Brazilian indian thinking as criticism of modernity: on an Ailton Krenak’s talking

Abstract

In this paper, we will develop the Ailton Krenak’s criticism to Western modernity-modernization as a monoculture of ideas that constitutes itself as a self-referential, self-subsistent, endogenous, autonomous and self-sufficient structure which does not need the help and the critic by the other of modernity. Using the notion of colonialism as theory of modernity, we will identify five fundamental problems that permeates the construction of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of Western modernity-modernization, problems that justify this Ailton Krenak’s criticism, namely: (a) the modernity as a society-culture marked by an absolute singularity as post-metaphysical universalism-globalism from cultural-communicative rationality, entirely different of the rest of societies-cultures as traditionalism in general based on essentialist and naturalized foundations; (c) the comprehension of the constitution and development of European modernity as an endogenous, autonomous, self-sufficient and closed movement-principle relatively to the other of modernity, totally capable of self-comprehension, self-reflexivity and self-correction from inside, by its own means, with no necessity of external help; (c) the reduction of the constitutive and distinctive dynamics of Western modernization to the notion of correlation, separation and tension-contradiction between cultural modernity and social-economic modernization, with the silencing about and the erasing of the colonialism as movement, principle and consequence of the process of Western modernization; (d) the restrictive comprehension of the constitutive and evolutionary way of Western modernization as a straight, direct and linear process which goes from modern Europe towards the First and Second Worlds, again silencing about and erasing the Third World as a constitutive part and consequence of the Western modernity-modernization as a whole; and, finally, (e) the correlation of cultural-modernity (as post-metaphysical universalism-globalism from cultural-communicative rationality) with/as humankind, the humankind as a big process of modernization, and each society-culture as a proto-modernity, which sustains and supports exactly the idea of Western modernization as the apogee of human evolution and, therefore, its universalist-globalist sense and vocation, a characteristic that is denied to the other of modernity.