This qualitative study scrutinises how green energy investment affects Indigenous Wayúu people in Colombia's La Guajira region. Employing coloniality of power and decolonial feminism frameworks, we delve into Wayúu women's struggles and resilience in defending territories against large-scale wind energy projects. Our findings suggest that governments and businesses are 'tuned in' to the economic benefits of these projects, yet 'tuned out' from Indigenous peoples' ontologies, concerns, needs and cosmovisions. This dynamic prompts questions about the unintended consequences of organisations' engagement with Indigenous peoples through corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Despite good intentions, CSR practices that are 'tuned out' from Indigenous peoples' cosmovisions may inadvertently reinforce power imbalances and further marginalise Indigenous communities. Our study highlights the need to honour Indigenous territories and protect Indigenous women's rights in long-term investments. Clean energy focus can mask green colonialism, which Wayúu women actively safeguard, upholding Indigenous worldviews via feminist decoloniality. We advocate for businesses to incorporate diverse perspectives beyond the dominant western worldview into their climate change mitigation actions and CSR strategies, and for public policies to balance decarbonisation efforts with Indigenous rights to contribute to sustainable and equitable energy transitions.
Abstract This article focuses on the role of servants in María Lugones' "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception." I show that Lugones uses and erases the work of servants in developing her understanding of world-traveling. This theoretical marginalization and instrumentalization challenges her claim to capture concrete, lived experience. This article argues that Lugones' theory is "pseudo-concrete": it capitulates into the very abstractions it seeks to overcome. Focusing on the role of servants reveals the class character of world-traveling and, in turn, its inability to grasp class relations. This article, thus, invites decolonial feminists to reconsider the advantages of class analysis for understanding not only capitalist domination but also perception, identification, and love.
For more than two decades, the vast production of post-structuralist/post-positivist feminist critique and postcolonial feminist thinking within the field of International Relations (IR) and, more recently, Global Politics (GP) has prompted critical investigations on their modern and colonial foundations (for examples, see, Sylvester 1993; Pappart and Marchand 1995; Gruffyd Jones 2006; Shilliam 2010). In doing so, different epistemological positions have been deployed in attempts to destabilize narratives that (re)produce dominant ideas about 'the international' and 'global politics.' Today, these contributions constitute a fruitful background to the current wave of academic interest focused on critically understanding the epistemic foundations of IR and GP as disciplines responsible for thinking about how power operates in international and global spheresDecolonial thinking has recently played a key role in this critical endeavour (Icaza 2010; 2015; Taylor 2012; Icaza and Vazquez 2013). Belonging to a different geo-genealogy2 than that of post-colonial studies, decolonial thinking takes as its point of departure the acknowledgement that there is 'no modernity without coloniality' (Quijano 2000; Mignolo 2003; 2013; Walsh 2007; 2010; 2011; 2012; Lugonés 2010a; 2010b; Vazquez 2009; 2011; 2014). For the purposes of this text, the relevance of this affirmation is that coloniality as the underside of modernity constitutes an epistemic location from which reality is thought. This locus of enunciation, following Mignolo, means that hegemonic histories of modernity as a product of the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution are not accepted but challenged in order to undo the Eurocentric power projection inherent to them. Precisely, in seeking to avoid becoming just another hegemonic project, decolonial thinking is also understood as an option — in contrast to a paradigm or grand theory — among a plurality of options
El objetivo del siguiente ensayo es aportar a la construcción del debate sobre la blanquitud, desde un posicionamiento feminista descolonial, e indagar desde ahí las discusiones presentes sobre el lugar de las feministas blancas o blanqueadas en el proyecto descolonial en la Abya Yala. Para ello, se acude a diferentes registros discursivos como el de la propia experiencia, el teórico y el de las representaciones en obras pictóricas y literarias, a través de los cuales se va armando un entramado de reflexiones que dan cuenta sobre la razón de ser de un feminismo descolonial, la construcción de la blanquitud en coordenadas geopolíticas específicas, el lugar de las mujeres blancas allí y las discusiones sobre producir conocimiento y acción política en el terreno del oxímoron, es decir, la posibilidad de construir un espacio donde pueden converger dos o más elementos contradictorios y opuestos ; The objective of the following essay is to contribute to the construction of the debate on whiteness, from a decolonial feminist position, and to investigate from there the present discussions about the place of white or bleached feminists in the decolonial project in the Abya Yala. To this end, different discursive registers are used, such as that of our personal experience, the theoretical one and the one of the representations in pictorial and literary works, through which a framework of reflections is elaborated that give account on the reason of being of a decolonial feminism, the construction of whiteness in specific geopolitical coordinates, the place of white women there and the discussions about producing knowledge and political action in the field of oxymoron, that is, the possibility of constructing a space where two or more contradictory and opposed elements meet
