Articles and Chapters by Rosalba Icaza
En: Alejo, Antonio; coordinador (2018) Activismos transnacionales de México: diálogos interdisciplinares ante la política global, Mexico:Instituto Mora, pp 2
Rosalba Icaza Garza INTRODUCCIÓN: SITUÁNDOME #Yamecanse de la mirada colonial del twitter! Escri... more Rosalba Icaza Garza INTRODUCCIÓN: SITUÁNDOME #Yamecanse de la mirada colonial del twitter! Escribía el tuit anterior en 2015 desde mi cuenta @icazarosalba, mientras los medios impresos, visuales y virtuales difundían sin parar la búsqueda de dos sospechosos del asesinato de doce personas en el diario satírico Charlie Hebdo ocurrido el 7 de enero en la ciudad de París, Francia. Entre los ultimados se encontra-ban dibujantes franceses que por sus caricaturas sobre el islam y el profeta Mohamed en particular, habían recibido amenazas de muerte de parte de radicales islámicos. Los medios hablaban de un atentado contra la libertad de expresión, de un ataque contra la civilización y en contra de la razón. Se hablaba, incluso, de un choque de civilizaciones (Cassidy, 2015). El discurso que contrastaba la cuna intelectual de occidente, Francia y por ende de sus ciu-dadanos e instituciones, con la barbarie de oriente y en particular del islam y sus creyentes, (re)producía una vez más las subjetividades que se encarnan en las representantes de gobierno, las periodistas, las ciudadanas francesas y europeas y, más tarde, ciudadanas y ciudadanos de muchos lugares del mundo, sumándose al #JesuisCharlie. Siete meses antes de los eventos en Charlie Hebdo, el 26 de septiem-bre de 2014, un joven mexicano llamado Alexander Mora, estudiante de la normal rural de Ayotzinapa en el estado de Guerrero, fue asesinado por policías municipales quienes antes lo torturaron y desollaron su rostro. Junto con Alexander, otros 42 estudiantes, algunos menores de edad e indígenas, fueron secuestrados y, de acuerdo con las versiones oficiales de la fiscalía mexicana, las cuales fueron cuestionadas por el Grupo de Expertos de la Comisión Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) creada exprofeso para el caso (GIEI, 2015), fueron calcinados por miembros del cártel de dro-gas Guerreros Unidos, quienes fueron apoyados por policías municipales. Unas horas después de estos trágicos eventos, el hashtag #todossomos ayotzinapa y #ayotzinapaaccionglobal se volvieron "tendencia" en twitter México (Ferguson, 2014). En cuestión de horas se organizaron marchas, performances y flash mobs "Pude haber sido Yo" en varias ciudades de México, Estados Unidos, Europa, Asia, etc. Después de algunas semanas, el hashtag #yamecanse se haría tendencia en Twitter México en referencia a la desa-fortunada frase del fiscal mexicano, Jesús Murillo Karam, responsable oficial de la investigación y quien expresaría su cansancio después de una larga conferencia de prensa. Con el #yamecanse comenzaría una "guerra digital" en Twitter para posicionar el hashtag o eliminarlo a fuerza de (ro)bots o repe-ticiones sin "emisor" (Mercaderos, 2014). 1 Tan sólo unas semanas antes, el 9 de agosto del 2014 en la ciudad de Ferguson, el adolescente afroamericano Michael Brown sería una víctima más de la violencia policial. Como en el caso de #JesuisCharlie, #todos-somosayotzinapa, el hashtag #Ferguson y posteriormente, #Handsupdont-shoot, 2 se volverían tendencia en Twitter (Bonilla y Rosa, 2015). ¿Qué es lo que nos indican estos acontecimientos violentos sobre el tipo de análisis que resulta indispensable llevar a cabo para comprender el activismo contemporáneo que prolifera en redes sociales y, en particular, en el caso de Ayotzinapa? En estas líneas no intento desarrollar un análisis de estudio de caso sobre el activismo virtual de este trágico evento. Existen interesantes esfuerzos en este sentido desde distintas perspectivas en relación a #ferguson (Bonilla y Rosa, 2015), #jesuischarlie (Rodríguez Garavito, 2015) e incluso sobre Ayotzinapa y la geopolítica de Estados Unidos en Medio Oriente (Dabashi, 2014). Este es un texto teórico-epistémico exploratorio a partir del planteamiento de las "epistemologías del Sur" (Sousa, 2009; Sousa, Nunes y Meneses, 2007) y el “pensamiento decolonial” (Mignolo, 2013, 2010, 2009a, 2009b y 2003; Quijano, 2000; Vázquez, 2014, 2011 y 2009), en particular del “feminismo decolonial” (Lugones 2010a y 2010b), sobre las lógicas
moderno-coloniales que caracterizan a los medios sociales en el que discurren gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo.
Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen
también en los análisis académicos en la disciplina de las relaciones internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender “qué es Twitter” frente a la
violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, “cómo se expresan” sus lógica(s) moderno-coloniales y si también se expresan “otras lógicas” en esta arena de visibilidad política. Desde el marco de la justicia epistémica, entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez, 2013)
Today, the ecological frontier coincides with the epistemic human frontier as the last resources ... more Today, the ecological frontier coincides with the epistemic human frontier as the last resources are in first nation peoples land. For example, the resource war we are facing is one in which first nations are struggling to preserve their lands, their rivers and mountains, dignity, their right to self-determination (Icaza and Vazquez 2017). What can we learn from these ongoing social struggles resisting violent forms of power destroying land, women lives and hope? This question inspires the steps taken along this chapter.
The notion of development cannot be separated from the history of western modernity. Development ... more The notion of development cannot be separated from the history of western modernity. Development has functioned at one and the same time as representation and articulation of the modern/colonial divide. The division between the human and the savage, between civilization and nature, linger behind the notion of development. It belongs to the epistemic tradition of the West that has arrogated to itself the authority to classify the diversity of the earth as nature and the diversi-ty of peoples of the world as „others“. In other words: development belongs to a eurocentric and anthropocentric epistemology whose identity as the geograph-ical center and historical now of humanity depended on the externalization of earth and the peoples of the world as otherness. Development as an expression of this genealogy of an anthropocentric eurocentrism has functioned as a media-tion that marks the border between today’s standard of humanity: the consumer and alterity; the poor, the dispossessed and earth. We want to explore the notion of development precisely in its function in articulating the separation between the consumer and the lives of the peoples and earth that are being incorporated, dispossessed, extracted and consumed.
Can the notion of development respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of life of earth and others? What does it mean to decolonize development?
Rosalba Icaza proposes re-thinking IR by considering how modernity (as an international regime of... more Rosalba Icaza proposes re-thinking IR by considering how modernity (as an international regime of knowledge) and coloniality (as an international regime of power) are mutually constitutive. Decolonizing IR, her contribution shows, would require a fundamental departure from Western epistemological paradigms such as the un-bodied rational choice actor, proceeding both from non-Euro-centric systems of thinking (i.e., Indigenous cosmologies) and different modes of knowing and being, such as the corpo-realities created through experiences of vulnerability. Following Maria Lugones, Icaza argues for ‘dwelling in the border,’ for ‘an emphasis on a knowing that sits in bodies and territories and its local histories in contrast to disembodied, abstract, universalist knowledge that generates global designs.’ Offering field notes from research trips along the Mexican migrant trail with her students, Icaza reflects on practical examples of such a decolonial approach to IR through the epistemologies of affect and the corporeal.
Between March and September 2016, the Diversity Commission studied diversity at the University of... more Between March and September 2016, the Diversity Commission studied diversity at the University of Amsterdam. Recognizing that the challenge to enhance social justice at the University requires active engagement with diversity, the Commission approached the topic along two lines: diversity of people and diversity in knowledge.
Diversity of people is concerned with the challenge of having a diverse academic environment, including people with different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, religions, (dis-)abilities, genders, skin colors, sexual preferences, ages, and other characteristics that shape their position in society. We envision a university that strives toward equal opportunities for all, where people are free from discrimination and feel that they belong. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What are the gendered and ethnic characteristics of the people who occupy important positions at the University? Which power pyramids are structural, despite the variety in the archipelago of islands that make up the University?
