CHALLENGES OF DECOLONIAL EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THE ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Abstract

This article was produced within the context of the Fifth Colloquium of the Research Group on Religion and Culture of the Graduate Program in Religion Studies of PUC Minas, in October 2017, which dealt with the theme “The epistemology of the Sciences of Religion: assumptions, issues and challenges”. One of the roundtables discussed the challenges of “postcolonial epistemology and religion studies”. Based on bibliographical research, this text begins by addressing basic questions of epistemology and then presents, in a panoramic way, the ecological paradigm and the main origins and ideas of postcolonial critical theories: postcolonial thought, subaltern studies, decolonial and descolonial thinking. The conclusions indicate that Religion Studies have much to gain from these critical epistemologies and can exercise, in a creative way, diversified and collective ways of doing science, facing, through the quality of their productions, the distrust that other areas have about the “Sciences of Religion”. Moreover, because this area of knowledge is multidisciplinary and in the process of an epistemological construction, it should be inserted in the hard debate of the theory of science. Finally, due to the very nature of this area, a dialogue with religious knowledge should be considered, recognizing the dignity of knowledge, thus contributing to the process of “greening up” as well as decolonizing sciences and knowledge.