El objetivo del siguiente ensayo es aportar a la construcción del debate sobre la blanquitud, desde un posicionamiento feminista descolonial, e indagar desde ahí las discusiones presentes sobre el lugar de las feministas blancas o blanqueadas en el proyecto descolonial en la Abya Yala. Para ello, se acude a diferentes registros discursivos como el de la propia experiencia, el teórico y el de las representaciones en obras pictóricas y literarias, a través de los cuales se va armando un entramado de reflexiones que dan cuenta sobre la razón de ser de un feminismo descolonial, la construcción de la blanquitud en coordenadas geopolíticas específicas, el lugar de las mujeres blancas allí y las discusiones sobre producir conocimiento y acción política en el terreno del oxímoron, es decir, la posibilidad de construir un espacio donde pueden converger dos o más elementos contradictorios y opuestos ; The objective of the following essay is to contribute to the construction of the debate on whiteness, from a decolonial feminist position, and to investigate from there the present discussions about the place of white or bleached feminists in the decolonial project in the Abya Yala. To this end, different discursive registers are used, such as that of our personal experience, the theoretical one and the one of the representations in pictorial and literary works, through which a framework of reflections is elaborated that give account on the reason of being of a decolonial feminism, the construction of whiteness in specific geopolitical coordinates, the place of white women there and the discussions about producing knowledge and political action in the field of oxymoron, that is, the possibility of constructing a space where two or more contradictory and opposed elements meet
This reflection article is developed based on the German seminar Decolonial Feminism: contributions to the strengthening of the women's social movement in Colombia from 2015 to 2020, which emphasizes on the experiences of women's social movements in the country and whose basis is decolonial feminism. Initially, the problem statement is presented; this section offers some key theoretical elements and the objective of the academic process executed. Next, the development of the research is presented through analytical, interpretative and critical perspectives, as well as the theoretical inquiries and the knowledge from the orality of some women belonging to collectivities, who participated in the conversation Decolonial Feminism: experiences and narratives of organizational expressions of women in Colombia; this brought together in dialogue a group of people who reflected their lifestyles and ancestral teachings. In such, a way that, the research findings are presented, in which contradictions against the initial approaches of the project are evidenced, analyzing, rethinking and deconstructingimaginaries that generate violence and, finally, the main conclusions that reveal the need to recognize and validate the subalternized knowledge and practices as other non-hegemonic ways of doing politics. ; El presente artículo de reflexión se desarrolla con base en el Seminario Alemán Feminismo decolonial: aportes al fortalecimiento del movimiento social de mujeres en Colombia periodo 2015 al 2020. En este, se abordaron las vivencias de algunas expresiones organizativas de mujeres en el país, cuyo sustento es el feminismo decolonial. Inicialmente, se expone el planteamiento del problema; este apartado ofrece algunos elementos teóricos claves y el objetivo del proceso académico ejecutado. Enseguida, se presenta el desarrollo de la investigación a través de perspectivas analíticas, interpretativas y críticas, así como las indagaciones teóricas y el conocimiento desde la oralidad de algunas mujeres pertenecientes a ...
Abstract: This essay highlights my first-hand experiences as a participant in the 2019 Black Transnational Decolonial Feminism summer program in Brazil. Grounding the article in critical scholarship—including Black feminist thought and decolonial feminism—I explore, reflect upon, and examine key challenges and possibilities that emerged in the program. I am interested in contributing to fostering transnational, Black feminist solidarity and forging connections across lines of contention.
El presente trabajo pretende indagar en una genealogía feminista- otra que desde los años 60 y 70 viene cuestionando el racismo, el clasismo y el heterosexismo epistémico presente en el pensamiento político feminista de corte occidental, así como analizando la interseccionalidad entre estas diversas variables. De este modo, se considera que tanto el feminismo lesbiano, como el feminismo negro, el feminismo de color o el feminismo chicano, entre otras muchas propuestas, han llevado a cabo inequívocamente análisis feministas con objetivos decoloniales y que, por tanto, sería interesante para este último paradigma reconocer y nutrirse de estas andaduras feministas. Por último, se vinculan algunas de las propuestas del feminismo decolonial a esta genealogía periférica a través del feminismo coalicional que nos propone Lugones. ; Aim of this work is to investigate the feminist genealogy, which from the 60 and 70 is challenging racism, classism and the epistemic heterosexism existing in Western feminist political thinking, analyzing the overlapping between these different variables. In this way, it can be considered that lesbian feminism, black feminism, color feminism or chicana feminism, among other proposals, have led without any doubt feminist analysis with decolonial objectives and therefore would be interesting to recognize these feminist proposals and to consider them as an example. Some proposals of the decolonial feminism are linked to this peripheral feminist genealogy through the coalitional feminism proposed by Lugones.
