Carl Schmitt’s Afterlife in Decolonial Theory: Rereading Walter Mignolo

By Harald Kümmerle

Living with Schmitt’s Ghost

To say that Carl Schmitt is a controversial figure would be an understatement. Called the “crown jurist of the Third Reich” for his proactive engagement with Nazi politics, he remains a key point of reference for the New Right.[1] His influence, however, reaches far beyond this milieu.

Writing about contemporary political discourse in the United States, political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller remarked in June 2025 that we are now living in “Carl Schmitt’s world”[2]. One concrete manifestation of this claim could be seen in Vice President J. D. Vance’s justification for the forced detention and expulsion of illegal immigrants: he invoked Augustine’s concept of ordo amoris – the theological principle of a rightly ordered hierarchy of love, from God and family outward to the wider world –[3] to argue that one must care more for those close to oneself than for those who are not. Some have argued that this aligns with Schmitt’s conception of Political Theology[4], as outlined below.[5] Yet the picture is more complex. Rather than merely drawing on Schmitt to justify his own positions, Vance had, two months before becoming Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, accused the Left of disregarding positive law on the basis that “these guys have all read Carl Schmitt”[6]. Putting possible accusations of projection aside – in the sense that it takes one to know one – Vance is not entirely wrong: Schmitt’s work has indeed been studied and appropriated by prominent leftist intellectuals.[7] Ironically, during the George W. Bush administration it was the liberal world order and American dominance that were criticized through Schmitt-inspired arguments from the Left,[8] the very order whose current decline many moderates on the Left now mourn.

Seeking to understand Schmitt’s lasting and conflictual influence – including his appropriation by prominent critical area studies scholars such as Naoki Sakai[9] – I organized a reading group at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) from April 2024 to February 2025. The thinkers whose reception of Schmitt we examined also included Argentinian semiotician Walter Mignolo, one of the most prominent figures of the Latin American decolonial school. As became clear both from circulated manuscripts and from the discussion at the workshop De-centering Academia: InterAsian Perspectives at the DIJ (13. September 2024), Mignolo’s work has served as a reference point for several participants of Shaping Asia, an interdisciplinary research network exploring connectivities, comparisons, and collaborations across Asian societies. When I explained in my own presentation during the workshop that Mignolo had welcomed the Russian invasion of Ukraine as harbinger of a new multipolar world order,[10] some German participants who had previously invoked Mignolo for their own arguments were surprised, if not shocked.

Building on my workshop presentation, this article argues that while Mignolo’s alignment with Russia cannot be solely attributed to his appropriation of Schmitt, his ultimate stance reveals deeper contradictions inherent in Schmitt’s work itself. The article develops this argument by first delineating two phases in Schmitt’s thought that are mostly distinct.[11] The section that follows examines how Mignolo positions Schmitt at the center of his work – in a way that, while questionable from the perspective of contemporary political science scholarship on Schmitt, raises fundamental questions about the grounds on which such appropriations can be critiqued. This is discussed in the last section.

Schmitt I: Pluralism, Homogeneity, and the Concept of Great Spaces

The first phase reveals two aspects. The first aspect aims to go beyond a universalism that Schmitt sees as reducing the world to rational calculations in liberal democracy. Interested in how the order that appeared as relatively stable until the First World War had come into being, his 1922 work Political Theology argued that all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.[12] The emphasis of such continuity would later prove alluring for decolonial theory. This holds even more for Schmitt’s declaration that “the political world is a pluriverse, not a universe”[13] in the 1927 article The Concept of the Political. This appears as unproblematic, even emancipatory.

