When the Body Speaks (to) the Political

Feminist Activism in Latin America and the Quest for Alternative Democratic Futures

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5858932
AutoresNatália Maria Félix De Souza (0000-0001-9914-8985, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo)
Ano2019
Volume41
Fascículo1
Páginas89-112
Data de publicação2019-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoContexto Internacional (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0102-8529 • E-ISSN: 1982-0240
EditoraFapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1590/s0102-8529.2019410100005
OpenAlexW2910127099
SCIELO_PIDS0102-85292019000100089
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas39
Referências citadas14

The article claims that the feminist movements emerging in the context of contemporary Latin American political struggles - such as Ni Una Menos - allow for a re-conceptualisation of the political, along with its subjects and objects. The uniqueness of these movements is predicated on the way they managed to link the ordinary killings of women's bodies to the extraordinary alliances between different social movements. A closer inspection into these ongoing experiences that mobilise different, rhizomatic arenas of political entanglements - such as the internet and the streets - allows us to see how Latin American feminist attachments and movements can redefine democratic practices and build different forms of community. By resisting what is perceived as 'a war against women in Latin America,' these movements allow for understanding the operation of a gendered necropolitics, which ties women's death with the ultimate functioning of modern politics and modern subjectivities. In doing so, they politicise not only the lives (and therefore voices) of women who are struggling in/for the political, but also the deaths (and therefore silences) on which the political has been built. Furthermore, by politicising the role of the body in the political and ethical arena, these movements open our political imaginaries to the possibilities of new attachments, filiations and articulations that are not subsumed under abstract universal categories and values, nor limited to identitarian and thus legalistic affirmations of the political. Following these arguments, I argue that contemporary feminist articulations in Latin America productively dispute the validity of the abstract, universal, modern 'human' to think alternative political futures. By politicising materiality and embodiment alongside language and discourse as productive of political ontologies, feminists open the space for reclaiming the political function of the female body

Context (archaeology · Democracy · Latin Americans · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Intersectionality · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Latin American and Latino Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law