[Walter] Mignolo is right to suggest that ‘emancipation’, as it was figured in European liberal discourse, is different from ‘liberation’ as it is conceived of in ‘decolonial’ discourse[…] At the same time, a disproportionate emphasis on radically different ‘categories of thought’ obscures the extent to which many ‘liberation’ struggles were committed to universalism — and not only because they were part of the dominant language or the colonizer’s categories of thought. Indeed, rather than offer sutured, self-contained alternatives to the idea of universal freedom, resistance often deliberately showed up the colonizer’s version of universalism to be anything but universal. Universals had to be embodied through experience and resistance, not refused as ‘European’. This often entailed working with the ‘logic of modernity’, decolonizing rather than repudiating it, teasing out its revolutionary promises.

— Insurgent Empire by Priyamvada Gopal (Page 26)