Anti-colonial Feminist Ramblings About Everything and Anything

Garretón, Manuel A. Incomplete democracy: political democratization in Chile and Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. En este libro, Garretón sostiene que Chile comenzó su transición durante el plesbicito de 1988, que la democracia se consolidó con el primer gobierno democrático en 1990 (cuando se estableció que no se podía regresar a la dictadura militar) y que el problema es que la democracia chilena es hoy una democracia incompleta, mediocre, con enclaves autoritarios. Cuestiona la idea de la exitosa "doble transición chilena" —a la democracia y al libre mercado— pero se enoja con Moulian y con otros intelectuales de izquierda que niegan que haya habido transición democrática o alternativamente, que ésta haya terminado. Garretón cree que esto último negaría lo específico del concepto de transición y le quitaría sentido a su uso. Para Garretón el desafío es volver a reconstituir al Estado, los actores sociales y los partidos políticos como r

Thayer, Willy. La crisis no moderna de la universidad moderna (Epílogo del conflicto de las facultades). Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1996. El argumento central de Thayer, en lo que concierne a mi tema, es que la transición es lo que ocurrió durante la dictadura, el tránsito desde el Estado moderno a la sociedad de mercado, donde el Estado deja de ser un referente de conducción ideológica del proyecto nacional. Este tránsito hace caer en crisis las categorías modernas de la política (Estado, Pueblo, progreso, etc.) que le servían de referente. El estado de ánimo de aburrimiento que acompaña la post-dictadura tiene que ver entonces con el fin de la épica y la proliferación inocua de las ideologías, ya no como confrontación de proyectos históricos, sino como un consumo cosmético dentro del menú neoliberal. El capitalismo tardío entonces, no requiere de una ideología ni de un orden político en particular.

Williams, Gareth. The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America. “Chapter 7: Operational Whitewash and the Negative Community”. Pp. 273-304. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. In Latin America, nationalist projects have been based on the establishment of normative identities and communities that indicate their limits in opposition to non-normative identities. Hegemony, thus, constitutes at the same time the grounds for subalternity (6). Subalternity is understood by Williams as "the often violent subject effect of national and post-national processes of social subordination, but also as the epistemological limit at which the nonhegemonic announces the limits of hegemonic thought and of hegemonic thinking". (10) Williams is looking for sites at the limits of current operations of whitewashing of both the relations between past and present violence and of heterogeneities collapsed under the idea of the national (such as the "chola" i

Velasco, Juan. “Performing Multiple Identities: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and His “Dangerous Border Crossings”. Latino/a Popular Culture edited by Michelle Habell-Pallan and Mary Romero. New York, London: New York University Press, 2002. Velasco looks at Gómez-Peña body of work which comprises performance and writing, and points at several issues raised by it: - commodification of indigenous identities - connections between the production of the 'authentic Other' and the new world order - performative nature of identity - colonial discourse as relying on a binary between colonizers and colonized identities - strategies by which colonized subjects can subvert this binary Anzaldúa has previously constructed the notion of the 'border' as a site for articulation of a 'new mestiza consciousness', a type of subjectivity that refuses to be on one side or the other. Gómez-Peña however, seems to be more skeptical about any 'positive model of cultural hybridity' since

Smith, Carol A. “Myths, Intellectuals, and Race/Class/Gender Distinctions in the Formation of Latin American Nations”. Journal of Latin American Anthropology . September 1996, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 148-169. Smith examines how "mestizaje" emerged linked to nationalist ideology but has also been appropriated in different ways by the identity politics of some "new social movements" in Latin America. The myth of mestizaje entails at the same time the illusion of homogeneity and the affirmation of internal racial hierarchies. Hegemonic national culture needs to be produced and controlled by state institutions. Mestizaje is presented as the "natural" or biological basis for the project of a national culture, and it is then a key ideological and mythical component of nation-building processes in LA. However, as subaltern subjects have more access to the means of production of images and discourses about them, they can manipulate these meanings. Smith is specially in

Levinson, Brett. “Dictatorship and Overexposure: Does Latin America Testify to More than One Market?” Discourse - 25.1&2, Winter & Spring 2003, pp. 98-118. Levinson argues the 1973 coup never ceased happening, it actually stroke with all its horror in the post-dictatorship, when the possibilities for articulating different political projects was radically closed, as the ideology of the free market was imposed as a consensus, and precisely, presented not as an ideology anymore, but as what just is , or "it goes without saying". To challenge this is actually not to make any sense. The coup really just hits with all its strength now, when the victims of state violence find there is no possible discourse available to account for the experiences. When violence is recognized, is done under the paradigm of measurability and trade, the exchange of crimes of one side in the market of forgiveness and forgetfulness of the transition. "Transition consequently commands a poet

Como el universo se empeña en ser paradójico y sorprendentemente absurdo, el tiempo y el espacio se doblan como un pañuelo y hoy el 11 de septiembre me encuentra reflexionando sobre la dictadura y la postdictadura en Estados Unidos, en la casa de mi tío que es veterano de los marines, con mi otra tía viuda de un detenido desaparecido y mi primo Roberto, que nació de esa relación pero no alcanzó a conocer a su papá. Mi tío Pedro está detenido desaparecido desde el 14 de Febrero de 1975, cuando tenía 22 años y además de estudiar Historia era dirigente del MIR. Yo tenía menos de un año cuando esto ocurrió y mi tía Lucía estaba entonces embarazada de 5 meses de mi primo Roberto. Esto ha sido una tragedia familiar de la cual se habla poco, y de a poco, al enterarme de más detalles, he comprendido por qué. En esa época (en la UP y al principio de la dictadura) varios de mis tíos, tías y mis papás militaban en el MIR. Mi primo Roberto es como mi hermano porque vivió con nosotros intermitentem