However, the second aspect is that for Schmitt, the call for global pluralism was closely connected to an affirmation of ethnic homogeneity inside of a state. In the extended version of Concept of the Political that appeared as a book in 1932, he argued that references to “humanity” in “ethical-humanitarian form” are a vehicle for an “economic imperialism”,[14] and that “whoever invokes humanity wants to deceive”[15]. For Schmitt, economic imperialism was beneficial to the United States and – even though the US did not join it – the foundation for the League of Nations as conceived by then-President Woodrow Wilson.[16] Schmitt was not opposed to imperialism, past or present – in fact, he came up with a conception that allowed for territorial expansion while guaranteeing sufficient homogeneity for a functioning political entity. Positioning “Great space against universalism” (Großraum gegen Universalismus)[17] in spring 1939, Schmitt argued that if a certain number of empires (Reiche) would respect each other’s interests and not interfere in their respective spheres of influence, it would help achieve global stability.[18]

As Germany and the Soviet Union, beginning in September 1939, divided up Eastern Europe in accordance with the Secret Protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed only weeks before, Schmitt’s conception seemed to appear viable for managing imperial competition. Schmitt’s work The Order of Great Spaces of International Law with a Ban on Intervention for Spatially Foreign Powers,[19] first published in 1939, developed this idea further and was met with both interest and critique while going through several revisions in less than two years. However, when the fourth edition was published in summer 1941, Germany had already attacked the Soviet Union, violating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and betraying Schmitt’s hope. The prediction of stability was also disproven by Japan’s attack on the US later that year. Schmitt had justified the concept of great spaces partly based on how Japan’s territorial interests in East Asia had been debated in international law, under the title of the “Asian Monroe Doctrine”.[20]

Schmitt II: Mythologizing the International Order

After the Second World War, Schmitt’s The Order of Great Spaces of International Law with a Ban on Intervention for Spatially Foreign Powers drifted into relative obscurity.[21] It was Schmitt’s 1950 work Nomos of the Earth[22], largely completed during wartime, that became a prominent reference for decolonial theorists and Walter Mignolo in particular. In it, Schmitt constructed a genealogy of how the jus publicum europaeum – European public international law – emerged in the early modern period. He framed colonialism outside of Europe in a distinctly positive light, arguing that it helped tame war between states inside of Europe.[23] This interpretation has generated significant scholarly engagement – as evidenced, for instance, by a volume on “geographies and the nomos” edited by historical geographer Steven Legg.[24] However, as prominent international law scholar Martti Koskenniemi has pointed out, Schmitt’s Nomos was not based on rigorous historiography but rather represented an arrangement of the theory he had already developed in Political Theology: Schmitt “gives the impression of describing a ‘concrete order’ when he is simply describing the logical corollaries of a theory of domestic absolutism.”[25]

However, the Nomos of the Earth also contained an aspect that Schmitt had first outlined in the article State Sovereignty and Free Sea from early 1941: the dichotomy between sea powers rooted in the universalism he opposed, and the land powers rooted in the particularism he defended.[26] Great Britain was, as a sea power, the most prominent bearer of universalism in the jus publicum europeaum.[27] The role of the US, by contrast, is something Schmitt has trouble pinning down in the 1950 Nomos. He gestures toward an America that no longer fits into the land-sea dichotomy, but he stops short of naming what he intuits.[28]

To better understand the reception of the Nomos of the Earth in decolonial theory, it is key to note that the English edition from 2003 included the 1955 article New Nomos of the Earth[29] as one of three “concluding corollaries”.[30] It is this text that Mignolo references most prominently.[31] Writing before the Sino-Soviet split and thus perceiving a confrontation between the West and the East, he judged that the “Eurocentric nomos of the earth”[32] that existed was destroyed following the First World War. Schmitt sketched three scenarios for the future: The first was the emergence of a “master of the world”[33] (Herr der Welt) – a single power capable of enforcing a binding order everywhere. Schmitt regarded this as incompatible with human nature, and it would have gone far beyond what would come to be referred to as Pax Americana. The second scenario was a continuation of the “current nomos of the earth”[34], marked by the shift of maritime predominance from Britain to the United States and the extension of this predominance into the aerial sphere, actively balancing between the other powers in the world. Although he regarded this as the most probable trajectory, he viewed it with marked antipathy. The third scenario was the rise of multiple great spaces each having a certain homogeneity and with the principle of non-intervention between them.[35] He strongly hoped for the third one – though by 1941, the expectation that such non-intervening great spaces would stabilize international order had already been disproven when the very powers Schmitt envisioned as respecting each other’s spheres of influence shattered that arrangement in practice.

