© koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2019 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004400467_007 CHAPTER 7 Coloniality Key Dimensions and Critical Implications Noah De Lissovoy and Raúl Olmo Fregoso Bailón Emerging from sociological and philosophical inquiry into the history of the colonial encounter in Latin America, the notion of coloniality (and the larger field of decolonial theory with which it is now associated) has become a crucial theoretical resource for scholars across a range of disciplines. Investigations of the structure and processes of coloniality challenge received ideas about power, knowledge, and identity in modernity, and these investigations have significant implications for educational philosophy. Nevertheless, decolonial scholarship remains less known among educational theorists than postcolo- nial theory, with which it shares many concerns but from which it also sharply differs in crucial respects. In our presentation of the notion of coloniality, we first describe the history and key dimensions of this idea. The second part of the article develops several of the most crucial implications of the notion of coloniality for scholars and educators, with particular attention to how this tra- dition offers a rethinking of familiar categories in critical theory and pedagogy. An Introduction to Coloniality The Eurocentric perspective of knowledge operates as a mirror that distorts what it reflects, as we can see in the Latin American historical experience. (Quijano, 2008, p. 204) Definition If we carefully look at Aníbal Quijano Obregón’s work, who coined the term, coloniality is grounded in the notion of coloniality of power. Quijano explains the way in which coloniality is a pattern of power that emerges from an invis- ible part of history. Importantly, the notion of coloniality of power empha- sizes the distinction between colonialism (a concrete social formation) and coloniality (an encompassing political, cultural, epistemological, and symbolic condition). However, beyond this distinction it is important to address the full extent of the concept: coloniality of power refers to power that is ontologically For use by the Author only | © 2019 Koninklijke Brill NV