Richard, Nelly. Feminismo, género y diferencia (s). Colección Archivo Feminista. Santiago: Palinodia, 2008. Este libro contiene una serie de ensayos, algunos ya publicados antes pero aquí revisados y expandidos. A través de ellos, Richard establece los siguientes puntos: El feminismo puede ser visto tanto como un movimiento social; una teoría; o como una operación que problematiza las relaciones de poder desde "el signo mujer" como significante o metáfora de lo subordinado, lo marginal, lo no-hegémonico. En este sentido, el feminismo y "lo femenino" pueden ser formulados como una crítica a las tecnologías de la representación que postulan a la identidad como lineal, unitaria y fija. Ser mujer no coincide siempre en este sentido ni con "lo femenino" ni con lo feminista (en el caso de la literatura, por ejemplo). "Lo femenino" entonces sería un proceso de significación constante, siempre imbuido en una intertextualidad, que permite articular múltip

Bergman, Marcelo and Monica Szurmuk. “Gender, Citizenship, and Social Protest: The New Social Movements in Argentina”. The Latin American subaltern studies reader edited by Ileana Rodríguez. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2001. This article deals with the case of the murder of a young, dark-skinned, working-class woman in Argentina —in which the son of a senator was involved— and the following movement of "marches of silence" that emerged to demand justice. The authors make the argument that in post-dictatorship Argentina, ideas and expectations about citizenship have changed, and that the way of doing politics has been profoundly impacted by the Madres as they inaugurated "public grieving and public suffering as political praxis" (391). While in other times this case would have been quickly dismissed as an individual crime, in this new context it became profoundly politicized, and triggered broader demands to change a corrupted political and economic system th

Radcliffe, Sarah and Sallie Westwood. “Gender, Racism and the Politics of Identities in Latin America”. “Viva”: women and popular protest in Latin America. Pp. 1-29. London; New York: Routledge, 1993. In this chapter, Radcliffe and Westwood make the following points: 1. Women's gender and political identities and practices have to be understood in their specific contexts, as they are ever shifting and multiple. 2. It is not possible (and also inaccurate and harmful) to talk about a unitary category of Latin American women, as one can speak of LA as a whole region only in conventional terms. If we do not acknowledge the fractures and multiple locations that women in LA, we contribute to silence and render invisible the women who are indeed oppressed by other women, i.e. working class, indigenous and other racialized women. It is also necessary to look beyond the commonplaces and stereotypes that exoticize LA, as this is part of a racist and eurocentric narrative. 3. "Gendered i

Stephen, Lynn. “The Construction of Indigenous Suspects: Militarization and the Gendered and Ethnic Dynamics of Human Rights Abuses in Southern Mexico”. Perspectives on Las Américas: a reader in culture, history and representation. Edited by Matthew Gutmann. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Stephen examines the gendered and sexualized patterns of militarization and torture in Oaxaca and Chiapas, and how in these processes, long held myths and stereotypes about women and indigenous peoples are mobilized in what she calls "the cultural packaging of violence", that is, the construction of subjects who can be targets of violence. She notes based on her ethnographic work that gender and ethnicity are critical for the construction of the worthless, subversive, dangerous subjects of violence (for the analysis of violence in Chile, we would need to add class as another critical factor, and the racialization of working-class subjects). She also points at the continuity of colonial

Stephenson, Marcia. “The Architectural Relationship between Gender, Race, and the Bolivian State”. The Latin American subaltern studies reader edited by Ileana Rodríguez. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2001. This article tackles the relationship between narratives of nationhood in Bolivia, race, gender and space. It argues that the idea of Bolivia as a modern nation-state requires to put in place the ideology of mestizo identity (the progressive whitening of the population), the "othering" of indigenous populations, and a gendered and racialized conception of space to domesticate the heterogeneous social body. Taking as a start point the planning and development of rural houses, Stephenson analyzes the ideological implications of their spatial distribution: hegemonic discourses of modernity and citizenship carry gendered distinctions between the inside/domestic and the outside/public, as well as the demand for the acculturation of indigenous communities, who are expected

Nagel, Joane. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations”. Nations and Nationalism: A Reader. Edited by Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Nagel examina la relación entre el nacionalismo y la construcción de la masculinidad hegemónica, particularmente en Estados Unidos; como el nacionalismo requiere de la exaltación de un cierto tipo de "hombría" y de feminidad; así como la sexualización de la guerra y del militarismo en general. En primer lugar, Nagel explora como la cultura del nacionalismo y el militarismo es inseparable de la cultura e ideología de la masculinidad hegemónica. En Estados Unidos, la masculinidad hegemónica se construye a través de las ideas de superioridad nacional y el imperialismo agresivo. Es más, las ideologías de la masculinidad, el colonialismo, nacionalismo, militarismo e imperialismo son inseparables entre sí y emergieron de manera conjunta a fines del siglo XIX. Temas c

Gutmann, M. “Gender Conventions” in The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. By Matthew C. Gutmann. Pp. 1-10 Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Gutmann enfoca su trabajo etnográfico en los significados asociados a la masculinidad y la paternidad en ciudad de México. Uno de sus objetivos es cuestionar la premisa con que han operado hasta ahora los estudios etnográficos en asumir apriori una categoría homogénea del "hombre mexicano" que frecuentemente es caracterizado como macho-machista, violento, borracho y ausente de la crianza de los niños. De hecho, Gutmann está preocupado por la forma como las/os antropólogas/os han contribuido a fijar este estereotipo, haciendo notar que es imposible encontrar una identidad masculina unitaria debido a fracturas generacionales, de clase, región y etnicidad; y que los significados sobre qué significa "ser macho" han ido cambiando a través del tiempo. De hecho, a Gutmann le parece un poco problemático y raci