From the colonial state to the national state: the regeneration in the nineteenth-century Colombia and the question of coloniality

The purpose of this essay is to present a critical analysis about the nation state in Latin America by utilizing the conceptual tools originating in so-called post/decolonial studies. To accomplish this task, two steps will be carried out. First, a brief genealogy of the concept of the coloniality of power will be formulated. In dialogue with Jacques Ranciere, it will be shown how coloniality is a constitutive element of the post-colonial nation state in Latin America, representing a partition of the sensible and therefore the generation of an excluded population 'without part'. Finally, the case of 'la Regeneracion' in nineteenth-century Colombia will be offered as a historical image where coloniality led to a partition of the sensible, as it updated and transformed itself to consolidate the cognitive legacies of colonialism.