguistics tools of colonial and capitalist modernity: a latin american position on the problem of colonization in the history of linguistic ideas

Abstract

This paper is grounded on materialistic perspective of language to ask: is it possible to enunciate in Latin America without being determined by colonial senses and meanings? Capitalism and colonization share the same beginning in this context. We argue that coloniality emerges as a spontaneous philosophy of capitalism, just as colonialism must be understood as a capitalism's (overdetermining) condition of possibility. We criticize the approach of Modernity in Kant and Foucault, and we stand for Latin American decolonial thought. We agree that Modernity coincides with the beginning of the exploration of America. We displace the importance given by Sylvain Auroux to the Renaissance while “la grammatisation” was taking place. We demonstrate that the way of writing the History of Linguistic Ideas in Brazil understands colonization as a turning point for the history of Latin American linguistic ideas, which leads us to rethink linguistic instruments as tools of colonial-capitalist modernity.