Diversity in knowledge refers to the challenge to broaden academic traditions and mainstream canons which are solely centered on Europe and the US, by adopting other academic perspectives and approaches to teaching and learning. We envision a university community that is conscious of how academic knowledge is influenced by its historical conditions, and of its social and environmental impact. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What epistemic frameworks are favored in a particular discipline? Who are the subjects that ‘know’ and are taken seriously; in other words: who gets to speak in relation to curricula, in the classroom, in textbooks, and on what grounds?
Diversity presents an opportunity to enrich the University community. Diverse and inclusive environments where a diversity of perspectives is valued breed academic excellence (Nature, 2014). The University will profit from diversity in ideas to advance scientific thinking and reflections on human cultures and material worlds.
The Commission used a variety of methods to study diversity, from the study of the relevant international, national and University-specific reports, to policy papers, studies and other data, as well as a survey, interviews, discussion circles and the taking and analyzing of photographs. Here we make various recommendations aimed to enhance social justice and diversity at the University, which we present under six main goals.
For more than two decades, the vast production of post-structuralist/post-positivist feminist cr... more For more than two decades, the vast production of post-structuralist/post-positivist feminist critique and postcolonial feminism thinking within the field of International Relations and more recently on Global Politics have pushed forward critical investigations on their modern and colonial foundations (e.g. Sylvester 1993, Pappart and Marchand 1995, Shilliam 2010, Gruffyd Jones 2006, etc.) In doing so, different epistemological positions have been deployed in their attempt to destabilize narratives that produce and reproduce dominant ideas about ‘the international’ and ‘global politics’. Today, these contributions constitute a fruitful background for the current wave of academic interest focused on critically understanding the epistemic foundations of IR and GP as disciplines responsible of thinking how power operates in the international and global spheres.
Decolonial thinking has recently been partaking in this critical endeavor (Icaza 2015 and 2010, Icaza and Vazquez 2013, Taylor 2012). Belonging to a different geo-genealogy to that of post-colonial studies, decolonial thinking departs from acknowledging that there is ‘no modernity without coloniality’ (Lugonés 2010a and 2010b, Mignolo 2003 and 2013, Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2014, 2011, 2009, Walsh 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2007). For the purposes of this text, the relevance of this affirmation is that coloniality as the underside of modernity constitutes an epistemic location from which reality is thought. This locus of enunciation, following Mignolo, means that hegemonic histories of modernity as a product of the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution are not accepted but challenged to undo their Eurocentric power projection inherent to them. Precisely, in seeking to avoid becoming just another hegemonic project, decolonial thinking is also understood as an option – in contrast to a paradigm or grand theory - among a plurality of options.
Our conversations about the 1955 Bandung Conference started in the sum- mer of 2014. Rosalba Icaz... more Our conversations about the 1955 Bandung Conference started in the sum- mer of 2014. Rosalba Icaza (RI) witnessed an informal but intense exchange between Tamara Soukotta (TS) and Walter Mignolo on the contemporary legacies of Bandung. Tamara expressed doubts about Walter’s argument on Bandung as setting the historical foundations of decoloniality in global poli- tics, developed in his article “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing” (2011).1
The present text is the outcome of various conversations that followed this first debate that we held between July 2014 and January 2016. All of our conversations, except the last one, were informal, brief and constantly inter- rupted by urgent personal-professional concerns. All of them were conducted in English as our lingua franca. Our last conversation was the only one that we agreed to record and transcripts were produced and circulated between us from which a first draft was agreed upon.
As we have known each other for over a period of seven years, start- ing a conversation was not difficult. However, we realized that it had been extremely rare to find moments and spaces to hold deep conversations about the meanings that each of us attach to Bandung and as part of our own personal-professional-epistemic trajectories. Therefore these conversations have been an opportunity for us to learn about each other as much as we have learnt about the plurality of meanings that Bandung inspires in us as the first international conference of “people of color” and a place of local histories in West Java, Indonesia.
This version of the text also aims to reflect that the meanings that each of us assigns to Bandung are in relation to our present interactions as two female colleagues of “Southern” origin doing research in a European University andwho share a commitment to struggles for liberation and autonomy of West Papuan people in Indonesia (TS) and of Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico (RI).
Rosalba had already explored auto-ethnography (Icaza 2015; Barbosa da Costa, Icaza and Talero 2015) in a dialogical way as developed by Mexican anthropologist Leyva Solano (2013), who speaks of about it as “a kind of praxis of research of co-labor (collaborative research) in which the written text is a dialogue with the spoken and written word, with visuality, with past and present experiences and with the imagined horizon of autonomy.” This way of working was agreed upon as our joint reflexive path.
Overall, this text aims to be an account of the multidimensional process of this reflexive path: a dialogue between each other on our different under- standings about Bandung but that are nonetheless deeply interconnected to our own political-personal-epistemic trajectories, and to our flourishing friendship as part of a learning community of students and colleagues-friends in the city of The Hague. As such, this chapter aims to demonstrate that our personal accounts of what Bandung means to us are intertwined but are also arising from and in relation to that community of colleagues-friends (see Icaza 2015).
In so doing, this written version of our spoken words uncovers the road trav- elled in a dialogical process of writing an “academic” reflection. The chosen path is critical self-reflection on the already walked route – our conversations and joint intellectual ruminations – which are rarely visible in “academic” texts, but that nonetheless direct our in-company walking/thinking/sensing. To shed light on this is our way of countering the dominant narratives surround- ing the generation of “academic” knowledge as if these were individual(ized) endeavours and coming from no place, no temporality, no memories.
What follows is a dialogue broken in several sections of different exten- sions that address different themes about Bandung. We chose them keeping in mind a key question: What does Bandung mean to us − the female- teachers-researchers-activists of southern origin based in northern academia?
What happens if we see social struggles as questioning our world- views concerning lives, nature ... more What happens if we see social struggles as questioning our world- views concerning lives, nature and genders? In this chapter, we reflect upon this question through our intellectual and personal travels through academic research. The three of us were invited to participate in the workshop that gathered together the authors who have contributed to this book, and as such we were offered the opportunity to reflect upon what we had learnt and what we had found inspiring in thinking about lives, nature and genders.
The methodology that we followed was a free exchange of ideas led by three questions:
• Is there a role for academia and for social movements when thinking about alternatives to the ecologically violent presents?
• In which ways do our social locations (gender, class, ethnicity) play a role in the engagements we have developed in our research?
• Which kind of research practices/perspectives/tools do each of us deploy to advance our understandings of social resistance to
transforming ecologically violent contexts?
En Diciembre del 2012 se llevó acabo en la ciudad de México la primera Cumbre Mundial de ‘indigna... more En Diciembre del 2012 se llevó acabo en la ciudad de México la primera Cumbre Mundial de ‘indignados’ que tuvo como finalidad el análisis de las ‘insurrecciones sociales y los movimientos de protesta que surgieron, entre 2010 y 2012…en países de la Primavera Árabe como Egipto, Túnez, Siria, Libia y Marruecos, y en Grecia, España, Estados Unidos, Chile y México”. Pocos medios de comunicación nacional e internacionales le dieron seguimiento y los análisis académicos sobre el mismo fueron prácticamente nulos. Sin embargo, en la cumbre destacó la participación de los y las protagonistas de estos movimientos en el proceso de análisis y al margen de la academia nacional e internacional encargada ‘de pensar lo internacional’. ¿Cuáles son las razones detrás de esta falta de interés? Es simplemente por que existen temas y eventos más urgentes que pensar y teorizar?
Diez años antes, el 16 de febrero del 2002, la Sra. Valentina Rosendo, indígena de la etnia mephá, fue violada y torturada por militares del 41 batallón de infantería que operaba en Cruz Grande, Guerrero en el Sureste Mexicano. En agosto del 2010, la Corte Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos condenó al Estado mexicano y lo sentenció, entre otras cosas, a reconocer su responsabilidad por la violación de los derechos humanos de la Sra. Rosendo y a pedirle perdón en un acto público. Éste tuvo lugar finalmente el 15 de diciembre del 2011 en la Ciudad de México y fue llevado a cabo por el Secretario de Gobernación (Ministro del Interior). Pero, ¿por qué demoró tanto este acto de reparación pública por parte del Gobierno Mexicano? ¿Por qué tuvo que acudir la Sra. Rosendo a instancias supra-estatales como la CIDH? Se trata tan solo de un mero asunto de competencias legales o de un asunto nacional ligado a la impunidad estructural del sistema de justicia mexicano? ¿Qué rol juega el origen étnico y la clase social de la Sra. Rosendo en este proceso?