Finally, in this exposition of Schmitt’s thinking, it should be emphasized that although he viewed the second scenario with marked antipathy, it structurally resembled – as political theorist and historian of ideas Herfried Münkler has pointed out – the very world order promoted by the EU over the last decades: the attempt to secure peace through increasing global economic interdependence under the protection of the United States.[36] Appropriating his arguments encompassed questioning this broader consensus at least partially.

Mignolo’s Appropriation of Schmitt

Before elucidating how Mignolo appropriated Schmitt, it is worth noting that Schmitt’s thought can be – almost by design – operationalized against American dominance. This greatly helped a theoretical reappreciation in states that question this dominance, like Russia and China.[37] The idea that a ‘multipolar’ world order – structurally similar to Schmitt’s third scenario – is desirable is not only fully consistent with Schmitt’s convictions laid out in The Concept of the Political – “the political world is a pluriverse, not a universe”[38]; he reinforced it when he later spoke of the “pluralist-multipolar”[39] world order. It is, then, no wonder that since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the idea of great spaces in the Schmittian sense has again gathered attention.[40]

Schmitt’s centrality to Walter Mignolo’s thought is evident in the fact that his 2011 book The Darker Side of Western Modernity, his most systematic work, opens its first chapter with a discussion of Schmitt’s Nomos of the Earth (1950), together with The New Nomos of the Earth (1955), which was included in the English edition he uses. Following Schmitt’s characterization of the jus publicum europeaum as the “second nomos of the earth”[41], Mignolo chose the heading “decolonizing the second nomos of the earth”[42]. Referring to the three scenarios above, or rather, the nomoi they would create, Mignolo holds that Schmitt gives the impression that “one of the three would obtain and hold the world together”. Laying out the complete framework that Mignolo proposes instead is beyond the scope of this article, but in essence, the development in the forthcoming decades will be characterized by “struggles, negotiations, competitions, and collaborations”; this will only end if “the agreement is reached that global futures shall be polycentric and noncapitalist”.

In another form and without reference to Schmitt, this general outlook had already been contained in his earlier book Local Histories/Global Designs (2000).[43] However, a new ingredient that features prominently in The Darker Side of Western Modernity is the concept of ‘dewesternization’, which had entered his writing shortly before, building on arguments of former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani.[44] For Mignolo, the process of ‘dewesternization’, while unable to transcend capitalism, could nevertheless help in overcoming fundamental problems in Western epistemology.[45] By explicitly privileging the East over the West, Mignolo’s perspective becomes compatible with geopolitical actors who rhetorically pursue the third scenario of multiple great spaces – particularly China and Russia. This holds all the more since Mignolo explicitly considers dewesternization to be a “state-led project”[46]. Furthermore, from Mignolo’s perspective the possible critique that great spaces with non-intervention principle are – as evidenced during the Second World War – not a stabilizing configuration can be countered at least from two positions: one, if the empires are non-Western, they may be less selfish than Western ones; and two, that arguments from established, and thus still Western-dominated, political science should not be a standard for decolonial practice.

This also becomes clear when he judges the declaration on international relations that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping signed on 4 February 2022, mere weeks before the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Even though the statement mentions the US multiple times with decidedly negative connotations,[47] according to Mignolo, “Decolonially read, the statement is not ‘against the West’ but rather ‘pro the East.’”[48] In the same article, Mignolo discusses the Chinese concept of ‘all under heaven’ (tianxia) as proposed by philosopher Zhao Tingyang[49] in a decidedly favorable manner, implying that it fills an important conceptual gap with regard to ‘dewesternization’ and also connects to the above-mentioned statement by Putin and Xi: “What Zhao proposes is a theoretical-political frame to make sense of de-Western pluriversal political philosophy and de-Western multipolarity for global interstate relations proposed by the joint statement.”[50] Mignolo’s positioning does not stop at framing China as a constructive actor. In the same work, adopting official Russian language, he clearly states: “Russia’s 2022 special operation in Ukraine, responding to NATO’s provocations, with the collaboration of Ukrainian government, to ‘contain’ Russia, is a signpost of the change of era and the advent of the multipolar world order that is tantamount with the advent of the third nomos of the Earth.”[51]

The Challenge of Critique: Decolonial Theory’s Academic Entrenchment

The troubling alignment between Mignolo’s decolonial theory and authoritarian geopolitics raises a crucial question: How can we effectively critique such positions when they are embedded in established academic frameworks that themselves resist challenge?

