Mangrovian Encounters between Epistemologies of the South and New (Feminist) Materialism
Keywords:
new materialism, decoloniality, epistemology, Eurocentrism, tropical materialism, epistemologies of the South, new feminist materialismAbstract
With the increased interest sparked across academia in both new materialism and epistemologies of the South, old colonial and patriarchal habits rear their vicious heads. On the one hand, feminist contributions are, in many cases, ignored or watered down in mainstream discussions in both approaches, pushing feminist political projects at the core of these epistemologies to the margins. On the other hand, the engagement in conversations and commitment to the ideas that emerge from the epistemologies of the South are limited or not recognized, a situation that contributes to perpetuating coloniality of knowledge. Accounting for these challenges, this paper puts into conversation epistemologies of the South (focusing on theorists from the Americas) and new feminist materialism in terms of specific concepts such as dualism, difference, time, universality, body-land, and relationality. By showing both the affinities and differences between the two, this paper demonstrates the richness and diversity of arguments; furthermore, it investigates what new materialism has to do with decolonization and tropicality. This paper concludes by addressing the questions: to what extent and in what way might new (feminist) materialism need to be decolonized? And how does it speak to “tropical materialisms”? Although this paper does not specifically focus on the tropics, tropical images of thought such as the “mangrove,” are evoked throughout the text.
References
Ahmed, S. (2008). Open forum imaginary prohibitions. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15(1), 23-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506807084854.
Arnold, D. (2000). “Illusory Riches”: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840–1950. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21(1), 2000, 6-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9493.00060.
Asambleas del Feminismo Comunitario. (2010). Pronunciamiento del feminismo comunitario latinoamericano en la Conferencia de los Pueblos sobre Cambio Climático. Biodiversidadla. https://www.biodiversidadla.org/Documentos/Pronunciamiento_del_Feminismo_Comunitario_latinoamericano_en_la_Conferencia_de_los_pueblos_sobre_Cambio_Climatico.
Barad, K. (2001). Re(con)figuring space, time, and matter. In M. Dekoven (Ed.), Feminist locations: Global and local, theory and practice (pp. 75-109). Rutgers University Press.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2012). Nature’s queer performativity. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 1-2, 25-53. https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v0i1-2.28067.
Braidotti, R. (2002). Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2005). A critical cartography of feminist post-postmodernism. Australian Feminist Studies, 20(47), 169-180. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164640500090319.
Braidotti, R. (2011). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary
feminist theory (2nd ed.). Columbia University Press.
Braidotti, R. (2022). Posthuman feminism. Polity Press.
Cabnal, L. (2016). De las opresiones a las emancipaciones: Mujeres indígenas en defensa del territorio cuerpo-tierra. Biodiversidadla. https://www.biodiversidadla.org/Documentos/De_las_opresiones_a_las_emancipaciones_Mujeres_indigenas_en_defensa_del_territorio_cuerpo-tierra.
Canal Encuentro. (2018). Historias debidas VIII: Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6HfhZUGhc.
Chao, S., & Enari, D. (2021). Decolonising Climate Change: A Call for Beyond-Human Imaginaries and Knowledge Generation. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(2), 32–54. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3796.
Clary-Lemon, J., & Grant, D. M. (Eds.). (Forthcoming August 2022). Decolonial conversations in posthuman and new material rhetorics. Ohio State University Press.
Colpani, G. (2022). Postcolonial responses to decolonial intervention. Postcolonial Studies, 25(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2022.2041695.
Dolphijn, R., & van der Tuin, I. (2012). New materialism: Interviews and cartographies. Open Humanities Press.
Eggleston, J. D. (2019). Encountering agency with decolonial thought, new materialism, and The Vegetarian. [Unpublished MA thesis]. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal politics: The real and the possible. Duke University Press.
EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional). (1996). Cuarta declaración de la selva Lacandona. https://palabra.ezln.org.mx/comunicados/1996/1996_01_01_a.htm.
Gargallo, F. (2014). Feminismos desde Abya Yala: Ideas y proposiciones de las mujeres de los 607 pueblos en nuestra América. Editorial Corte y Confección.
Grosfoguel, R. (2016). Del “extractivismo económico” al “extractivismo epistémico” y “extractivismo ontológico”. Tabula Rasa, 24, 123-143.
Haraway, D. (2004). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In The Haraway reader (pp. 63-124). Routledge.
Hinkelammert, F. J. (1996). El mapa del emperador. Editorial Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones.
hooks, b. (1994). Holding my sister’s hand. In Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Klein, Naomi. (2013, March 6). Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson. Yes! https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson.
Korol, C. (2020, January 17). Guatemala: Feminismo comunitario y recuperación de saberes ancestrales. Noticias de América Latina y el Caribe. https://www.nodal.am/2020/01/guatemala-feminismo-comunitario-y-recuperacion-de-saberes-ancestrales/.
Lander, E. (2000). La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas. CLACSO.
Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742-759. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01137.x.
Lundberg, A., Regis, H., & Agbonifo, J. (2022). Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3877.
Lundberg, A., Vasques Vital, A., & Das, S. (2021). Tropical Imaginaries and Climate Crisis: Embracing Relational Climate Discourses. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(2), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3803.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 240-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548.
Mendoza, B. (2016). Coloniality of Gender and Power: From Postcoloniality to Decoloniality. In Disch, L. & Hawkesworth, M. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (pp. 100-121). Oxford University Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 449-514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647.
Möser, C. (2021). Materialism, matter, matrix, and mater: Contesting notions in feminist and gender studies. In B. Bianchi, E. Filion-Donato, M. Miguel, & A. Yuva (Eds.), Materialism and Politics (pp. 203–214). ICI Berlin Press. https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-20_11.
Okazawa-Rey, M. (2018). No freedom without connection. In C. T. Mohanty & L. Carty (Eds.), Feminist freedom warriors: Genealogies, justice, politics, and hope (pp. 15-33). Haymarket Publications.
Paredes. J. (2008). Hilando fino: Desde el feminismo comunitario. Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas.
Quijano, A. (1992). Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad. Perú Indígena, 13(29), 11-20.
Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005.
Rosiek, J. L., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. L. (2019). The new materialisms and indigenous theories of non-human agency: Making the case for respectful anti-colonial engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3-4), 331-346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419830135.
Santos, B. S. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press.
Segato, R. L. (2010). Género y colonialidad: En busca de claves de lectura y de un vocabulario estratégico descolonial [Unpublished manuscript]. Available at https://nigs.ufsc.br/files/2012/09/genero_y_colonialidad_en_busca_de_claves_de_lectura_y_de_un_vocabulario_estrategico_descolonial__ritasegato.pdf.
Swinehart, K. (2019). Decolonial time in Bolivia’s Pachakuti. Signs and Society, 7(1), 96-114. https://doi.org/10.1086/701117.
Thiele, K. (2014). Pushing dualisms and differences: From “equality versus difference” to “nonmimetic sharing” and “staying with the trouble”. Women: A Cultural Review, 25(1), 9-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2014.901110.
Todd, Z. (2016). An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another word for colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1), 4-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124.
van der Tuin, I. (2009). “Jumping generations”: On second- and third-wave feminist epistemology. Australian Feminist Studies, 24(59), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164640802645166.
Wingrove, E. (2016). Materialisms. In Disch, L., & Hawkesworth, M. (Eds.), The oxford handbook of feminist theory (pp. 454-471). Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 CC-BY
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.
2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.
4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.
5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.