A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

WHAT MODERNITY? WHAT INTERCULTURALITY?
REFLECTIONS FROM SOUTH AMERICA
GABRIELA BERNAL CARRERA
Introduction: what modernity?
It is a complicated task to try and trace the convergences between European,
Latin American, African and Asian priorities because, in spite of
all our new communications techniques, we simply cannot connect ourselves
with the daily reality of all these worlds. The new technology has
opened a door which it is impossible to pass through, even cursorily.
The pressure of our everyday experiences is so intense that it is impossible
to transmit them across these technological thresholds. This
makes it difficult to find a starting point for analyzing the urgent needs
felt by humanity at this complex historical moment.
Setting aside the discourses that write off the historical responses of
colonized peoples as ‘social resentment’, it is precisely in the re-reading
of colonial history that we can find a point of departure. As far as the
present work is concerned, which seeks to reflect on the role that interculturality
should play in forming the notion of the ‘Common Good of
Humanity’, history enables us to identify the oppressive forms that cultural
differences have created for a large part of humanity.
In the long process that is history, we can identify the conquest of the
Americas as a departure point for both colonizers and colonized. We
choose this as a milestone, not so much for its geographical relevance,
but because after the ‘Discovery’ there was a change in the notion of
‘We’ as Humanity in the European world: the ‘We’ which took shape
first in theological discussions about the humanity of ‘The Other’ (in
other words Indian) and which has reasserted itself these days with discussions
about the parameters for implementing or measuring the development
of underdeveloped peoples. The arguments that are made
from time to time in scientific circles and international organizations
when discussing the plight of ‘the losers’ are more or less a continuation
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