#Yamecanse de la mirada colonial del twitter! Escribo el twit anterior desde mi cuenta @icazarosa... more #Yamecanse de la mirada colonial del twitter! Escribo el twit anterior desde mi cuenta @icazarosalba mientras los medios impresos, visuales y virtuales difunden sin parar la búsqueda de dos sospechosos del asesinato de 12 personas en el diario satírico Charlie Hebdo ocurrido el 7 de Enero del 2015 en la ciudad de Paris, Francia. Entre los ultimados se encuentran dibujantes Franceses que por sus caricaturas sobre el Islam y el profeta Mohamed en particular, habían recibido amenazas de muerte de parte de radicales islámicos.
Los medios hablan de un atentado contra la libertad de expresión, de un ataque contra la civilización y en contra de la razón. Se habla incluso, de un choque de civilizaciones (Cassidy 2015). El discurso que contrasta la cuna intelectual de occidente, Francia y por ende sus ciudadanos e instituciones, con la barbarie de oriente y en particular del Islam y sus creyentes, (re)produce la subjetividades que se encarnan en las representantes de gobierno, las periodistas, las ciudadanas Francesas, y Europeas y mas tarde ciudadanas y ciudadanos de muchos lugares del mundo, sumándose al #Je suis Charlie.
Siete meses antes de los eventos en Charlie Hebdo, el 26 de Septiembre del 2014, un joven Mexicano llamado Alexander Mora, estudiante de la normal rural de Ayotzinapa en el estado de Guerrero, fue asesinado por supuestos policías municipales quienes antes lo torturaron y desollaron su rostro. Junto con Alexander, otros 42 estudiantes algunos menores de edad e indígenas, fueron secuestrados y de acuerdo a las versiones oficiales de la fiscalía mexicana, calcinados por miembros del cartel de drogas Guerreros Unidos apoyados por policías municipales.
Unas horas después de estos trágicos eventos, el hashtag #todossomosayotzinapa y #ayotzinapaaccionglobal se volvieron ‘tendencia’ en twitter México (Ferguson 2104). En cuestión de horas se organizaron marchas, performances y flash mobs “ Pude haber sido Yo” en varias ciudades en México, Estados Unidos, Europa, Asia, etc. Después de algunas semanas, el hashtag #yamecanse se haría tendencia en twitter Mexico en referencia a la desafortunada frase del fiscal Mexicano, Murillo Karam, responsable oficial de la investigación y quien expresaría su cansancio después de una larga conferencia de prensa. Con el #yamecanse comenzaría una ‘guerra digital’ en twitter para posicionar el hashtag o eliminarlo a fuerza de (ro)bots o repeticiones sin ‘emisor’ (Mercaderos 2014).
Tan solo unas semanas antes, el 9 de Agosto del 2014 en la ciudad de Ferguson, el adolescente afro-americano Michel Brown seria una victima mas de la violencia policial. Como en el caso de #JesuisCharlie, #todosomosayotzinapa, el hashtag #Ferguson y posteriormente, #Handsupdontshoot , se volverían tendencia en twitter (Bonilla y Rosa 2015).
Qué es lo que nos indican estos acontecimientos violentos sobre el tipo de análisis que resultaría indispensable llevar acabo para comprender el activismo contemporáneo que prolifera en redes sociales y en particular, en el caso de Ayotzinapa?
En estas líneas no intento desarrollar un análisis sobre el activismo virtual de este trágico evento. Existen interesantes esfuerzos en este sentido desde distintas perspectivas en relación a #ferguson (Bonilla y Rosa 2015), #jesuischarlie (Rodriguez Garavito 2015) e incluso sobre Ayotzinapa en relación a la geopolítica Norte Americana en Medio Oriente (Dabashi 2014). Este es un texto exploratorio a partir del planteamiento de las epistemologías del sur (Santos 2009 y 2007) y el pensamiento decolonial (Mignolo 2013, 2010, 2009a, 2009b y 2003; Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2015, 2014, 2011 y 2009), en particular del feminismo decolonial (Lugones 2010a and 2010b), sobre las lógicas moderno/coloniales que caracteriza a los medios sociales en el que discurre gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo. Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen también en los análisis académicos en Relaciones Internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender qué es twitter frente a la violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, cómo se expresan sus lógica(s) moderno/coloniales y si también se expresan lógicas otras en esta arena de visibilidad política. Entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez 2013)
Además al plantearme esta exploración, busco formas de reflexionar (posición epistemológica) a cerca de los medios sociales que contribuyan a desestabilizar la perspectiva dominante en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales que naturaliza la separación entre el “objeto de estudio” (Ej. el activismo trasnacional en twitter) del “sujeto que le conoce” (Ej. el académico). Como he argumentado en otros escritos, este es un paso importante para descolonizar las Relaciones Internacionales (Icaza 2013) y por ello el texto esta escrito en forma de una constante reflexión sobre como se conoce lo que se pretende conocer.
Posicion epistémica decolonial y de colabor
Resulta importante señalar que esta exploración esta profundamente informada por mi participación limitada en la campaña transnacional “Eurocarava 43” como académica especializada en Relaciones Internacionales, feminista Mexicana y residente en los Países Bajos. Es desde esas identificaciones personales/profesionales que fui contactada para apoyar con recursos logísticos, institucionales y personales diversos actos de manifestación pública incluyendo eventos académicos sobre los trágicos eventos de Ayotzinapa.
En el proceso organizativo tuve la oportunidad de entablar un dialogo con dos de sus jóvenes organizadoras. En este dialogo resultaron centrales el papel protagónico que buscaba darse a los estudiantes y sus familias y en consecuencia el segundo plano que se buscaba asignar a las instituciones académicas y políticas. Es en este tipo de dialogo que busca generar relación, a partir del cual desarrollo las ideas aquí presentadas y desde esta posición epistémica, lo expresado no es resultado de un mero trabajo de reflexión individual que requeriría un análisis auto-etnográfico tan de moda en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales (Bligg y Bleiker 2010). El proceso dialógico que aquí se comparte como base de esta reflexión busca desestabilizar la idea de una supuesta objetividad académica y denunciar su violencia epistémica. De esta forma intento plantear una alternativa a la objetivación de la resistencia social, a la reducción de la acción por la visibilidad política que se da en redes sociales, por parte de la academia como un “objeto” que se estudia y no del que se aprende (Barbosa, Icaza y Ocampo 2015; Icaza próximamente; Icaza 2015; Icaza y Vazquez 2013).
Asimismo, la experiencia personal de verme imposibilitada por motivos de salud para participar en los actos planeados de la Eurocaravana 43 resulta igualmente relevante. Saberme físicamente incapaz de desplazarme para estar presente en las marchas, reuniones y seminarios y expresar mi solidaridad, le dio un profundo sentido a las denuncias de los feminismos sobre la violencia epistémica de los análisis académicos escritos desde el no lugar (placeless), sin cuerpos (bodyless) y que desde ahí reproducen las historias de algunos cuerpos normalizados y de algunos lugares universalizados, como historias comunes a todas y todos como una historia única (Adichie 2009, Escobar y Harcourt 2005, Haraway 1988, Lugones 2003).
La novelista Nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie nos alerta del ‘peligro de la historia única’ pues “crea estereotipos y el problema con los estereotipos no es que sean falsos sino que son incompletos. Hacen de una sola historia la única historia…la consecuencia de la historia única es que roba la dignidad de los pueblos…es imposible hablar sobre la historia única sin hablar del poder…. Cómo se cuentan, quién las cuenta cuándo se cuentan, cuántas historias son contadas en verdad depende del poder” (Adichie 2009). Intento entonces evidenciar ese poder y su origen detrás de la historia única que nos llega en forma de mensajes de 140 caracteres, con la finalidad de identificar sus limitaciones y potencialidades en las luchas del activismo transnacional por la visibilidad política.
