Rethinking Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics in a Global

Neoliberal Context

Ochy Curiel, Manuela Borzone, Alexander Ponomareff

Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, Volume 14, Number 2, 2016,

pp. 46-55 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/650687

Access provided at 14 Dec 2019 18:23 GMT from Princeton University

 Ochy Curiel
Translated by Manuela Borzone and Alexander Ponomareff

Rethinking Radical Anti-Racist

Feminist Politics in a Global
Neoliberal Context

Abstract
This article rethinks the challenges of radical politics within a global neoliberal context by
rekindling conversations about the history of Afro-Latin American women’s movements. The
article explores the current economic crisis and its dehumanizing effects primarily on racialized
populations, poor people, and women, and locates these groups in relation to the rise of the
world-system. Likewise, it identifies the theoretical contributions made by Afrodescendant
Latin American women to decolonial thought, not only in relation to the historical domination
of the significance of the nation-state but, more importantly, as regards to the dependency
relation of political subjects within capitalism, western modernity, European colonization,
and the processes of racialization and sexualization of social relations. Acknowledging that the
Afro women’s movement in Latin America and the Caribbean is going through difficult times,
this article considers the role of radical decolonial politics in the creation of a particular strain
of thinking that would allow the movement to understand the specific configuration of these
systems of domination, to overcome the binarism of theory and practice, to promote the creation
of political alliances, to reconceptualize autonomy, to question essentialism, and to reconsider
social class.

At this juncture, as the individualism that produces neoliberalism makes

collective action more difficult, I would like to reexamine our history as
racialized Afro women by thinking about and reflecting on a more radical

Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 14, no. 2 (2016): 46–55.

Copyright © 2016 Smith College. doi: 10.2979/meridians.14.2.04

46
politics. We live in a time in which economic, political, social, and human
crises are increasingly expressed as extreme poverty and social insecurity,
through the lenses of biopolitics, territorial control, and extractivism on
behalf of multinational corporations complicit with the state. All of this
increasingly dehumanizes people, which primarily affects racialized and
poor populations and, above all, women.
It is necessary to understand the current crisis as continuities in the
modern world system (Wallerstein 1979) that began with Europe as
the center of economic, social, political, and cultural power. From that
center, a non-western social and cultural alterity developed out of the
processes involved in the expansion of capitalism on a planetary scale
through colonialism. Colonialism, here, is understood not just as the
conquering and domination of peoples and civilizations, but also as the
production of knowledge about “other” cultures stemming from ideas of
evolution and progress. This led to the oppositions between modernity and
tradition, civilization and barbarism, development and underdevelopment,
metropolis and periphery, globalization and localism, and domination
and dependency. Colonialism introduced a paradox: the process of
colonialization allowed Europe to build itself as both the center of and the
paradigm for modernity, while simultaneously situating America as its
periphery (Dussel 1999). This paradox, or doubling, has been translated
as social constructions, thought, and practices as what Anibal Quijano
has termed “the coloniality of power and knowledge” (Quijano 2000,
123). Later on, Maria Lugones identified it as “the coloniality of gender”
(2008, 19) by analyzing the way in which the colonial order introduced
heterosexual gender binary logics, which operates in conjunction with race
and class.
However, this world-system is not only centered in Europe. In the
present day, the United States plays a central role in the world system by
establishing hierarchical structures of power on economic, cultural, social,
and symbolic levels.
Radical politics entails the understanding of the continuity of coloniality
in our experience as racialized women, as well as in the ideas and theories
that we have produced thus far. Our work is a valuable source that allow us
to locate and comprehend the articulation of systems of oppression for our
context.

