Knowledge, subjectivity, and the University

There can be no discourse of decolonization, no theory of decolonization, without a decolonizing practice. The discourse of multicultural- ism and the discourse of hybridity are essentialist and historicist interpretations of the indigenous question. They do not address the fundamental issues of decolonization but instead obscure and renew the effective practices of colonization and subalternization. Their function is to supplant the indigenous populations as historical subjects and to turn their struggles and demands into elements of a cultural reengineering and a state apparatus in order to subjugate them and neutralize their will. A “change so that everything remains the same” bestows rhetorical recognition and subordinates, through patronage, the Indians into purely emblematic and symbolic functions—that is, a sort of “cultural pongueaje” [a free domestic service required of indigenous tenants] in the service of the spectacle of the multi- cultural state and mass communication.

-(Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012, pp. 100-101) ^[1]