To co-write this piece has meant for us to put in words the deeply personal, painful and fruitful... more To co-write this piece has meant for us to put in words the deeply personal, painful and fruitful process that has meant to engage with the ideas of María Lugones. An ongoing process in which our subjectivities are shifting and some kind of joint perspective emerges from the vestiges of what is left in each of us as products of gender-specific developmentalist policies in Latin America. This pain allows us to feel/think/sense the coloniality of Eurocentric social sciences and of some feminisms (Icaza 2013a, 2013b). In this text, we co- construct an engagement from this troubled and ongoing process to think together coloniality through a critical re-consideration of ‘gender’. We will show how 'gender' is an analytical category that has been widely used and misused in development discourses and interventions during the last three decades.
Our central aim is to explain why and in which ways the notion of coloniality of gender call for a reflection on how we approach the epistemic grounds of white feminism, of development studies and also the modernity/coloniality debate. In particular, we understand that the notion of the coloniality of gender shifts the perspective of knowledge from the abstract disembodied position of male and western centred paradigms to a view from the historical embodied experience. This shift in the perspective of knowledge is enabling a move beyond the analytic of gender towards recognizing coalitional practices of liberation and resistance.
Gender is thus acknowledged as an important analytical category to understand the modern/colonial system of oppression, but is also seen as what needs to be overcome by the decolonial practices of coalitional resistance. Thinking the coloniality of gender means to think from an embodied experience, it is to think from the ground up, from the body. It is a thinking that averts the generalizations that are common to abstract modern thought. It helps us to understand the limits of feminist anti-essentialist discourses that praise the performativity of identity as holding the only possibilities for desestabilization. We see decolonial feminism as an invitation to thinking/being/doing/sensing that exceeds the dominant discourses about women, gender, sexuality and the body.
In order to develop these ideas, the text is divided in the following sections. The first section presents a historical background of the trajectory of the category “gender” within development studies literature, including its mainstreaming with the emergence of the Gender and Development paradigm (GAD).
The second section discusses three key ideas advanced by Maria Lugones in her text “the Coloniality of Gender“: a) the ahistorical and universalist understanding of the category “gender”; b) the relevance of decolonial resistances to radicalize the category “gender”; c) the limits of the category “gender” in order to see decolonial resistances.
The final section is a concluding reflection that highlights some of our thoughts and intuitions on the possible implications for critical feminisms agendas aiming to question the cross- cultural relevance of gender analyses of developmentalism.
This chapter is the outcome of a ‘trialogue’ across the Atlantic via the Internet on civic innova... more This chapter is the outcome of a ‘trialogue’ across the Atlantic via the Internet on civic innovation. The text is driven by our shared interest in finding possible ways in which our activist-research experiences, marked by troubled but intense dialogue with feminist and non-feminist communities and individuals, could contribute to civic innovation research and praxis. We asked ourselves the question: ‘how can the concepts of embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality that have been so important to feminist theory and practice inform the concept of civic innovation?’ Our conversation reflects on the notion and praxis of embodiment aware of the experiences of the living body (Harcourt 2009) and the importance of intersectionality in feminist analysis (Crenshaw 1989; 2013).
We base our conversation on our own experiences in transnational feminist practice and research. And in engaging in this conversation we have co-constructed a shared conviction of the need to undertake critical self-reflection on our own practices as activists-researchers ‘doing’ civic innovation in Latin America and Europe with a meeting point at the International Institute of Social Studies. We are consciously drawing attention to our different positionalities as feminists, researchers and gendered beings as we cross diverse knowledge and epistemic boundaries.
The chapter is built up from shared conversations and self-reflections, about embodied understanding of intersectional ‘identities’ in relation to transnational feminist activism. In the chapter we begin with a definition of the main concepts with which we engage - embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality. We then share three stories in order to analyze our every day living and engagement as feminists in different communities, social movements and NGO policy contexts. Each of us describes how our research practices generate ways of understanding embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and interculturality. Following the stories we turn to look at how this feminist praxis can contribute to the conceptualization of civic innovation specifically in the university context of the International Institute of Social Studies where Rosalba and Wendy currently teach – and where Gina did in the past. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of research in civic innovation around the issues of embodiment and intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality.
This paper represents a collective contribution to an ongoing debate on the benefits and disadvan... more This paper represents a collective contribution to an ongoing debate on the benefits and disadvantages of export-based, industrial jobs for women as well as on the implications of global labor standards on these types of jobs. On the basis of extensive research on women in Mexico's and Central America's maquiladoras (assembly plants that produce export goods), this paper aims to problematize the viewpoints that present export-based, industrial jobs as dignified alternatives for women in the South and to question the skepticism about global labor standards as a possible alternative for improving work conditions in all sectors producing for export. In so doing, the paper stresses three interrelated issues: a) the relevance of local and regional contexts that inform diverse industrialization paths over time, b) the agency the women workers represent, and c) the legal instruments already existent in our common efforts to improve working conditions.
The Interculture Dialogues on ‘Going Beyond the Comfort Zone: Sexuality, Reproductive Health and ... more The Interculture Dialogues on ‘Going Beyond the Comfort Zone: Sexuality, Reproductive Health and Rights in Development’, held at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, The Hague, from June 3 to 6, 2013, were one of the first activities of the newly formed Sexuality Research Initiative (SRI) at the ISS.
In this set of reflections, we discuss the methodology of intercultural dialogues and the outcome of this first meeting of SRI as an example of how to take up sexuality in development studies. The SRI decided to take up both decolonial feminism and feminist activism as two approaches that problematize mainstream development views of sexuality, which are dominated by medicalized and westernised understandings of embodiment, gender, and power relations. SRI adopted a feminist approach to knowledge production, using active listening and co-production as ways to design and analyze a research issue.
In these reflections, we pay special attention to the methodology of intercultural dialogues as a way to include diverse understandings of sexuality, gender and embodiment, and as a way go beyond gender-bound and culturally fixed understandings of sexuality. We explain how different research areas (involving sexual politics, queer ecology, sexual violence, politics of knowledge, Tuberculosis, youth sexuality, middle class sexualities and sexual reproductive rights and health) emerged through the intercultural dialogue process where SRI could create the space for participants to identify connections and common interests for further research.
Uploads
Articles and Chapters by Rosalba Icaza
moderno-coloniales que caracterizan a los medios sociales en el que discurren gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo.
Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen
también en los análisis académicos en la disciplina de las relaciones internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender “qué es Twitter” frente a la
violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, “cómo se expresan” sus lógica(s) moderno-coloniales y si también se expresan “otras lógicas” en esta arena de visibilidad política. Desde el marco de la justicia epistémica, entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez, 2013)
Can the notion of development respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of life of earth and others? What does it mean to decolonize development?
Diversity of people is concerned with the challenge of having a diverse academic environment, including people with different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, religions, (dis-)abilities, genders, skin colors, sexual preferences, ages, and other characteristics that shape their position in society. We envision a university that strives toward equal opportunities for all, where people are free from discrimination and feel that they belong. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What are the gendered and ethnic characteristics of the people who occupy important positions at the University? Which power pyramids are structural, despite the variety in the archipelago of islands that make up the University?
Diversity in knowledge refers to the challenge to broaden academic traditions and mainstream canons which are solely centered on Europe and the US, by adopting other academic perspectives and approaches to teaching and learning. We envision a university community that is conscious of how academic knowledge is influenced by its historical conditions, and of its social and environmental impact. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What epistemic frameworks are favored in a particular discipline? Who are the subjects that ‘know’ and are taken seriously; in other words: who gets to speak in relation to curricula, in the classroom, in textbooks, and on what grounds?
Diversity presents an opportunity to enrich the University community. Diverse and inclusive environments where a diversity of perspectives is valued breed academic excellence (Nature, 2014). The University will profit from diversity in ideas to advance scientific thinking and reflections on human cultures and material worlds.
The Commission used a variety of methods to study diversity, from the study of the relevant international, national and University-specific reports, to policy papers, studies and other data, as well as a survey, interviews, discussion circles and the taking and analyzing of photographs. Here we make various recommendations aimed to enhance social justice and diversity at the University, which we present under six main goals.
