Decolonisation and gender : Perspectives on literatures and cultures of the Americas

• Authors: Romana Radlwimmer
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the recent past, decolonial proposals have become more and more important for feminisms of the Americas, that is, for Latin American and U.S. Latina/o theories and practices negotiating the signifi cance of gender. Decolonial feminist thought proposes multiple ways of deconstructing coloniality (the ongoing effects of colonisation), and distances itself from postcolonial feminisms by emphasising not only its own unique, historically diverse geopolitical situatedness in the Americas, but also discordance with the assumption of the postcolonial "silenced subaltern female subject". The article traces some of the conceptual travels of a decolonial feminist project as it is, today, under construction, and ponders on the options it presents for literary and cultural studies of the Americas on a transborder level. It then presents two decolonial feminist theoretical proposals: María Lugones’ Coloniality of Gender and her attempt to move, as she says, toward a decolonial feminism, as well as Gloria Anzaldúa’s concepts of Borderlands and Nepantla. Lugones analyses "gender" as an inherently colonial category which defi nes an ecological, economic, political, spiritual, and epistemological modernity for the Americas; Anzaldúa envisions a world of decolonial, feminist poetical interstices while employing creative practices. These notions reshape the tools available for future cultural and literary analysis and propose a holistic politics of healing.

Keywords

EN

decolonial feminism; literary and cultural studies; the Americas; María Lugones; Gloria Anzaldúa

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 16-34
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Romana Radlwimmer

• Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i. / Institute of Sociology CAS, Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

Identifiers

DOI

10.13060/25706578.2017.18.2.369