QUO VADIS, EUROPAM? REFLECTIONS ON EUROCENTRISM

Abstract

In this text I discuss the conception of Europe through the analysis of several authors such as Boaventura de Sousa, Ramón Grosfoguel, Aníbal Quijano, and so on. The study is divided into two parts: the first section focuses on the critique of a unified Europe as a concept, as well as the vision of Europe as the centre of the world and its “natural” borders. The second section analyses the relationship between Europe and Latin America and Africa, highlighting the colonial character of this relationship and the epistemological and worldview consequences that emerged. Similarly, I reflect on Boaventura de Sousa's abyssal thinking as a tool for questioning the forms of knowledge that we use and have inherited from academia on the European continent. Finally, I conclude that the concept of Europe has been forged by the economic and colonial powers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the historiography of those countries. Likewise, I add that today's idea of Europe continues to be used as a colonial tool to maintain the continent's hegemony over former colonised territories.