Gender and Equivocation: Notes on Decolonial Feminist Translations

Abstract

Latin American feminist theories, especially those articulated by subaltern/racialized subjects, operate within an epistemological referent that is distinct from the analytic models of critique historically based on centre and periphery, tradition and modernity dichotomies. An effect of transculturation and diasporic movements that create space and time disjunctures, the chronotrope of these feminisms is the interstice, and its practice is rooted in cultural translation in the constitution of other forms of knowledge (saberes propios) and humanity. By replacing dichotomous approaches of social-political conflicts for complex analysis of the in-between spaces — las fronteras — of the social landscape — and, therefore, by emphasizing through the practice of translation relationalities between hegemonic forces and subaltern contestations, these feminisms are today in the forefront of discussions on how to decentre and decolonize Western knowledge formations. They are, in very creative ways, enabling alternative possibilities that go beyond those offered by feminist postcolonial theories.