Ochy Curiel  •  Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics 47

 What are usually labelled as black women’s movements—later ‘Afro
women’s movements’—in Latin America are part of the so-called “new
social movements” which arose in the 1970s and gained increased traction
in the 1980s. Their novelty was in the fact that their concerns were not
limited to class struggles but rather, they mobilized based on “race,” sex,
culture, and sexual orientation, among other identities. These groups
and collectives have articulated themselves outside of the paradigm of
modernity insofar as they define themselves as not white, not heterosexual,
not from privileged class positions, and, even, not women.
Therefore, our genealogy as a social movement has a rich history that
dates back to the Ialodês, the emblematic figures of African women.
These were feminine political leaders who worked primarily in urban
centers. Afro-Brazilian feminist Jurema Werneck (2005) has proposed
the recuperation of their histories and myths to comment on the history
of thought and critical practice created to oppose the patriarchy in the
Americas.
This genealogy is connected to the histories of women such as Maria
Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, and many more who
have been pioneers of and inspiration for what is known as Black Feminism
in the United States. This feminist line of thought and political action came
into prominence by pointing out the racism in white feminism and the lack
of gender awareness in the Civil Rights movement in the United States.
In their view, this racism and sexism translated into an articulation of the
subordination of women at the intersections of sex and gender, race, class,
and sexuality (Curiel 2007b).

Contributions Made by Racialized Women in

Latin America and the Caribbean

One important contribution made by Afrodescendant Latin American

and Caribbean feminists has been their work in exposing the effects of
mestizaje as nationalist ideology. As such, mestizaje carried with it a project
of homogenization which resulted from colonialism and Eurocentrism and
implied the invisibilization, stereotyping, and violation of racialized women
and their bodies.

48 MERIDIANS  14:2
 Furthermore, these feminists have shown how research conducted about
black women in the colonial period only focused on black women as slave-
breeders, wet nurses, sexual objects of desire for their masters, or, most
generously, as a labor force.
Another important contribution has been the creation of a new
vocabulary to understand the complexity of Afro-Latin American realities.
One such example is Amefricanidad—posited by Afro-Brazilian scholar Léila
Gonzales—which is a historical process of resistance, of reinterpretation,
and of the creation of new cultural forms with African models as referents,
but that simultaneously recuperates otherwise overlooked historical and
cultural experiences of colonialism. Thus, this concept both constructs a
singular identity while maintaining the plurality of identities (Barrios 2000,
54–55).
These contributions have led to an analysis of the sexual and the racial
divisions in the labor force. They have shown that, in the case of black
women, public and private spheres were never separate like “white”
feminism proposed. Black women have always worked at home and on
the streets beginning in colonial times. Sueli Carneiro has proposed to
“blacken feminism” to understand this relationship between racism and
sexism, and to “feminize the antiracist struggle” to understand the effects
of racism on women throughout the history of the Americas (Carneiro
2005).
Their work has also rendered visible racism and sexism experienced
by Afro women. They have called attention to issues such as the lack of
statistical information and research categorized by race and sex, the racial
and sexual segregation of public services, the racist and sexist character of
the violence against black and indigenous women, and the stereotypical
and violent images of Afro women in the media. At the same time, they have
criticized the way in which the sexual and racial divisions of labor place
Afro women in less valued and lower-earning spheres of work, including
domestic work, maquilas, and informal and sexual industries. Additionally,
they have exposed the rhetoric of “looking professional” as a racist and
sexist marker that prevents Afro women from accessing certain jobs. All of
this is seen as the consequences of colonialism and slavery.
Even though it remains a topic of contention among Afro-theorists and
within the Afro movement, some Afrodescendant lesbians have related

