Feminisms and women's struggles in LA
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 is lived through racisms and social constructions of 'race' in Latin America" (6) That is, gender identities and relations are shaped by race relations. In turn, "ethnic identities and class identities are always constructed and refracted through gender identities" (8). As a consequence, we cannot look at gender, race and class
4. The ideological construct of the nation and its narratives rely on invented ethnicities, i.e. mestizo identity, and the exclusion and othering of indigenous subjects.
5. Symbols of nationhood are highly gendered: the masculine military and the mothers of the nation. However, these discourses are also racialized, as only some mothers are deemed as patriotic in contrast to unruly or racialized motherhood. Women in different contexts of political repression have strategically appropriated this symbol of motherhood to resist violence, i.e. the 'motherist' groups such as the Argentinian Madres or the Chilean Relatives of the Dissapeared have evoked the images of suffering and sacrificial motherhood promoted by the Catholic discourse.
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 is lived through racisms and social constructions of 'race' in Latin America" (6) That is, gender identities and relations are shaped by race relations. In turn, "ethnic identities and class identities are always constructed and refracted through gender identities" (8). As a consequence, we cannot look at gender, race and class
4. The ideological construct of the nation and its narratives rely on invented ethnicities, i.e. mestizo identity, and the exclusion and othering of indigenous subjects.
5. Symbols of nationhood are highly gendered: the masculine military and the mothers of the nation. However, these discourses are also racialized, as only some mothers are deemed as patriotic in contrast to unruly or racialized motherhood. Women in different contexts of political repression have strategically appropriated this symbol of motherhood to resist violence, i.e. the 'motherist' groups such as the Argentinian Madres or the Chilean Relatives of the Dissapeared have evoked the images of suffering and sacrificial motherhood promoted by the Catholic discourse.
"It is not possible (and also inaccurate and harmful) to talk about a unitary category of Latin American women"
ReplyDeleteWould you say, likewise, that it's wrong to talk about a a unitary category of Chilean women? What about class or racial or regional differences between women in Chile, for instance?
Absolutely. The use of the notion of “Chilean women” is definitely a concept to be aware of, because it creates the illusion of a homogeneous category with common characteristics and interests, and glosses over conflicts and power relations among women that, as you say, have to do with class, race, sexual orientation, regional differences, etc. In fact, when different ideological projects have invoked “Chilean woman” (in singular) or "women", they have frequently assigned a normative, univocal image and meaning to womanhood / femininity, thus excluding (racialized, poor, queer, etc.) women who do not fit in these definitions.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this does not mean that we cannot invoke this category at all. In some discursive contexts, i.e. within debates over reproductive health, we need to resort to this category to refer temporarily to the concrete bodies that are socially/culturally marked as women in Chile and thus experience concrete effects that derive from these normative definitions (i.e., lack of alternatives when facing an undesired pregnancy). To avoid essentializing “Chilean women” (through biological and/or cultural determination) and avoid creating normative definitions of what it means to be a Chilean woman, we can move through the tension strategically, as Richard suggests, depending on what the situation requires, and being quick to acknowledge fractures and differences on "Chilean women" experience this category according to their specific location in multiple power structures.