At our first meeting of the fall term, we discussed Alex Adamson's paper "Coloniality of Gender: María Lugones, Sylvia Wynter, Decolonial Feminism, and Trans and Intersex Liberation". Below are some of the questions and ideas that were discussed in our meeting:
· Feminist scholarship in general has a history of FGM critiques, and these debates are tied to womanhood and girlhood in deeply racialized ways, whereas intersex mutilation is not talked about and not conceived of as racialized.
intersex mutilation is not talked about and not conceived of as racialized.
· Refreshing to see discussion of policy, institutions; decolonial feminism is often abstract and doesn’t engage with specific political events or what can we do in terms of action. Adamson’s paper offers a distinct move that doesn’t happen very often.
abstract and doesn’t engage with specific political events or what can we do in
terms of action. Adamson’s paper offers a distinct move that doesn’t happen very often.
that doesn’t happen very often.
· Is the author’s critique author about a specific trend of intersex activism? How much of intersex activism is more like a liberal white activism, or is it drawing or working or trying to create solidarity or coalitions? Which ways does intersex activism and scholarship work with intersection of racism and coloniality?
· Why would the West be outraged by the mutilation? This is an issue of private property: how can you mutilate our bodies? Propertization, part of the issue that the West thinks that this is hurting them, more about property. Political economy of reproduction. Seeing mutilation in this vein.
· We can think of reproduction as an economy, yes there is surrogacy, black and brown bodies are the center of surrogacy. How the West reacts to any FGM intervention: “Oh we have to stop this barbaric mechanism”, is also a way to say I can do it and you can’t.
· In both cases the body is taken as property in intervention. In one case is denounced. In the other, normalizing bodies and normalizing society that generates a type of economy. It is an industry. This industry cannot be fully separated from productive economy.
· Language of mutilation interesting. Thrown around to deny trans healthcare and surgery.
· Intersex as a dislocating point in the conversation. Wynter would say there is a criticism of practices outside of their culture but there has to be a dislocating point and the article finds these. Western feminism not culturally aware of mutilation of becoming gender, important to track this history.
· What do we make of the monstrosity concept? White reclamation, monstrosity means different things to racialized people. There is an ambiguity here. Fanon: overdetermination from the outside and his existence is constructed as an other, doesn’t use monster, savage, animality. White scholars take a race-blind approach to taking up monstrous. If you are engaging decolonial theory there is a responsibility to address the ways in which racialized people are not down for this.
· For Wynter, there is a danger when we are trying to create other conceptions of human and we bring over dominant conception. She is challenging us to rethink the human and think new genres of the human. Important not to give on reconceptualizing the human but being aware of the limitations of the Western conceptions and how it might rear its head. Wynter’s project encourages this type of rethinking.
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