Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also epistemic. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The many forms of knowing were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightenedcriollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate theBlack, Indigenous, and mestizo peoples of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating thecriollos from the castes. Epistemic violenceand not only physical violenceis thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

Santiago Castro-Gómez is professor of philosophy at the University of Santo Tomás and the University Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. He has taught as visiting professor at Duke University, Pittsburgh University, and the University of Frankfurt. His book,Critique of Latin American Reason is now a classic text of Latin American philosophy. His many other publications include La hybris del punto cero,Tejidos oníricos,History of Governmentality, Volumes I& II, andRevolutions without Subject.

George Ciccariello-Maher is Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Vassar College.

Don T. Deere is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University.

Translators Introduction / 1. Places of Enlightenment: Colonial Discourse and Geopolitics of Knowledge in the Century of Enlightenment / 2.Purus ab omnia macula sanguinis: The colonial imaginary of whiteness in New Granada / 3. Imperial Biopolitics: Health and sickness in the framework of Bourbonic reforms / 4. Illegitimate Knowledges: The Enlightenment as mechanism of epistemic expropriation / 5. Striated Spaces: Geography, territorial politics, and population control / Epilogue / Appendix (to the 2nd edition) / Bibliography / Index