Mignolo’s work has gained legitimacy through endorsement by prominent figures in progressive academia. In a 2018 work, he acknowledged feminist philosopher of science Sandra Harding as “a mentor over the past years”[52] – highly significant given Harding’s central role in developing standpoint epistemology. Harding herself, writing about decolonial theory in 2016, argued that “the moral and political energies that continue to generate such discussions in [Latin America] are themselves productive for the rest of us.”[53] Standpoint epistemology, as political scientist Yascha Mounk has argued, has become a powerful force in shaping academic discourse and political consensus.[54] Within such a context, critique becomes problematic: who has the standing to challenge a decolonial theorist’s interpretation of non-Western alternatives? Can Western scholars critique Mignolo’s embrace of ’dewesternization’ without being accused of perpetuating epistemic violence?

When Mignolo frames Russia’s invasion as merely responding to NATO provocations and heralding a multipolar world order, the critical tools that might challenge such apologetics are neutralized by appeals to epistemic diversity. The same theoretical frameworks that have productively challenged Western universalism may now shield questionable political alignments from scrutiny. This suggests that addressing the reception of thinkers like Schmitt in decolonial theory requires more than historical scholarship or theoretical analysis. It demands confronting how the very architecture of contemporary critical scholarship – particularly its emphasis on positional authority and epistemic pluralism – can inadvertently immunize authoritarian appropriations against critique. Schmitt’s ghost persists not only in geopolitical projects but also in the conceptual architectures that shape how critique itself is distributed in contemporary academia.

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Notes

[1] For a prominent account, see Volker Weiß, Die autoritäre Revolte: Die Neue Rechte und der Untergang des Abendlandes (Klett-Cotta, 2017).

[2] Jan-Werner Müller, “Nazi Jurist Carl Schmitt’s Lessons for Today,” Foreign Policy, June 30, 2025, https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/30/nazi-carl-schmitt-authoritarian-government-international-law/.

[3] The concept of ordo amoris originates in Augustine, De Civitate Dei XV, and was later developed by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae II-IIae. Vance did not use the term explicitly in his Fox News interview on January 29, 2025, but posted “Just google ‘ordo amoris’” on X the following day in response to criticism. See Associated Press, “What Is ‘ordo Amoris?’ Vice President JD Vance Invokes This Medieval Catholic Concept,” AP News, February 6, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-catholic-theology-migration-e868af574fb2e742c6ed3d756c569769.

[4] Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, Elfte, korrigierte Auflage (Duncker & Humblot, 2021).

[5] On this interpretation, see Carlotta Voß, “Die Politische Theologie von J.D. Vance,” Politik & Ökonomie Blog, April 16, 2025, https://politischeoekonomie.com/die-politische-theologie-von-j-d-vance/.

[6] Ross Douthat, “What J.D. Vance Believes,” Opinion, The New York Times, June 13, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/jd-vance-interview.html.

[7] Matthew G. Specter, “What’s ‘Left’ in Schmitt? From Aversion to Appropriation in Contemporary Political Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt, ed. Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford University Press, 2016).

[8] Jan-Werner Müller, “Mit Schmitt gegen Schmitt und gegen die liberale Weltordnung. Zur transatlantischen Diskussion um Globalisierung, Empire und Pax Americana,” in Der Staat des Dezisionismus, ed. Rüdiger Voigt (Nomos, 2007).

[9] E.g. Naoki Sakai, The End of Pax Americana: The Loss of Empire and Hikikomori Nationalism, Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society (Duke University Press, 2022), 101.

