The theory of encryption of power proposes a fresh understanding of how the use of language monopolizes and hides power, preventing access to it through the denial and neutralization of differences based on class, race, and gender. It argues that coloniality exists because it encrypts power; hence the theory develops insights alongside and in parallel to decolonial theory and critical and subaltern studies. The central claim exposes how, in the name of the people, the people are made vulnerable to dispossession and exclusion, and how in the name of democracy, democracy is undermined and potentially destroyed. Theorizing encryption challenges the linkages between liberalism and colonialism, capitalism and sovereignty, constitution and economy, and their claims of necessity. The insights produced can be brought to bear on such phenomena as information circuits of disinformation on social media platforms, artificial intelligence, weapons, technologies of surveillance, and data mining.

The series editors invite authors to engage with these ideas articulated by the theory of encryption and join them in developing further philosophical insights into this growing and promising field, by way of monographs, edited collections, and revised dissertations addressing topics such as power, democracy, and sovereignty, and questions such as those proposed by feminism, and by gender and race theory.


Editor(s): Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo, Marinella Machado Araujo, Angus McDonald, James Martel
Advisory Board: Walter Mignolo (Duke University), Stacy Douglas (Carleton University), Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster), Jorge Cerdio (ITAM), Amarela Varela (UACM), Rahul Govind (University of Delhi), Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (University of Bayreuth), Amira Osman (Tshwane University of Technology)
Staff editorial contact: Jana Hodges-Kluck (jhodges-kluck@rowman.com)