Decentering the Hegemonic Subject: Denise Ferreira Da Silva’s Contribution to Reshape “Global” Sociology

The paper departs from the idea that global sociology is currently nothing but an analytical exercise of onto-epistemological imperialism. Regarding the fact that theory is the discipline's common ground, most of the recent progressive debates revolve around the process of how to assemble a general subject able to better include the lives of the global peripheries (the majority of the world) without displacing the hegemonic standpoint of the global north.In order to think about reshaping this biased structure of knowledge, this proposal explores the work of Denise Ferreira da Silva, suggesting that her writings can be read as an outstanding advancement in the current trends of disciplinary transformation. The argument is divided into two chronologically complementary sessions. First, it explores the author's explanation of the rise and consolidation of the notion of homo modernus as the governing subject of humanities as sciences. The focus is on the exclusionary and hierarchical consequences of restricting the social and sociological relevance to an ideal Western faculty of self-determination. The second part draws on the author's recent assembling of an analytical ontology, "the wounded captive body in the scene of subjugation", to methodologically assess the collective existences of the majority of the world's population. From the perspective of this paper, Ferreira da Silva's proposal draws on the violent and exclusionary consequences of modernity to suggest the possibility of breaking with the hegemonic narrative. In my reading of her work, the possible alternative is based on investigating and producing existences that are not bound by the structures of time/history and space that conceived the global as an extension of Western colonial concerns.