[10] See, for example, Walter D. Mignolo, “The Explosion of Globalism and the Advent of the Third Nomos of the Earth,” in Globalization: Past, Present, Future, ed. Manfred B. Steger et al. (University of California Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.172.m. In the abstract, Mignolo describes the invasion as “Russia’s 2022 special operation in Ukraine, responding to NATO’s provocations, with the collaboration of Ukrainian government, to ‘contain’ Russia” and calls it “a signpost of the change of era and the advent of the multipolar world order that is tantamount with the advent of the third nomos of the Earth.” For a critique of Mignolo’s position but from perspective that also aligns itself with the decolonial movement, see Selbi Durdiyeva, “‘Not in Our Name’: Why Russia Is Not a Decolonial Ally or the Dark Side of Civilizational Communism and Imperialism – The SAIS Review of International Affairs,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs, May 29, 2023, https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/not-in-our-name-why-russia-is-not-a-decolonial-ally-or-the-dark-side-of-civilizational-communism-and-imperialism/.

[11] A systematic investigation would without a doubt carry out a more fine-grained division. For expositions of Schmitt’s thought, see Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt zur Einführung, 6., ergänzte Auflage 2021 (Junius Verlag, 2021); Jean-François Kervégan, Was tun mit Carl Schmitt?, trans. Bernd Schwibs, with Benno Zabel (Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

[12] Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 43.

[13] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Synoptische Darstellung der Texte, ed. Marco Walter (Duncker & Humblot, 2018), 166–67.

[14] Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 168–69.

[15] Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 168–69.

[16] Carl Schmitt, “Völkerrechtliche Formen des modernen Imperialismus,” in Positionen und Begriffe, im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailles 1923–1939, Vierte, korrigierte Auflage (Duncker & Humblot, 2014).

[17] Carl Schmitt, “Großraum gegen Universalismus,” in Positionen und Begriffe, im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailles 1923–1939, Vierte, korrigierte Auflage (Duncker & Humblot, 2014).

[18] Carl Schmitt, “Raum und Großraum im Völkerrecht,” in Staat, Großraum, Nomos: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916-1969, Zweite, unveränderte Auflage, ed. Günter Maschke (Duncker & Humblot, 2021).

[19] Carl Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte: Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht, Vierte, um ein Personenregister ergänzte Auflage der Ausgabe von 1941 (Duncker & Humblot, 2022).

[20] Schmitt, “Großraum gegen Universalismus.”

[21] It was only recently translated into English: Carl Schmitt, Writings on War, ed. Timothy Nunan (Polity, 2011). For an international bibliography of primary and secondary literature on Schmitt, see Alain de Benoist, Carl Schmitt: Internationale Bibliographie der Primär- und Sekundärliteratur (Ares Verlag, 2010). Its editor Alain de Benoist, though a leading figure of the global New Right, received support also from scholars on the Left like Chantal Mouffe.

[22] Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europeaeum, Fünfte Auflage (Duncker & Humblot, 2011).

[23] Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde, Fünfte Auflage, 171–72.

[24] Stephen Legg, Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt: Geographies of the Nomos, Interventions (Routledge, 2011).

[25] Martti Koskenniemi, “International Law as Political Theology: How to Read Nomos Der Erde?,” Constellations 11, no. 4 (2004): 495, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1351-0487.2004.00391.x.

[26] Carl Schmitt, “Staatliche Souveränität und freies Meer: Über den Gegensatz von Land und See im Völkerrecht der Neuzeit,” in Staat, Großraum, Nomos: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916-1969, Zweite, unveränderte Auflage, ed. Günter Maschke (Duncker & Humblot, 2021).

[27] Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde, Fünfte Auflage, 144.

[28] See especially the chapter “Sinnwandel der völkerrechtlichen Anerkennung” in Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde, Fünfte Auflage.

[29] Carl Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” in Staat, Großraum, Nomos: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916-1969, Zweite, unveränderte Auflage, ed. Günter Maschke (Duncker & Humblot, 2021).

[30] We use the paperback edition: Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, First paperback edition, trans. G. L. Ulmen (Telos Press, 2006), 324–35.

[31] See Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Latin America Otherwise (Duke University Press, 2011), passim. On page 27, Mignolo incorrectly claims that this text was also part of the second edition of the German version from 1974; but see Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europeaeum, Zweite Auflage (Duncker & Humblot, 1974).

[32] Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” 520.

[33] Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” 521.

[34] Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” 521.

[35] Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” 521.

[36] Herfried Münkler, Welt in Aufruhr: Die Ordnung der Mächte im 21. Jahrhundert (Rowohlt Berlin, 2023), 328.

