Secularism Meets Coloniality: Mariategui's Andean Political Theology

Abstract

This article seeks to clarify the link between Mariategui's political theology and his critique of modern-secular-coloniality. I argue that understanding the place and the significance of Mariategui's critique of secularism/colonialism helps us grasp the fuller extent of Mariategui's thought, a pioneering critic of modernity in the early twentieth century who keenly understood the limits of modern-liberal framework for analyzing the political problems of Latin America. Mariategui's reading of Marx and revolution raises important challenges to various forms of twenty-first-century political theologies that tackle modernity from within Western liberal modernity (postmodern theories and philosophies). Mariategui offers important insights not only for critics of the secular and modernity who fail to attest to the important question of coloniality from which secularism/modernity must be disentangled, but also for critics of colonialism/coloniality who fail to view religion as the key fabric of coloniality.

Keywords:

• Jose Carlos Mariategui
• political theology
• coloniality
• secularism
• modernity

Notes

1 Wynter, “Beyond the Word of Man,” 639.

2 In their introduction to the recent special issues of Critical Research on Religion, Vincent Lloyd and Ludger Viefhues-Bailey map out the relation between the (post)secular and the (post)colonial and argue for an analysis of the complex intersection between modernity, secularism, and colonialism. Lloyd and Viefhues-Bailey, “Introduction,” 13–24.

3 Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” 2–4.

4 Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies; Asad, Formations of the Secular; Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen, Rethinking Secularism; Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters; Gorski, Kim, and VanAntwerpen, The Post-Secular in Question.

5 Van der veer, The Modern Spirit of Asia, 117.

6 Mignolo, “The Enduring Enchantment,” 927–54; Wynter, Beyond the Word of Man.

7 Ibid., 934.

8 Ibid., 935.

9 Wynter, “Unsettling Coloniality of Being/Power/Truty/Freedom,” 275, 277, 280.

10 Wynter, Beyond the Word of Man, 641.

11 Ibid., 639.

12 Mariategui, “Factor Religioso,” 140.

13 Ibid., 142.

14 Ibid. Translation mine.

15 Marcella Althaus-Reid shows how the Jesuit court exercised penal executions on acts of sexual transgressions during the early colonial period in Andes. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 20.

16 Wynter, Beyond the Word of Man, 639.

17 Blume, “Dialectics of Conversion,” 30.

18 Ibid.

19 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” 562.

20 Ibid., 564–74.

21 Mariategui, “The Land Problem,” 85.

22 Ibid., 147.

23 Ibid., 245.

24 Ibid., 313.

25 Jennings, The Christian Imagination, 59.

26 Ibid., 76.

27 Mariategui, “Factor Religioso,” 136.

28 Ibid., 135.

29 Ibid., 137.

30 Lowy and Brena, “Communism and Religion,” 75.

31 Ibid., 138.

32 Ibid., 151.

33 Ibid., 144.

34 Lowy, 71.

35 Pierina Ferretti, Del Misticismo Decadentista, 51–2.

36 Mariategui, “Cartas Italianas,” cited in Pierina Ferretti, Del Misticismo Decadentista, 73.

37 Rouanet, “Irrationalism and Myth in George Sorel,” 65.

38 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, 27–9.

39 Rouanet, “Irrationalism and Myth,” 51.

40 Ibid., 67.

41 Tager, “Myths and Politics in the Works of Sorel and Barthes,” 629.

42 Vernon, Commitment and Change, 61–71; Vincent, “Interpreting Georges Sorel,” 243.

43 Vanden and Becker, Jose Carlos Mariategui, 208.

44 Ibid., 209.

45 Ibid., 210.

46 Quijano, “Prologo. Jose Carlos Mariategui,” LXXVI.

47 Mariategui, “Man and Myth,” 383.

48 Ibid.

49 Mariategui, “Factor Religioso,” 160. Translation mine.

50 Paris, El Marxismo Latinoamericano de Mariategui, 14; Dessau, “Literatura y Sociedad en las Obras de Jose Carlos Mariategui”; Messeguer, Jose Carlos Mariategui y Su Pensamiento Revolucionario, 136–41.

51 Ferretti, Del Misticismo Decadentista, 86.

52 Mariategui, Man and Myth, 387.

53 Ibid.

54 Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, xxvii.

55 Mariategui, El Alma Matinal y Otras Estaciones del Hombre de Hoy, 84.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

An Yountae

An Yountae is an assistant professor of religion at Lebanon Valley College. His research interests include postcolonial theory, Latin American philosophy, political theology, and philosophy of religion.