Abstract

The current proposal to “decolonize” aesthetics and to relativize Western artistic and philosophical assumptions doesn’t just refer to the historical moment of West-European colonization in the late nineteenth century. It extends to its entire philosophical and aesthetic conceptualization, and to the epistemic domination of the world it includes. Using the term “epistemic imperialism”, certain African theorists demand a “decolonization of mind”, a change in the understanding of all relationships, be they political, cultural, aesthetic, ecological, economic, or some other category. Together with different authors of the global south, I put forward the ideas of non-identitarian and (non-in)dividual understandings of persons, cultures, and art practices and of new forms of aesthetic and personal dividuation as a means of decolonization.