Contributions for a critical praxis of the social order

Abstract

This interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos seeks to develop a critique of the capitalist, colonial and patriarchal system, of the forms of domination that it entails and of the rationality-knowledge that sustains it. Taking this axis, various issues related to this social order are addressed, emphasizing what he calls the abysmal line that separates "metropolitan society" from "colonial society". From this central idea of its theoretical system, the issue of the State and its institutions —specifically schools and universities—, education, critical theory, resistance processes and the commonplace are analysed. It insists on the need for an epistemic rupture that allows the rationality that is configured from this abysmal line to become visible, something that is possible from the "Epistemologies of the South", that is, from the knowledge born in processes of struggle and resistance.