Ochy Curiel  •  Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics 49

 racism and sexism to heterosexuality as the obligatory and normative
system. This has brought together their theoretical standpoint and their
political practices (Curiel 2007a).
These groups have contributed, generally, to postcolonial and decolonial
critiques by elaborating a deeper and more systematic political and
theoretical thinking which has grown out of their political practices. All
of this has contributed not only to the production of feminist theories, but
also to discourse in the social sciences and their attempts to universalize
“woman” as a subject position. This has entailed the contextualization of
critical categories, including patriarchy, the sexual division of labor, family,
reproduction, and sexuality. These issues could no longer be analyzed
uncritically once we take into account the experiences of Afro and “Third
World” women.
Additionally, they stressed the importance of experience in
constructing theoretical apparatuses and in political practice. This, in
turn, questioned the assumption that knowledge can only be produced in
academic circles.
Above all, their most important epistemic contribution has been exposing
the interrelation, imbrication, and intersection of systems—or matrices—of
domination and of “race,” class, and sexuality. This has provided continuity
for these Afro-American contributions and been the foundation for new
perspectives from the Latin American and Caribbean contexts.
By taking all of these invaluable contributions together, I see that it
is necessary not only to decolonize our thinking but to do the same for
contemporary political practices. Contextualizing and, above all, putting
into practice this work of decolonization implies tackling a series of
challenges which I will detail below.
I understand decolonization as the recognition of the economic, political,
and cultural historical domination between nations which resulted from
the European colonization of other peoples, and the effects produced
by coloniality in our social imaginary. Furthermore, decolonization, in
this sense, recognizes the dependence we, as political subjects, endure
as a result of the cultural and political processes produced by capitalism
and western modernity. Likewise, this dependence is also a product of
European colonialism, especially its socializing and sexualizing of social
relations, the imposition of heteronormativity as a political regime, the

50 MERIDIANS  14:2
imposition of a universal ideological framework, and the naturalization
and institutionalization of various political practices. These political
practices are still dependent on and subordinated to development policies
and colonial logics which operate under the banner of international
cooperation.
Decolonization is, therefore, a political and epistemological position
which traverses individual and collective thought and action: our
imaginaries, our bodies and sexualities, and our ways of being and doing in
the world. This necessitates a kind of “cimarronage” drawn from imposed
and colonized social practices and the construction of “other” thoughts in
accordance with our lived experiences.
My point of departure is that Latin American and Caribbean Afro
women’s movements are experiencing a low point. This is the result of
three issues: disarticulation, the weakening of their political proposals, and
the institutionalization of their trajectory. The resurgence of the movement
will have to respond to the following issues:

• How to understand the specific context in which we find ourselves

so that it allows for the construction of political alliances between
feminists and Afro women critics. The caveat is that we must try to
avoid falling into unresolved differences and producing inequalities
which arise in the intersections of race, class, and sexuality, as well as
from our individual contexts and experiences.
• How to act as Afro feminist women critics in Latin America and the
Caribbean. This is important because in this vast region, there are
internal armed conflicts, forced migration, and extreme poverty, as well
as extractivism of natural resources in Afro and indigenous territories.
Therefore, it is necessary to find new ways to understand the concrete
imbrication of systems of domination in our current context.
• How to interpret, in light of our contexts and thinking, the articulation
of autonomy for our bodies, our desires, and our sexuality without
denying our material situations.

I believe that our Afro American, Chicana, lesbian, Third World ancestry
provided us with the answers to these issues a long time ago.
First, we must question every essentialized identity. Despite what
the Afro women’s movement argues, it is not possible to build a social

