This article discusses the epistemic structures of the modern world in relation to four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century (1450-1650). It argues that the epistemic privilege of Western Man was build upon the genocide/epistemicide against colonial subjects. The article relates the racist/sexist epistemic structure of Westernized Universities and the modern world to the genocide/epistemicide against Muslims and Jews in the conquest of Al-Andalus, against indigenous peoples in the conquest of the Americas, against African people in the conquest of Africa and their enslavement in the Americas and against European women burned alive accused of being witches. These four genocide/epistemicides are foundational to modern/colonial epistemic structures and to Westernized Universities. The main thesis of the article is that the condition of possibility of the 1640s cartesian idolatric God-eye view of the "I think, therefore I exist" is the "I exterminate, therefore I exist".
Westernized Universities; racist/sexist epistemology; world-system; genocide/epistemicide; colonial conquest