RARG Pt 4 - Decolonising and community feminisms in Latin America

Helen Dixon (she/they) is a british-nicaraguan queer feminist activist, academic and published writer/poet and translator. They will be facilitating four workshops (as a co-participant among peers) to celebrate and explore decolonising and community feminist theory and methodologies from Abya Yala*. The purpose of the workshops is to share, discuss and challenge ourselves in reflecting about Latin American decolonial/community feminist thinking and practices, and the complex ethics of their transnational translation. Three of the texts will be available in Spanish and English versions.

The first week will set out a context for discussing gender and coloniality based on Rita Segato’s dismantling of universalist western/northern perspectives on Latin American realities. The second week takes up Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s critiques of the decolonial turn and her recuperation, from practice into theory, of Aymaran linguistic and cultural notions of identification, multiplicity and intercultural reciprocity. In the third week we will engage with the ideas and implications of proposals for community/communitarian feminism written by Lorena Cabnal and built from the experience and cosmovisions of indigenous feminist women in Abya Yala. Lastly we will look at Rosa Dos Ventos Lopes Heimer and Nina Franco’s adaptation of community feminist concepts and embodied methodologies in working as/with Latin American migrant women in the UK.

As part of the discussion each week, but with special emphasis in Week 4, we will look at the ethical dilemmas and political implications of translating conceptual language, methodologies and activist practices across highly differentiated realities in a world shaped by neoliberal globalisation.

Each week Helen will endeavour to include at least one generative/creative working method consistent with the thinking and practices we’ll be exploring, albeit within the limitations of our online gathering.

Week 1 – Tuesday, October 25th - Gender, patriarchy and coloniality

Gender and Coloniality: From Low-Intensity Communal Patriarchy to High-Intensity Colonial-Modern Patriarchy // Género y colonialidad: en busca de claves de lectura y de un vocabulario estratégico descolonial

Rita Laura Segato (English translation Pedro Monque)

Week 2 – Tuesday, November 8th -Decolonising practices and discourses

Ch’ixinakax utxiwa:
A Reflection on the Practices
and Discourses of Decolonization // Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (English translation Duke University Press

Week 3 – Tuesday, November 22nd - Community/communitarian indigenous feminism

Approach to building the proposal for epistemic thinking of indigenous feminist women from Abya Yala // Acercamiento a la construcción de la propuesta de pensamiento epistémico de las mujeres indígenas feministas comunitarias de Abya Yala

Lorena Cabnal (English translation Helen Dixon)

Week 4 – Tuesday, Decmber 6th - Transnational and methodological translations

Travelling Cuerpo-Territorios: A decolonial feminist geographical methodology to conduct research with migrant women

Rosa Dos Ventos Lopes Heimer

The Radical Approaches Reading Group

This seoires is the fourth iteration of the Poetry Translation Centre's Radical Approaches Reading Group, a online space dedicated to the discussion of revolutionary ideas in theoretical texts. It’s a space to learn together, to grow in our understandings and get to grips with the core arguments of theorists thinking through and writing about decolonisation, gender, the construction of history and much more.

* Abya Yala is a term used by many Indigenous peoples to describe the North and South American continents. The name has been used since Pre-Columbian times and comes from the Kuna language used by the Native American Guna people. The Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani suggested using the term as an alternative to the names given to the same land by foreign people.