Decolonial thinking has recently been partaking in this critical endeavor (Icaza 2015 and 2010, Icaza and Vazquez 2013, Taylor 2012). Belonging to a different geo-genealogy to that of post-colonial studies, decolonial thinking departs from acknowledging that there is ‘no modernity without coloniality’ (Lugonés 2010a and 2010b, Mignolo 2003 and 2013, Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2014, 2011, 2009, Walsh 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2007). For the purposes of this text, the relevance of this affirmation is that coloniality as the underside of modernity constitutes an epistemic location from which reality is thought. This locus of enunciation, following Mignolo, means that hegemonic histories of modernity as a product of the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution are not accepted but challenged to undo their Eurocentric power projection inherent to them. Precisely, in seeking to avoid becoming just another hegemonic project, decolonial thinking is also understood as an option – in contrast to a paradigm or grand theory - among a plurality of options.
The present text is the outcome of various conversations that followed this first debate that we held between July 2014 and January 2016. All of our conversations, except the last one, were informal, brief and constantly inter- rupted by urgent personal-professional concerns. All of them were conducted in English as our lingua franca. Our last conversation was the only one that we agreed to record and transcripts were produced and circulated between us from which a first draft was agreed upon.
As we have known each other for over a period of seven years, start- ing a conversation was not difficult. However, we realized that it had been extremely rare to find moments and spaces to hold deep conversations about the meanings that each of us attach to Bandung and as part of our own personal-professional-epistemic trajectories. Therefore these conversations have been an opportunity for us to learn about each other as much as we have learnt about the plurality of meanings that Bandung inspires in us as the first international conference of “people of color” and a place of local histories in West Java, Indonesia.
This version of the text also aims to reflect that the meanings that each of us assigns to Bandung are in relation to our present interactions as two female colleagues of “Southern” origin doing research in a European University andwho share a commitment to struggles for liberation and autonomy of West Papuan people in Indonesia (TS) and of Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico (RI).
Rosalba had already explored auto-ethnography (Icaza 2015; Barbosa da Costa, Icaza and Talero 2015) in a dialogical way as developed by Mexican anthropologist Leyva Solano (2013), who speaks of about it as “a kind of praxis of research of co-labor (collaborative research) in which the written text is a dialogue with the spoken and written word, with visuality, with past and present experiences and with the imagined horizon of autonomy.” This way of working was agreed upon as our joint reflexive path.
Overall, this text aims to be an account of the multidimensional process of this reflexive path: a dialogue between each other on our different under- standings about Bandung but that are nonetheless deeply interconnected to our own political-personal-epistemic trajectories, and to our flourishing friendship as part of a learning community of students and colleagues-friends in the city of The Hague. As such, this chapter aims to demonstrate that our personal accounts of what Bandung means to us are intertwined but are also arising from and in relation to that community of colleagues-friends (see Icaza 2015).
In so doing, this written version of our spoken words uncovers the road trav- elled in a dialogical process of writing an “academic” reflection. The chosen path is critical self-reflection on the already walked route – our conversations and joint intellectual ruminations – which are rarely visible in “academic” texts, but that nonetheless direct our in-company walking/thinking/sensing. To shed light on this is our way of countering the dominant narratives surround- ing the generation of “academic” knowledge as if these were individual(ized) endeavours and coming from no place, no temporality, no memories.
What follows is a dialogue broken in several sections of different exten- sions that address different themes about Bandung. We chose them keeping in mind a key question: What does Bandung mean to us − the female- teachers-researchers-activists of southern origin based in northern academia?
The methodology that we followed was a free exchange of ideas led by three questions:
• Is there a role for academia and for social movements when thinking about alternatives to the ecologically violent presents?
• In which ways do our social locations (gender, class, ethnicity) play a role in the engagements we have developed in our research?
• Which kind of research practices/perspectives/tools do each of us deploy to advance our understandings of social resistance to
transforming ecologically violent contexts?
Diez años antes, el 16 de febrero del 2002, la Sra. Valentina Rosendo, indígena de la etnia mephá, fue violada y torturada por militares del 41 batallón de infantería que operaba en Cruz Grande, Guerrero en el Sureste Mexicano. En agosto del 2010, la Corte Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos condenó al Estado mexicano y lo sentenció, entre otras cosas, a reconocer su responsabilidad por la violación de los derechos humanos de la Sra. Rosendo y a pedirle perdón en un acto público. Éste tuvo lugar finalmente el 15 de diciembre del 2011 en la Ciudad de México y fue llevado a cabo por el Secretario de Gobernación (Ministro del Interior). Pero, ¿por qué demoró tanto este acto de reparación pública por parte del Gobierno Mexicano? ¿Por qué tuvo que acudir la Sra. Rosendo a instancias supra-estatales como la CIDH? Se trata tan solo de un mero asunto de competencias legales o de un asunto nacional ligado a la impunidad estructural del sistema de justicia mexicano? ¿Qué rol juega el origen étnico y la clase social de la Sra. Rosendo en este proceso?
Los medios hablan de un atentado contra la libertad de expresión, de un ataque contra la civilización y en contra de la razón. Se habla incluso, de un choque de civilizaciones (Cassidy 2015). El discurso que contrasta la cuna intelectual de occidente, Francia y por ende sus ciudadanos e instituciones, con la barbarie de oriente y en particular del Islam y sus creyentes, (re)produce la subjetividades que se encarnan en las representantes de gobierno, las periodistas, las ciudadanas Francesas, y Europeas y mas tarde ciudadanas y ciudadanos de muchos lugares del mundo, sumándose al #Je suis Charlie.
Siete meses antes de los eventos en Charlie Hebdo, el 26 de Septiembre del 2014, un joven Mexicano llamado Alexander Mora, estudiante de la normal rural de Ayotzinapa en el estado de Guerrero, fue asesinado por supuestos policías municipales quienes antes lo torturaron y desollaron su rostro. Junto con Alexander, otros 42 estudiantes algunos menores de edad e indígenas, fueron secuestrados y de acuerdo a las versiones oficiales de la fiscalía mexicana, calcinados por miembros del cartel de drogas Guerreros Unidos apoyados por policías municipales.
Unas horas después de estos trágicos eventos, el hashtag #todossomosayotzinapa y #ayotzinapaaccionglobal se volvieron ‘tendencia’ en twitter México (Ferguson 2104). En cuestión de horas se organizaron marchas, performances y flash mobs “ Pude haber sido Yo” en varias ciudades en México, Estados Unidos, Europa, Asia, etc. Después de algunas semanas, el hashtag #yamecanse se haría tendencia en twitter Mexico en referencia a la desafortunada frase del fiscal Mexicano, Murillo Karam, responsable oficial de la investigación y quien expresaría su cansancio después de una larga conferencia de prensa. Con el #yamecanse comenzaría una ‘guerra digital’ en twitter para posicionar el hashtag o eliminarlo a fuerza de (ro)bots o repeticiones sin ‘emisor’ (Mercaderos 2014).
Tan solo unas semanas antes, el 9 de Agosto del 2014 en la ciudad de Ferguson, el adolescente afro-americano Michel Brown seria una victima mas de la violencia policial. Como en el caso de #JesuisCharlie, #todosomosayotzinapa, el hashtag #Ferguson y posteriormente, #Handsupdontshoot , se volverían tendencia en twitter (Bonilla y Rosa 2015).
Qué es lo que nos indican estos acontecimientos violentos sobre el tipo de análisis que resultaría indispensable llevar acabo para comprender el activismo contemporáneo que prolifera en redes sociales y en particular, en el caso de Ayotzinapa?
En estas líneas no intento desarrollar un análisis sobre el activismo virtual de este trágico evento. Existen interesantes esfuerzos en este sentido desde distintas perspectivas en relación a #ferguson (Bonilla y Rosa 2015), #jesuischarlie (Rodriguez Garavito 2015) e incluso sobre Ayotzinapa en relación a la geopolítica Norte Americana en Medio Oriente (Dabashi 2014). Este es un texto exploratorio a partir del planteamiento de las epistemologías del sur (Santos 2009 y 2007) y el pensamiento decolonial (Mignolo 2013, 2010, 2009a, 2009b y 2003; Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2015, 2014, 2011 y 2009), en particular del feminismo decolonial (Lugones 2010a and 2010b), sobre las lógicas moderno/coloniales que caracteriza a los medios sociales en el que discurre gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo. Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen también en los análisis académicos en Relaciones Internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender qué es twitter frente a la violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, cómo se expresan sus lógica(s) moderno/coloniales y si también se expresan lógicas otras en esta arena de visibilidad política. Entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez 2013)
Además al plantearme esta exploración, busco formas de reflexionar (posición epistemológica) a cerca de los medios sociales que contribuyan a desestabilizar la perspectiva dominante en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales que naturaliza la separación entre el “objeto de estudio” (Ej. el activismo trasnacional en twitter) del “sujeto que le conoce” (Ej. el académico). Como he argumentado en otros escritos, este es un paso importante para descolonizar las Relaciones Internacionales (Icaza 2013) y por ello el texto esta escrito en forma de una constante reflexión sobre como se conoce lo que se pretende conocer.