Feminisms have had a significant impact on social work discussions in Latin America in recent decades. However, the gap between academic discussions and professional practice remains wide. Based on a qualitative study that included 69 semi-structured interviews with social workers in Chile, in this article, we focus the analysis on the experiences of women social workers implementing mental health programmes. These are women – professionals facing extremely precarious working conditions – who work with other women who, while below the poverty line, are users of state health policy. The findings suggest that in these highly precarious spaces, the division between professional and the user is blurred, producing what feminist philosopher María Lugones calls 'liminal space'. Professionals and users establish alliances and practices of resistance from that liminal space to challenge the oppressions they experience. Drawing upon a decolonial feminist perspective, we identify challenges for social work such as problematising professional bonds, incorporating structural readings of precariousness and feminised resistance, and repositioning the value of frontline social workers' and users' knowledge. We can learn from these women's experiences that question the deepest foundations of colonial and patriarchal capitalism still present in training and professional practice.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the modern-colonial capitalist system has been consolidated by a Eurocentric logic that has aggravated the North-South gap. Thus the international economic relations that imposed the generation and racialization of labour were forged. In this sense, the assurance of the socio-economic rights of the working class of the Global North was the product of a process imbricated by the factors of modernity, (neo)colonialism and development. Therefore, the urgency of deconstructing the current ecocide and genocidal economic system is presented, for this new world order has profited from the overexploitation and death of thousands of women. This investigation implements a theoretical-methodological intersectional approach, that is to say, to understand the subordination of women there is a need to do so from a set of co-constitutional variables (gender, race, sexuality, spirituality, etc.) and from "situated knowledges" as Donna Haraway puts it. This perspective allows us to go beyond gender oppression, for which it will be essential to actively listen to the experiences of other women who have been marginalized and excluded by hegemonic and Eurocentric feminisms, only considered as objects of study never as political subjects. This work is implicated in the will to study and move towards an alternative reading of international relations. For this purpose, it is my proposal to begin in the feminist margins of decolonial feminisms, from the ideas of thinkers who are characterized by not seeking a consensus but a conversation from difference. Regarding the structure, the first part of the article will present a critique of mainstream international relations discourse from a decolonial perspective. Thus, the aim is to prove through a critique of the hegemonic paradigm that international relations serves the interests of the Global North as a consequence of Eurocentric thinking. Subsequently, the relegation of reproductive work to women linked to the colonial process will be studied. Furthermore, it will seek to demonstrate the effects of the international economic system on the subalternized, racialized, and colonized lives of workers, refugees, or migrants. In relation to this issue, the study and review of historical factors is fundamental because international relations cannot be understood without studying history; that is, the creation of the current international economic system as a consequence of the construction of the international and sexual division of labour and the processes of colonization and racialization. In turn, the above study has as an objective to demonstrate that the care economy is the backbone of the functioning of the international economic system. In other words, if women - traditionally responsible for maintaining lives - went on general strike, the world economy would come to a standstill. Likewise, the violence caused by the modern/colonial capitalist system on the bodies of the subalternized will be analyzed. In this sense, the epistemologies of the South become essential for the study of the neocolonial North-South economic relations where violence against women plays a key role. Examples of this are free-trade zones, extractivism, or in the worst of the cases: wars. Finally, a dialogue between decolonial feminisms and the feminist economy is presented to rethink and justify welfare as a path towards the protection of planetary life. In short, the global context is a system that has ceded the baton to a model that makes it impossible to guarantee the care of lives as a consequence of a nature that is Eurocentric, racist, colonial, heteropatriarchal, ecocidal and so forth. The proposal to urge an alternative is justified through a crisis of a systemic nature which, despite attempts to blur its permanence, is still present through political and socio-economic conflicts. Thus, the Global North is suffering from a process leading to areas that were once part of the centre are now peripheral - as a consequence of the globalised crisis and increased by austerity policies. This consolidates a political, economic, ecological and ethical crisis, which forces us to question the direction in which we are navigating and how we will manage this process, even if this seems inevitable with respect to environmental degradation and being immersed in a context of social hyper-segmentation, where growing inequalities seem to be naturalized and at the same time legitimized. For this reason, this article aims to establish a dialogue between descolonial feminisms and feminist