Ethnorace and Latine Decolonial Feminisms: Filling the Gaps of Erasure
Files
Publication Date
Summer 2024
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
Black feminism; Latinx; Latin American philosophy; ethnorace; intersectionality
Description
This paper discusses how decolonial feminists, specifically from a Latine perspective, can mitigate issues of erasure using the concept of ‘ethnorace.’ One major figure in decolonial Latine feminist theory, María Lugones, has offered notable contributions to the field through her analysis of the modern/colonial gender system. Despite the advancements her work makes, her readings of Black feminist scholars have been critiqued for the potential erasures enacted by her account of decolonial feminism. For example, Kathryn Sophia Belle and Emma D. Velez have highlighted how Lugones’s interpretation of intersectionality may misrepresent the theoretical framework as developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, as well as the history of intersectional approaches in Black feminist theory. In this paper, I argue that the concept of ethnorace can be used within decolonial feminism to address these erasures. Using Linda Martín Alcoff’s argument for Latine identity as an ethnoracial identity, I propose a new account of ethnorace as an identification category that considers the racial, ethnic, and historical/political aspects of an identity. Such an account, I argue, brings awareness to both the heterogeneity and racialization of such a group. If this account of ethnorace is used in a rereading of Lugones’s work, it can alleviate the erasures of Black feminist theory committed in her original reading of intersectionality and, moreover, bring into focus the experiences of multiply-marginalized Latine people. This paper therefore serves as a contribution to feminist decolonial theories concerned with coalition-building across marginalized communities.
Disciplines
African American Studies | Ethnic Studies | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Latina/o Studies
Format
MOV
Medium
video
Size or Duration
13:48 minutes
City
San Antonio
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