Posicion epistémica decolonial y de colabor
Resulta importante señalar que esta exploración esta profundamente informada por mi participación limitada en la campaña transnacional “Eurocarava 43” como académica especializada en Relaciones Internacionales, feminista Mexicana y residente en los Países Bajos. Es desde esas identificaciones personales/profesionales que fui contactada para apoyar con recursos logísticos, institucionales y personales diversos actos de manifestación pública incluyendo eventos académicos sobre los trágicos eventos de Ayotzinapa.
En el proceso organizativo tuve la oportunidad de entablar un dialogo con dos de sus jóvenes organizadoras. En este dialogo resultaron centrales el papel protagónico que buscaba darse a los estudiantes y sus familias y en consecuencia el segundo plano que se buscaba asignar a las instituciones académicas y políticas. Es en este tipo de dialogo que busca generar relación, a partir del cual desarrollo las ideas aquí presentadas y desde esta posición epistémica, lo expresado no es resultado de un mero trabajo de reflexión individual que requeriría un análisis auto-etnográfico tan de moda en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales (Bligg y Bleiker 2010). El proceso dialógico que aquí se comparte como base de esta reflexión busca desestabilizar la idea de una supuesta objetividad académica y denunciar su violencia epistémica. De esta forma intento plantear una alternativa a la objetivación de la resistencia social, a la reducción de la acción por la visibilidad política que se da en redes sociales, por parte de la academia como un “objeto” que se estudia y no del que se aprende (Barbosa, Icaza y Ocampo 2015; Icaza próximamente; Icaza 2015; Icaza y Vazquez 2013).
Asimismo, la experiencia personal de verme imposibilitada por motivos de salud para participar en los actos planeados de la Eurocaravana 43 resulta igualmente relevante. Saberme físicamente incapaz de desplazarme para estar presente en las marchas, reuniones y seminarios y expresar mi solidaridad, le dio un profundo sentido a las denuncias de los feminismos sobre la violencia epistémica de los análisis académicos escritos desde el no lugar (placeless), sin cuerpos (bodyless) y que desde ahí reproducen las historias de algunos cuerpos normalizados y de algunos lugares universalizados, como historias comunes a todas y todos como una historia única (Adichie 2009, Escobar y Harcourt 2005, Haraway 1988, Lugones 2003).
La novelista Nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie nos alerta del ‘peligro de la historia única’ pues “crea estereotipos y el problema con los estereotipos no es que sean falsos sino que son incompletos. Hacen de una sola historia la única historia…la consecuencia de la historia única es que roba la dignidad de los pueblos…es imposible hablar sobre la historia única sin hablar del poder…. Cómo se cuentan, quién las cuenta cuándo se cuentan, cuántas historias son contadas en verdad depende del poder” (Adichie 2009). Intento entonces evidenciar ese poder y su origen detrás de la historia única que nos llega en forma de mensajes de 140 caracteres, con la finalidad de identificar sus limitaciones y potencialidades en las luchas del activismo transnacional por la visibilidad política.
Our central aim is to explain why and in which ways the notion of coloniality of gender call for a reflection on how we approach the epistemic grounds of white feminism, of development studies and also the modernity/coloniality debate. In particular, we understand that the notion of the coloniality of gender shifts the perspective of knowledge from the abstract disembodied position of male and western centred paradigms to a view from the historical embodied experience. This shift in the perspective of knowledge is enabling a move beyond the analytic of gender towards recognizing coalitional practices of liberation and resistance.
Gender is thus acknowledged as an important analytical category to understand the modern/colonial system of oppression, but is also seen as what needs to be overcome by the decolonial practices of coalitional resistance. Thinking the coloniality of gender means to think from an embodied experience, it is to think from the ground up, from the body. It is a thinking that averts the generalizations that are common to abstract modern thought. It helps us to understand the limits of feminist anti-essentialist discourses that praise the performativity of identity as holding the only possibilities for desestabilization. We see decolonial feminism as an invitation to thinking/being/doing/sensing that exceeds the dominant discourses about women, gender, sexuality and the body.
In order to develop these ideas, the text is divided in the following sections. The first section presents a historical background of the trajectory of the category “gender” within development studies literature, including its mainstreaming with the emergence of the Gender and Development paradigm (GAD).
The second section discusses three key ideas advanced by Maria Lugones in her text “the Coloniality of Gender“: a) the ahistorical and universalist understanding of the category “gender”; b) the relevance of decolonial resistances to radicalize the category “gender”; c) the limits of the category “gender” in order to see decolonial resistances.
The final section is a concluding reflection that highlights some of our thoughts and intuitions on the possible implications for critical feminisms agendas aiming to question the cross- cultural relevance of gender analyses of developmentalism.
We base our conversation on our own experiences in transnational feminist practice and research. And in engaging in this conversation we have co-constructed a shared conviction of the need to undertake critical self-reflection on our own practices as activists-researchers ‘doing’ civic innovation in Latin America and Europe with a meeting point at the International Institute of Social Studies. We are consciously drawing attention to our different positionalities as feminists, researchers and gendered beings as we cross diverse knowledge and epistemic boundaries.
The chapter is built up from shared conversations and self-reflections, about embodied understanding of intersectional ‘identities’ in relation to transnational feminist activism. In the chapter we begin with a definition of the main concepts with which we engage - embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality. We then share three stories in order to analyze our every day living and engagement as feminists in different communities, social movements and NGO policy contexts. Each of us describes how our research practices generate ways of understanding embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and interculturality. Following the stories we turn to look at how this feminist praxis can contribute to the conceptualization of civic innovation specifically in the university context of the International Institute of Social Studies where Rosalba and Wendy currently teach – and where Gina did in the past. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of research in civic innovation around the issues of embodiment and intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality.
In this set of reflections, we discuss the methodology of intercultural dialogues and the outcome of this first meeting of SRI as an example of how to take up sexuality in development studies. The SRI decided to take up both decolonial feminism and feminist activism as two approaches that problematize mainstream development views of sexuality, which are dominated by medicalized and westernised understandings of embodiment, gender, and power relations. SRI adopted a feminist approach to knowledge production, using active listening and co-production as ways to design and analyze a research issue.
In these reflections, we pay special attention to the methodology of intercultural dialogues as a way to include diverse understandings of sexuality, gender and embodiment, and as a way go beyond gender-bound and culturally fixed understandings of sexuality. We explain how different research areas (involving sexual politics, queer ecology, sexual violence, politics of knowledge, Tuberculosis, youth sexuality, middle class sexualities and sexual reproductive rights and health) emerged through the intercultural dialogue process where SRI could create the space for participants to identify connections and common interests for further research.
moderno-coloniales que caracterizan a los medios sociales en el que discurren gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo.
Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen
también en los análisis académicos en la disciplina de las relaciones internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender “qué es Twitter” frente a la
violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, “cómo se expresan” sus lógica(s) moderno-coloniales y si también se expresan “otras lógicas” en esta arena de visibilidad política. Desde el marco de la justicia epistémica, entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez, 2013)
Can the notion of development respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of life of earth and others? What does it mean to decolonize development?
Diversity of people is concerned with the challenge of having a diverse academic environment, including people with different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, religions, (dis-)abilities, genders, skin colors, sexual preferences, ages, and other characteristics that shape their position in society. We envision a university that strives toward equal opportunities for all, where people are free from discrimination and feel that they belong. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What are the gendered and ethnic characteristics of the people who occupy important positions at the University? Which power pyramids are structural, despite the variety in the archipelago of islands that make up the University?
