Beyond the color of reason. For an anticolonial sociology of race and adultcentrism

This chapter is intended as a basis for a critical sociology of the connections between racism and adultcentrism. Focusing on coloniality as the continuity of patterns of colonial domination over ways of thought and life, I argue that adultcentrism is a form of power that relies on the theoretical construction of the “savage minor,” a not-yet-human that functions as the opposite of the enlightened subject of reason. Drawing from postcolonial philosophy, social theory, and Latin American political thought, I discuss how forms of infantilization of racialized peoples are a continuous source for the reproduction of adultcentric power and violence. Finally, I discuss some criteria for an anticolonial sociology of adultcentrism based on the evidence of violence against youth in Latin America.