From the critique of development to the critique of modernity

Latin American thought and creation of alternatives

Abstract

The critique of the notion of development could be rounded off at the moment when various peripheral thoughts, or those that had the capacity to incorporate that exteriority, were capable of revealing the (spatial) secrets of the global logic of capital. From those formulations, from the two decades following the cutoff of the mid-20th century, it has been possible to move on to a discourse that has been capable of making an explanatory leap from the critique of development to the critique of technique, determinism and progress; and from the critique of capitalism to the critique of modernity/postmodernity, technosciences and complexity. What is found in the middle of this explanatory leap (location of the enunciative agency from an "inside" of development to an "outside" of modernity) is an interval of neoliberal hegemony, which now extends as an interregnum of crisis of the neoliberal domination itself, which has put the entire world in a condition of cataclysm and catastrophe (the regional macro fires in various corners of the world, and the global pandemic crisis, are but staggering symptoms). Today, perhaps we are in the presence of the historic beginning of the 21st century, since the climatic, biodiverse and ecological times of the world do not seem to resist the acceleration that accompanies the long-awaited growth of economic profit rates within the framework of global accumulation promoted by neoliberalism. The tendency to search for the creation of space(s) in the runaway economic temporality, turns as an indicative and guiding vector, since the physical-material, geographical limits can precipitate as the defining limit or the paralyzing blockade of the accumulation itself. If we do not find alternatives to these dilemmas, we are in imminent danger of the crisis of capitalism becoming transmuted (and thus perversely looking for its solutions) into a crisis of humanity. Thought, social theory and philosophy from Latin America have much to contribute to a genuine understanding of these aspects, but even more relevant to pointing out alternative directions.