Diversity in knowledge refers to the challenge to broaden academic traditions and mainstream canons which are solely centered on Europe and the US, by adopting other academic perspectives and approaches to teaching and learning. We envision a university community that is conscious of how academic knowledge is influenced by its historical conditions, and of its social and environmental impact. To assess this type of diversity, we asked questions such as: What epistemic frameworks are favored in a particular discipline? Who are the subjects that ‘know’ and are taken seriously; in other words: who gets to speak in relation to curricula, in the classroom, in textbooks, and on what grounds?
Diversity presents an opportunity to enrich the University community. Diverse and inclusive environments where a diversity of perspectives is valued breed academic excellence (Nature, 2014). The University will profit from diversity in ideas to advance scientific thinking and reflections on human cultures and material worlds.
The Commission used a variety of methods to study diversity, from the study of the relevant international, national and University-specific reports, to policy papers, studies and other data, as well as a survey, interviews, discussion circles and the taking and analyzing of photographs. Here we make various recommendations aimed to enhance social justice and diversity at the University, which we present under six main goals.
Decolonial thinking has recently been partaking in this critical endeavor (Icaza 2015 and 2010, Icaza and Vazquez 2013, Taylor 2012). Belonging to a different geo-genealogy to that of post-colonial studies, decolonial thinking departs from acknowledging that there is ‘no modernity without coloniality’ (Lugonés 2010a and 2010b, Mignolo 2003 and 2013, Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2014, 2011, 2009, Walsh 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2007). For the purposes of this text, the relevance of this affirmation is that coloniality as the underside of modernity constitutes an epistemic location from which reality is thought. This locus of enunciation, following Mignolo, means that hegemonic histories of modernity as a product of the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution are not accepted but challenged to undo their Eurocentric power projection inherent to them. Precisely, in seeking to avoid becoming just another hegemonic project, decolonial thinking is also understood as an option – in contrast to a paradigm or grand theory - among a plurality of options.
The present text is the outcome of various conversations that followed this first debate that we held between July 2014 and January 2016. All of our conversations, except the last one, were informal, brief and constantly inter- rupted by urgent personal-professional concerns. All of them were conducted in English as our lingua franca. Our last conversation was the only one that we agreed to record and transcripts were produced and circulated between us from which a first draft was agreed upon.
As we have known each other for over a period of seven years, start- ing a conversation was not difficult. However, we realized that it had been extremely rare to find moments and spaces to hold deep conversations about the meanings that each of us attach to Bandung and as part of our own personal-professional-epistemic trajectories. Therefore these conversations have been an opportunity for us to learn about each other as much as we have learnt about the plurality of meanings that Bandung inspires in us as the first international conference of “people of color” and a place of local histories in West Java, Indonesia.
This version of the text also aims to reflect that the meanings that each of us assigns to Bandung are in relation to our present interactions as two female colleagues of “Southern” origin doing research in a European University andwho share a commitment to struggles for liberation and autonomy of West Papuan people in Indonesia (TS) and of Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico (RI).
Rosalba had already explored auto-ethnography (Icaza 2015; Barbosa da Costa, Icaza and Talero 2015) in a dialogical way as developed by Mexican anthropologist Leyva Solano (2013), who speaks of about it as “a kind of praxis of research of co-labor (collaborative research) in which the written text is a dialogue with the spoken and written word, with visuality, with past and present experiences and with the imagined horizon of autonomy.” This way of working was agreed upon as our joint reflexive path.
Overall, this text aims to be an account of the multidimensional process of this reflexive path: a dialogue between each other on our different under- standings about Bandung but that are nonetheless deeply interconnected to our own political-personal-epistemic trajectories, and to our flourishing friendship as part of a learning community of students and colleagues-friends in the city of The Hague. As such, this chapter aims to demonstrate that our personal accounts of what Bandung means to us are intertwined but are also arising from and in relation to that community of colleagues-friends (see Icaza 2015).
In so doing, this written version of our spoken words uncovers the road trav- elled in a dialogical process of writing an “academic” reflection. The chosen path is critical self-reflection on the already walked route – our conversations and joint intellectual ruminations – which are rarely visible in “academic” texts, but that nonetheless direct our in-company walking/thinking/sensing. To shed light on this is our way of countering the dominant narratives surround- ing the generation of “academic” knowledge as if these were individual(ized) endeavours and coming from no place, no temporality, no memories.
What follows is a dialogue broken in several sections of different exten- sions that address different themes about Bandung. We chose them keeping in mind a key question: What does Bandung mean to us − the female- teachers-researchers-activists of southern origin based in northern academia?
The methodology that we followed was a free exchange of ideas led by three questions:
• Is there a role for academia and for social movements when thinking about alternatives to the ecologically violent presents?
• In which ways do our social locations (gender, class, ethnicity) play a role in the engagements we have developed in our research?
• Which kind of research practices/perspectives/tools do each of us deploy to advance our understandings of social resistance to
transforming ecologically violent contexts?
Diez años antes, el 16 de febrero del 2002, la Sra. Valentina Rosendo, indígena de la etnia mephá, fue violada y torturada por militares del 41 batallón de infantería que operaba en Cruz Grande, Guerrero en el Sureste Mexicano. En agosto del 2010, la Corte Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos condenó al Estado mexicano y lo sentenció, entre otras cosas, a reconocer su responsabilidad por la violación de los derechos humanos de la Sra. Rosendo y a pedirle perdón en un acto público. Éste tuvo lugar finalmente el 15 de diciembre del 2011 en la Ciudad de México y fue llevado a cabo por el Secretario de Gobernación (Ministro del Interior). Pero, ¿por qué demoró tanto este acto de reparación pública por parte del Gobierno Mexicano? ¿Por qué tuvo que acudir la Sra. Rosendo a instancias supra-estatales como la CIDH? Se trata tan solo de un mero asunto de competencias legales o de un asunto nacional ligado a la impunidad estructural del sistema de justicia mexicano? ¿Qué rol juega el origen étnico y la clase social de la Sra. Rosendo en este proceso?
Los medios hablan de un atentado contra la libertad de expresión, de un ataque contra la civilización y en contra de la razón. Se habla incluso, de un choque de civilizaciones (Cassidy 2015). El discurso que contrasta la cuna intelectual de occidente, Francia y por ende sus ciudadanos e instituciones, con la barbarie de oriente y en particular del Islam y sus creyentes, (re)produce la subjetividades que se encarnan en las representantes de gobierno, las periodistas, las ciudadanas Francesas, y Europeas y mas tarde ciudadanas y ciudadanos de muchos lugares del mundo, sumándose al #Je suis Charlie.
Siete meses antes de los eventos en Charlie Hebdo, el 26 de Septiembre del 2014, un joven Mexicano llamado Alexander Mora, estudiante de la normal rural de Ayotzinapa en el estado de Guerrero, fue asesinado por supuestos policías municipales quienes antes lo torturaron y desollaron su rostro. Junto con Alexander, otros 42 estudiantes algunos menores de edad e indígenas, fueron secuestrados y de acuerdo a las versiones oficiales de la fiscalía mexicana, calcinados por miembros del cartel de drogas Guerreros Unidos apoyados por policías municipales.
Unas horas después de estos trágicos eventos, el hashtag #todossomosayotzinapa y #ayotzinapaaccionglobal se volvieron ‘tendencia’ en twitter México (Ferguson 2104). En cuestión de horas se organizaron marchas, performances y flash mobs “ Pude haber sido Yo” en varias ciudades en México, Estados Unidos, Europa, Asia, etc. Después de algunas semanas, el hashtag #yamecanse se haría tendencia en twitter Mexico en referencia a la desafortunada frase del fiscal Mexicano, Murillo Karam, responsable oficial de la investigación y quien expresaría su cansancio después de una larga conferencia de prensa. Con el #yamecanse comenzaría una ‘guerra digital’ en twitter para posicionar el hashtag o eliminarlo a fuerza de (ro)bots o repeticiones sin ‘emisor’ (Mercaderos 2014).
Tan solo unas semanas antes, el 9 de Agosto del 2014 en la ciudad de Ferguson, el adolescente afro-americano Michel Brown seria una victima mas de la violencia policial. Como en el caso de #JesuisCharlie, #todosomosayotzinapa, el hashtag #Ferguson y posteriormente, #Handsupdontshoot , se volverían tendencia en twitter (Bonilla y Rosa 2015).