economics to seek a consensus for the creation of a feminist, subversive and common agenda. For this sort of reflection and questioning the presence of international relations becomes indispensable. From the beginning, this discipline should go hand in hand with the transition phase aimed at replacing capital with the care economy and sustainability of life as the epicentre of the system. This research seeks to outline the nonconformity of accepting that history has already been written against those who prevent us from dreaming of the change we want and believe in. But why now? The present moment is decisive. In the face of the threat to planetary life from a destructive economic system, it is more necessary than ever to participate in the creation of another paradigm of international relations through other knowledges. Undoubtedly, the image of the Amazon in flames is further proof of the urgency of initiating a transformation of the global political and socio-economic system. From where and for what purpose is knowledge produced? What role does the economy play within international relations? Who benefits and who is harmed by the globalized capitalist model? Where do women stand within the economic system? Which lives are worth living? Is it possible to initiate an alternative to capitalism from Europe? These questions are not posed with the aim of giving a definitive answer, but with the intention of provoking dialogue and reflection. That is to say, against the logic of the ethics of war, it is manifested to promote the transition of the current international economic system towards a new model for which it will be essential to initiate an analysis of international relations from feminist genealogies and from decolonial thought. ; A partir de la mitad del siglo XX se consolidó el sistema capitalista moderno/colonial, por medio de la lógica eurocéntrica que agravó la brecha Norte-Sur. Así se forjaron las relaciones económicas internacionales que impusieron la engeneración y la racialización del trabajo. En este sentido, la garantía de los derechos socioeconómicos de la clase trabajadora de una parte del planeta (Norte), fue el producto de un proceso imbricado por los factores de modernidad, (neo)colonialismo y desarrollo. De este modo, se presenta la urgencia de deconstruir el sistema económico actual ecologicida y genocida, que ha sido el creador de este nuevo orden mundial que ha rentabilizado la sobreexplotación y la muerte de miles de mujeres. Así, esta investigación bebe de la aplicación de un enfoque teórico-metodológico interseccional, es decir, es necesario entender la subordinación de las mujeres a partir del conjunto de variables co-constitutivas (género, raza, sexualidad, espiritualidad, etcétera) y desde los conocimientos situados de Donna Haraway. Respecto a la estructura, en la primera parte del artículo se presentará una crítica al discurso mainstream de las Relaciones Internacionales desde la perspectiva descolonial. Posteriormente, se estudiará la relegación del trabajo reproductivo a las mujeres vinculada al proceso colonial, además, se pretenderá demostrar los efectos del sistema económico internacional en las vidas de las subalternizadas, sobre las mujeres trabajadoras, las racializadas, las colonizadas, las refugiadas, las trans o las migrantes. En último término, se presenta un diálogo entre los feminismos descoloniales y la economía feminista para repensar y justificar el bienestar como camino hacia la protección de la vida planetaria. En definitiva, el contexto global es un sistema que le ha cedido la batuta a un modelo que imposibilita garantizar el cuidado de las vidas como consecuencia de su naturaleza eurocéntrica, racista, colonial, heteropatriarcal, ecologicida y un largo etcétera. Por esta razón, este artículo abre una puerta al diálogo entre los feminismos descoloniales y la economía feminista para tratar de encontrar consensos que permitan crear una agenda feminista, subversiva y común. Para este camino de reflexión y cuestionamiento la presencia de las Relaciones Internacionales se vuelve indispensable. Esta disciplina debe acompañar, desde el inicio, la fase de transición que consiga desplazar el capital para situar en el epicentro del sistema los cuidados y la sostenibilidad de la vida.
URL del artículo en la web de la Revista: https://www.upo.es/revistas/index.php/ripp/article/view/3658 ; El presente trabajo pretende indagar en una genealogía feminista- otra que desde los años 60 y 70 viene cuestionando el racismo, el clasismo y el heterosexismo epistémico presente en el pensamiento político feminista de corte occidental, así como analizando la interseccionalidad entre estas diversas variables. De este modo, se considera que tanto el feminismo lesbiano, como el feminismo negro, el feminismo de color o el feminismo chicano, entre otras muchas propuestas, han llevado a cabo inequívocamente análisis feministas con objetivos decoloniales y que, por tanto, sería interesante para este último paradigma reconocer y nutrirse de estas andaduras feministas. Por último, se vinculan algunas de las propuestas del feminismo decolonial a esta genealogía periférica a través del feminismo coalicional que nos propone Lugones. ; Aim of this work is to investigate the feminist genealogy, which from the 60 and 70 is challenging racism, classism and the epistemic heterosexism existing in Western feminist political thinking, analyzing the overlapping between these different variables. In this way, it can be considered that lesbian feminism, black feminism, color feminism or chicana feminism, among other proposals, have led without any doubt feminist analysis with decolonial objectives and therefore would be interesting to recognize these feminist proposals and to consider them as an example. Some proposals of the decolonial feminism are linked to this peripheral feminist genealogy through the coalitional feminism proposed by Lugones. ; Universidad Pablo de Olavide
