Coloniality of Power meets Dependency Theory: Developmentalism, Marginality, and Marx’s Commune in Quijano’s Socialization of Power
Inés
Valdez (Johns Hopkins University)
Tuesday, September 30, 6:30 p.m. (ET)
GC Room 9206-07
And online via Zoom
The Center for Global Ethics and Politics is excited to welcome political theorist Inés Valdez as our second colloquium speaker of Fall 2025. The format of this colloquium will involve a lecture and Q&A. For this event, the speaker has made an advanced copy
of the paper available, for your possible interest. It can be found
here.
This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom.
The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and snacks.
If you plan to attend virtually, please register in
advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.
Abstract
Attention to the coloniality school in U.S. scholarship has eclipsed the longer tradition of dependency theory and Latin American thinkers’ creative reworking of Marxism. This paper focuses on Aníbal Quijano because he is both the founder of the coloniality
approach and heavily influenced by Marxist dependency theory and Marx’s critique of the state. We argue that his Marxist commitments remain central in his later works on the coloniality of power and bien vivir. We do this by tracing socialization of power
as emerging from a synthesis of his Marxist work and remaining an orienting emancipatory horizon in his work on the coloniality of power. Thus reconstructed, socialization of power is recast as a more historical and political notion, in contrast to the epistemological
and identitarian thrust of other contributions to coloniality. The paper traces three theoretical-historical threads. First, we reconstruct Quijano’s dependency theory writings on marginality and state developmentalism. Second, we illustrate that his notion
of socialization of power emerges as a political response to or synthesis of these two strands of work, which he develops in dialogue with Marx’s critique of the state and enthusiasm for the Paris Commune. Third, we show that Quijano’s account of reciprocity
and socialization of power allows him to understand communal practices emerging in Latin American urban peripheries and orients his emancipatory horizon until his death in 2018. Re-reading Quijano accomplishes two things. First, this reading reveals that his
critique of monopoly capitalism—at play in his early writings on marginality and the authoritarian developmental state—remains relevant to understand his later work. Second, juxtaposing Marx and Quijano highlights a continuing dilemma of revolutionary politics,
in 1870s Europe and 1970s Latin America: how to organize political power.
Speaker Bio
Inés Valdez is professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and works on the political theory of empire, capitalism, race, and migration. Her most recent book is Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism (Cambridge
UP, 2023). She has also published on the political thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Immanuel Kant and is currently working on an intellectual history and critical recovery of Marxist dependency theory. Valdez has received fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation,
the Princeton University Center for Human Values, and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
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