Decolonizing Constitutionalism - Beyond False Or Impossible Promises

The modern state, law, and constitution result from a legal canon that (re)produces the abyssal lines dividing the world that is validated from the world whose humanity and epistemological validity are denied. This book aims to contribute to a post-abyssal reflection on law and constitutionalism by considering the structural axes of power that are constitutive of modern law "capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy" alongside the legal plurality of the world. Is it possible to decolonize, decommodify, and depatriarchalize the constitution? The authors speak from multiple geographies, raise different questions, resort to differentiated theoretical approaches, and reveal varying levels of optimism about the possibilities of transforming constitutions. The readers are confronted with critical perspectives on the Eurocentric legal canon, as well as with the recognition of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-patriarchal legal experiences. The horizon of this publication is the expansion of the possibilities of legal and political imagination.

List of contents

Table of Contents:  Boaventura de Sousa Santos; Sara Araújo; Orlando Aragón Andrade  Preface  Boaventura de Sousa Santos; Sara Araújo; Orlando Aragón Andrade  Introduction  Part 1.  The vast landscape of constitutionalisms 1.  Issa G. Shivji Do Constitutions Matter? The dilemma of a radical lawyer 2.  Asifa Quraishi-Landes Healing a wounded Islamic constitutionalism: Sharia, legal pluralism, and unlearning the nation-State paradigm 3.  Upendra Baxi Nihilisms, contradictions and anomie in new constitutionalisms: a view from India 4.  Rosalva Aída Hernandez Towards a New Transformative Constitutionalism Arising from Indigenous Women? 5.  Sara Araújo Modern Constitutionalism, Legal Pluralism and the Waste of Experience Part 2. Post-colonial Transitions: the case of South Africa 6.  Heinz Klug Legacies and Latitudes: Past, present and future in South Africa's post-colonial legal order 7.  Albie Sachs Superior courts and the need of transformative jurisprudence. Shared experiences from a South African judge 8.  Tshepo Madlingozi On Settler Colonialism and Post-Conquest Constitutionness: The Decolonising Constitutional Vision of African Nationalists of Azania/South Africa Part 3. The return of the abyssally excluded?: The indigenous constitutional struggles in Latin America 9.  Salvador Schavelzon Can silence be a constituent? A reading on the indigenous-communitarian constitutionalism of Bolivia 10.  Raúl Llasag Fernández Plurinational Constitutionalism: Plurinationality from Above and Plurinationality from Below 11.  Nina Pacari Transformational constitutionalism, interculturality and the reform of the state: looking through the eyes of the originary peoples 12.  Agustin Grijalva Participation and Presidentialism in the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 13.  Orlando Aragón Andrade Transforming Transformative Constitutionalism. Lessons from the Political-Legal Experience of Cherán, Mexico 14.  Boaventura de Sousa Santos The Law of the Excluded: Indigenous Justice, Plurinationality, and Interculturality in Bolivia and Ecuador Boaventura de Sousa Santos; Sara Araújo, Orlando Aragón Andrade  Conclusion

Summary

Decolonizing Constitutionalism aims to contribute to a post-abyssal reflection on law and constitutionalism by considering the structural axes of power that are constitutive of modern law "capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy" alongside the legal plurality of the world.

Report

This is an important edited volume framed by the groundbreaking theoretical work of Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos. This scholarship has set aside a singular focus on the Eurocentric view of the law and developed in its place an 'epistemology of the South,' based upon the knowledges of those excluded, appropriated, and subject to the violence of the state. The goal of this project is to expand our political imagination to allow for the emergence of alternative forms of politics in oppressed communities. The book makes available the important findings of a collaborative research project on struggles for social justice in the global South. It is based upon a cutting-edge theoretical framework which explores the potential for constitutional change outside of a state-centric approach. The volume provides essential reading for those working in the area of comparative constitutionalism and will stimulate new research and thinking for the next generation of scholars in the field.
- Kristin Bumiller, Amherst College
This is an important and very useful contribution to the connected subjects of democracies, social justice and political activism, human rights, law and legal orders, and power and economies across societies. It moves beyond the surface of introduction and explanation of abyssal thinking to a range of post-abyssal possibilities and applications across multiple geographies and peoples with different questions. All the authors take up the challenges of decolonization, decommodification, and 'depatriarchalization', and all of the authors ground their writing in the experiences and realities of peoples around the globe. Abyssal thinking proves to be a critical lens in the subject instances of each chapter, and the reader will be able to see how abyssal thinking may be extrapolated to other issues and circumstances. I think this is an outstanding book and I am excited by its publication and availability.

- Val Napoleon, University of British Columbia

Studying constitutions (and other topics) from the perspective of the global South is important and the Epistemologies of the South have been ignored for too long. Its discussion of indigenous voices, especially indigenous women, and indigenous justice is one of the most important contributions of the book. This book adds a vitally important, yet often ignored, dimension to scholarship. It is not only timely but long overdue.

- Sumudu Atapattu, University of Wisconsin

Product details

• Authors: Boaventura Araujo De Sousa Santos
• Assisted by: Orlando Aragón Andrade (Editor), Sara Araújo (Editor), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.07.2023
• EAN: 9781032490274
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3249027-4
• No. of pages: 338
• Series: Epistemologies of the South
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Constitutions, LAW / Constitutional, Constitution: government & the state, Constitution: government and the state, Constitution, Constitutional & administrative law