From the shared voice to the appropriate experience

Contributions/debates from feminisms of the South

Abstract

Far from an instrumental conception of the personal, the affective and the intuitive as a means to knowledge, in this paper we will address the interrelations, the mutual implications and the impossibility of thinking these instances separately in feminist practices. We recover, at the crossroads between feminisms of the South and decolonial feminist theories, discussions that contribute to the construction of knowledge committed to social transformation, affected and situated.

First of all, we will review the transitions of some feminist practices and conceptualizations: from the North to the South (the slogan “the personal is political” and the consciousness-raising groups); and from the South to the North (the concept of the body-territory and its praxis). Based on the experience of consciousness-raising groups as a political strategy capable of accounting for the collective process of the intimate and personal as a subaltern feminist practice, we find in the personal and affective narrative, tools that at the same time have repercussions on our own knowledge as situated researchers.

Secondly, we ask ourselves, what transformations are produced in these journeys? How are ideas politicized so that they are not depowered? Who are at risk of being devoured? Of these transits and feedbacks, nourishing when they occur within the framework of a critical decolonial feminist ethic; cannibalistic, when the extractivist/patriarchal zeal predominates; we will deal with in this article. To this end, we will pay attention to the forms of transmission, power relations and contextualized dynamics. Finally, we will address the possible dialogues between southern and decolonial feminisms, in order to build bridges rather than abysses.