Decolonizing constitutionalism : beyond false or impossible promises / edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Sara Araújo, Orlando Aragón Andrade.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issa G. Shivji, Do Constitutions Matter? The dilemma of a radical lawyer -- Asifa Quraishi-Landes, Healing a wounded Islamic constitutionalism : Sharia, legal pluralism, and unlearning the nation-state paradigm -- Upendra Baxi Nihilisms, Contradictions and anomie in new constitutionalisms : a view from India -- Rosalva Aída Hernandez, Towards a new transformative constitutionalism arising from Indigenous women? -- Sara Araújo, Modern constitutionalism, legal pluralism and the waste of experience -- Heinz Klug, Legacies and latitudes : past, present and future in South Africa's post-colonial legal order -- Albie Sachs, Superior courts and the need of transformative jurisprudence. Shared experiences from a South African judge -- Tshepo Madlingozi, On settler colonialism and post-conquest constitutionness : the decolonising constitutional vision of African Nationalists of Azania/South Africa -- Salvador Schavelzon, Can silence be a constituent? A reading on the indigenous-communitarian constitutionalism of Bolivia -- Raúl Llasag Fernández, Plurinational constitutionalism : plurinationality from above and plurinationality from below -- Nina Pacari, Transformational constitutionalism, interculturality and the reform of the state : looking through the eyes of the originary peoples -- Agustin Grijalva, Participation and presidentialism in the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 -- Orlando Aragón Andrade, Transforming transformative constitutionalism. Lessons from the political-legal experience of Cherán, Mexico -- Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The Law of the Excluded : Indigenous justice, plurinationality, and interculturality in Bolivia and Ecuador -- Boaventura de Sousa Santos; Sara Araújo, Orlando Aragón Andrade, Conclusion.

"The modern state, law, and constitution result from a legal canon that (re)produces the abyssal lines dividing the world that is validated from the world whose humanity and epistemological validity are denied. This book aims to contribute to a post-abyssal reflection on law and constitutionalism by considering the structural axes of power that are constitutive of modern law "capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy" alongside the legal plurality of the world. Is it possible to decolonize, decommodify, and depatriarchalize the constitution? The authors speak from multiple geographies, raise different questions, resort to differentiated theoretical approaches, and reveal varying levels of optimism about the possibilities of transforming constitutions. The readers are confronted with critical perspectives on the Eurocentric legal canon, as well as with the recognition of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-patriarchal legal experiences. The horizon of this publication is the expansion of the possibilities of legal and political imagination"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.