“Which Side are You On, Ariel?”: Recognition and redistribution in Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s theory of emancipation

Abstract

The article deals with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s approach to the debate between recognition and redistribution. Having in mind both José Martí’s idea of Nuestra America and the Shakespearean metaphor of Ariel, Santos develops what he names subaltern paradigm of recognition (difference) and redistribution (equality), based on an epistemology of the south which he opposes to the so- called European-American paradigm, understood as the neo-liberal globalization. He argues, then, for the need to face this dominant paradigm of globalization with a counter-hegemonic paradigm of globalization.