[37] However, especially in China, the reception of Schmitt cannot be reduced to merely justifying state positions; see e.g. Sebastian Veg, “The Rise of China’s Statist Intellectuals: Law, Sovereignty, and ‘Repoliticization,’” The China Journal, no. 82 (July 2019): 23–45, Chicago, IL, https://doi.org/10.1086/702687; Xie Libin and Haig Patapan, “Schmitt Fever: The Use and Abuse of Carl Schmitt in Contemporary China,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 18, no. 1 (2020): 130–46, https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moaa015.

[38] Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 166–67.

[39] Carl Schmitt, “Die Ordnung der Welt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Staat, Großraum, Nomos: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916-1969, Zweite, unveränderte Auflage, ed. Günter Maschke (Duncker & Humblot, 2021), 602.

[40] Brendan Simms, Die Rückkehr des Großraums?, Carl-Schmitt-Vorlesungen 6 (Duncker & Humblot, 2023).

[41] Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth, 352; Schmitt, “Der neue Nomos der Erde,” 519.

[42] Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 27–35. The following quotes in this paragraph are on page 33.

[43] Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton University Press, 2000).

[44] Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, nos. 7–8 (2009): 161, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275.

[45] Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 47. More explicitly, he writes: “While dewesternization shares with rewesternization the ‘survival of capitalism,’ the confrontation takes place at other levels of the colonial matrix of power: the sphere of authority, of knowledge, and of subjectivity.”

[46] Walter D. Mignolo, “On Pluriversality and Multipolar World Order: Decoloniality after Decolonization; Dewesternization after the Cold War,” in Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, ed. Bernd Reiter (Duke University Press, 2018), 92. On the often-underestimated continuities between Schmittian thought and the early realist school of International Relations – where states are frequently treated as ‘black boxes’ – see Matthew Specter, The Atlantic Realists: Empire and International Political Thought Between Germany and the United States (Stanford University Press, 2022).

[47] Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China, “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development,” April 2, 2022, https://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?id=8215&lib=tax&SearchKeyword&SearchCKeyword.

[48] Mignolo, “The Explosion of Globalism and the Advent of the Third Nomos of the Earth,” 203.

[49] Tingyang Zhao, Alles unter dem Himmel: Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Weltordnung, trans. Michael Kahn-Ackermann, suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft 2282 (Suhrkamp, 2020).

[50] Mignolo, “The Explosion of Globalism and the Advent of the Third Nomos of the Earth,” 203.

[51] Mignolo, “The Explosion of Globalism and the Advent of the Third Nomos of the Earth,” 193.

[52] Walter D. Mignolo, “Foreword: On Pluriversality and Multipolarity,” in Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, ed. Bernd Reiter (Duke University Press, 2018), xv.

[53] Sandra Harding, “Latin American Decolonial Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge: Alliances and Tensions,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 41, no. 6 (2016): 1080, https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916656465.

[54] Yascha Mounk, Im Zeitalter der Identität: Der Aufstieg einer gefährlichen Idee, trans. Helmut Dierlamm and Sabine Reinhardus (Klett-Cotta, 2024).

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About the Author

Dr. phil. Harald Kümmerle, M.Sc., is Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo, where he heads the Knowledge Lab, which is focused on knowledge production and knowledge infrastructures. He has organized reading groups on topics including the international reception of Carl Schmitt’s thought and “imaginaries and modernities”. His research interests include the history of mathematics, new materialism, digital humanities, and critical data studies. His recent publications include “From Data Universalism to Data Particularism: Epistemologizing Digital Sovereignty Based on Germany’s and Japan’s COVID-19 Responses” Global Studies Quarterly, 2025, with Johannes Thumfart) and “Datenströme und Raumordnung: Japans Regulierungsmodell im globalen Kontext” (Zeitschrift für Digitalisierung und Recht, 2025).

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Other Articles in the Series “De-centering Academia: InterAsian Perspectives

Claudia Derichs, Riho Isaka and Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, De-centering academia: InterAsian Perspectives, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 03.02.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/64183

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Citation: Harald Kümmerle, Carl Schmitt’s Afterlife in Decolonial Theory: Rereading Walter Mignolo, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 10.03.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/64697

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