Ochy Curiel  •  Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics 51

 movement based solely on specific identities. Identity politics mattered
both to individuals and social movements in the 1980s and 1990s. It was
a necessary focus for policies that allowed us to position ourselves as
subjects at a specific moment in time, but it can no longer be our priority.
Multiculturalism has been absorbed by market dynamics and, with this
absorption, the meaning of identity politics has shifted.
Afro-Dominican Yuderkys Espinosa (2003) has problematized identity
politics within feminism, as well as within antiracist and socio-sexual
movements. She has argued against the limitations of essentialized
identities, thus showing the danger of this practice. Additionally, she has
called for the need to transcend identity politics in order to build political
projects with other subjectivities against varied systems of oppression.
Following Gayatri Spivak (2009), I think that we ought to frame identities
as a strategic essentialism, but with the caveat that this cannot be our main
policy. We need to be more antiracist than black or Afro, which means
we cannot forget that we are black or Afro, but this also has to intersect
with common sites of oppression and, simultaneously, other histories of
resistance and transformation.
Second, we must develop autonomy away from the agendas of the
United Nations and other forms of colonialistic international cooperation.
Even though it was an overwhelming phenomenon during the 1990s, the
majority of organizations and Afro women collectives still active today rely
on the UN, its world conferences—in Durban and Beijing, for instance—
and its projects for development, which are nothing more than expressions
of neoliberalism. Therefore, we must, once and for all, depart from these
logics and push for creative, varied, and, most importantly, counter-
hegemonic projects against those authorized by the state, multinational
corporations, and neocolonial cooperation, which perpetuate structural
racism.
Third, we must create our own modes of thinking. This means destroying
the binary opposition between theory and practice. To decolonize oneself
entails comprehending what our foremothers already knew: theory is the
result of practice and the production of theory is a social practice. The
movement has to think and analyze itself from a theoretical standpoint in
order to define its discourse. After all, there is no social movement without
political discourse.

52 MERIDIANS  14:2
 Even though we have to make visible the manner in which we, Afro
women, live, and how racism, (hetero)sexism, and classism impacts us, the
movement keeps diagnosing itself from victimized positions. This is why
Afro women’s movements must also produce a political analysis of why this
phenomenon occurs; they must position themselves critically in light of this
issue in order to create an alternative politics.
We must therefore produce more theory out of our own practice. We
must transition out of “testimony” by crafting thoughtful political subject
positions, and from there create our theories.
Fourth, we must re-think social class from a non-reductionist
perspective. Class is still a marker of social inequality, even if it is no longer
a trending topic in privileged academic circles. We need to reconceptualize
class and its intersection with racism and with sexism in order to propose
and experiment with autonomous and communal forms of collective action.
This will imply leaving behind the niche of analyzing single problematics
by actually understanding the intersection of issues such as neoliberal
politics, biopolitics, consumer logics, information and communication
technology, migration policies, armed conflicts, low-intensity wars, and
even heterosexism (for those who are not lesbian).
Fifth, we must establish critical political alliances. We can no longer
afford to be a movement without political articulations. This is not only
important for a mixed Afro movement but also for any critical social
movements. This will entail addressing the following issues:

• The identification of political proposals by groups such as indigenous

and settler populations, academics, autonomous and libertarian
feminists, and feminist lesbians, among others. These groups create
new worlds and articulate political projects that stem from differing
histories of oppression. After all, these are issues that unite us because
we have been subjects of similar historical grievances from colonial
times through the age of global neoliberalism.
• The definition—together with other movements—of new political
strategies for our times. In other words, how and from where to forge
transnational counter-hegemonic alliances in opposition to aspects of
neoliberal globalization. We can no longer think of ourselves as being
disconnected from the rest of the world. These political connections
cannot develop exclusively among members of a privileged Afro sector.

Ochy Curiel  •  Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics 53

 We must work together to develop a global politics that will impact the
local and the collective as well. This implies the creation of our own
political thinking, theories, and practices.

This has been my invitation. I hope that this special issue will contribute
to the creation of new types of political and critical articulations and
alliances that stem from political projects and not only from racial and
ethnic identities. The time has come for us to go beyond them.

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About the Author

Ochy Curiel is an Afro-Dominican lesbian, feminist, academic, singer,
and social anthropologist. She is the postgraduate curriculum coordinator
of the School of Gender Studies of the National University of Colombia,
and professor and member of the Gender Studies Research Group (GIEG)
of the same college. Curiel is a member of the Latin American Group for
Feminist Studies, Formation, and Action (GLEFAS), and is an activist in the
lesbian feminist and Afro women’s movements in Latin America and the
Caribbean.

Ochy Curiel  •  Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics 55