Qué es lo que nos indican estos acontecimientos violentos sobre el tipo de análisis que resultaría indispensable llevar acabo para comprender el activismo contemporáneo que prolifera en redes sociales y en particular, en el caso de Ayotzinapa?
En estas líneas no intento desarrollar un análisis sobre el activismo virtual de este trágico evento. Existen interesantes esfuerzos en este sentido desde distintas perspectivas en relación a #ferguson (Bonilla y Rosa 2015), #jesuischarlie (Rodriguez Garavito 2015) e incluso sobre Ayotzinapa en relación a la geopolítica Norte Americana en Medio Oriente (Dabashi 2014). Este es un texto exploratorio a partir del planteamiento de las epistemologías del sur (Santos 2009 y 2007) y el pensamiento decolonial (Mignolo 2013, 2010, 2009a, 2009b y 2003; Quijano 2000, Vazquez 2015, 2014, 2011 y 2009), en particular del feminismo decolonial (Lugones 2010a and 2010b), sobre las lógicas moderno/coloniales que caracteriza a los medios sociales en el que discurre gran parte de las energías del activismo trasnacional contemporáneo. Lógicas que como argumentaré posteriormente, se producen y reproducen también en los análisis académicos en Relaciones Internacionales sobre este tipo de activismo transnacional.
En particular, me interesa comprender qué es twitter frente a la violenta experiencia de Ayotzinapa, cómo se expresan sus lógica(s) moderno/coloniales y si también se expresan lógicas otras en esta arena de visibilidad política. Entiendo por visibilidad política la visibilidad de palabras y obras de regiones de la sociedad que han sido marginalizadas, desdeñadas o producidas como ausentes (Icaza y Vázquez 2013)
Además al plantearme esta exploración, busco formas de reflexionar (posición epistemológica) a cerca de los medios sociales que contribuyan a desestabilizar la perspectiva dominante en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales que naturaliza la separación entre el “objeto de estudio” (Ej. el activismo trasnacional en twitter) del “sujeto que le conoce” (Ej. el académico). Como he argumentado en otros escritos, este es un paso importante para descolonizar las Relaciones Internacionales (Icaza 2013) y por ello el texto esta escrito en forma de una constante reflexión sobre como se conoce lo que se pretende conocer.
Posicion epistémica decolonial y de colabor
Resulta importante señalar que esta exploración esta profundamente informada por mi participación limitada en la campaña transnacional “Eurocarava 43” como académica especializada en Relaciones Internacionales, feminista Mexicana y residente en los Países Bajos. Es desde esas identificaciones personales/profesionales que fui contactada para apoyar con recursos logísticos, institucionales y personales diversos actos de manifestación pública incluyendo eventos académicos sobre los trágicos eventos de Ayotzinapa.
En el proceso organizativo tuve la oportunidad de entablar un dialogo con dos de sus jóvenes organizadoras. En este dialogo resultaron centrales el papel protagónico que buscaba darse a los estudiantes y sus familias y en consecuencia el segundo plano que se buscaba asignar a las instituciones académicas y políticas. Es en este tipo de dialogo que busca generar relación, a partir del cual desarrollo las ideas aquí presentadas y desde esta posición epistémica, lo expresado no es resultado de un mero trabajo de reflexión individual que requeriría un análisis auto-etnográfico tan de moda en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales (Bligg y Bleiker 2010). El proceso dialógico que aquí se comparte como base de esta reflexión busca desestabilizar la idea de una supuesta objetividad académica y denunciar su violencia epistémica. De esta forma intento plantear una alternativa a la objetivación de la resistencia social, a la reducción de la acción por la visibilidad política que se da en redes sociales, por parte de la academia como un “objeto” que se estudia y no del que se aprende (Barbosa, Icaza y Ocampo 2015; Icaza próximamente; Icaza 2015; Icaza y Vazquez 2013).
Asimismo, la experiencia personal de verme imposibilitada por motivos de salud para participar en los actos planeados de la Eurocaravana 43 resulta igualmente relevante. Saberme físicamente incapaz de desplazarme para estar presente en las marchas, reuniones y seminarios y expresar mi solidaridad, le dio un profundo sentido a las denuncias de los feminismos sobre la violencia epistémica de los análisis académicos escritos desde el no lugar (placeless), sin cuerpos (bodyless) y que desde ahí reproducen las historias de algunos cuerpos normalizados y de algunos lugares universalizados, como historias comunes a todas y todos como una historia única (Adichie 2009, Escobar y Harcourt 2005, Haraway 1988, Lugones 2003).
La novelista Nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie nos alerta del ‘peligro de la historia única’ pues “crea estereotipos y el problema con los estereotipos no es que sean falsos sino que son incompletos. Hacen de una sola historia la única historia…la consecuencia de la historia única es que roba la dignidad de los pueblos…es imposible hablar sobre la historia única sin hablar del poder…. Cómo se cuentan, quién las cuenta cuándo se cuentan, cuántas historias son contadas en verdad depende del poder” (Adichie 2009). Intento entonces evidenciar ese poder y su origen detrás de la historia única que nos llega en forma de mensajes de 140 caracteres, con la finalidad de identificar sus limitaciones y potencialidades en las luchas del activismo transnacional por la visibilidad política.
Our central aim is to explain why and in which ways the notion of coloniality of gender call for a reflection on how we approach the epistemic grounds of white feminism, of development studies and also the modernity/coloniality debate. In particular, we understand that the notion of the coloniality of gender shifts the perspective of knowledge from the abstract disembodied position of male and western centred paradigms to a view from the historical embodied experience. This shift in the perspective of knowledge is enabling a move beyond the analytic of gender towards recognizing coalitional practices of liberation and resistance.
Gender is thus acknowledged as an important analytical category to understand the modern/colonial system of oppression, but is also seen as what needs to be overcome by the decolonial practices of coalitional resistance. Thinking the coloniality of gender means to think from an embodied experience, it is to think from the ground up, from the body. It is a thinking that averts the generalizations that are common to abstract modern thought. It helps us to understand the limits of feminist anti-essentialist discourses that praise the performativity of identity as holding the only possibilities for desestabilization. We see decolonial feminism as an invitation to thinking/being/doing/sensing that exceeds the dominant discourses about women, gender, sexuality and the body.
In order to develop these ideas, the text is divided in the following sections. The first section presents a historical background of the trajectory of the category “gender” within development studies literature, including its mainstreaming with the emergence of the Gender and Development paradigm (GAD).
The second section discusses three key ideas advanced by Maria Lugones in her text “the Coloniality of Gender“: a) the ahistorical and universalist understanding of the category “gender”; b) the relevance of decolonial resistances to radicalize the category “gender”; c) the limits of the category “gender” in order to see decolonial resistances.
The final section is a concluding reflection that highlights some of our thoughts and intuitions on the possible implications for critical feminisms agendas aiming to question the cross- cultural relevance of gender analyses of developmentalism.
We base our conversation on our own experiences in transnational feminist practice and research. And in engaging in this conversation we have co-constructed a shared conviction of the need to undertake critical self-reflection on our own practices as activists-researchers ‘doing’ civic innovation in Latin America and Europe with a meeting point at the International Institute of Social Studies. We are consciously drawing attention to our different positionalities as feminists, researchers and gendered beings as we cross diverse knowledge and epistemic boundaries.
The chapter is built up from shared conversations and self-reflections, about embodied understanding of intersectional ‘identities’ in relation to transnational feminist activism. In the chapter we begin with a definition of the main concepts with which we engage - embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality. We then share three stories in order to analyze our every day living and engagement as feminists in different communities, social movements and NGO policy contexts. Each of us describes how our research practices generate ways of understanding embodiment, intersectionality, decoloniality and interculturality. Following the stories we turn to look at how this feminist praxis can contribute to the conceptualization of civic innovation specifically in the university context of the International Institute of Social Studies where Rosalba and Wendy currently teach – and where Gina did in the past. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of research in civic innovation around the issues of embodiment and intersectionality, decoloniality and critical interculturality.
In this set of reflections, we discuss the methodology of intercultural dialogues and the outcome of this first meeting of SRI as an example of how to take up sexuality in development studies. The SRI decided to take up both decolonial feminism and feminist activism as two approaches that problematize mainstream development views of sexuality, which are dominated by medicalized and westernised understandings of embodiment, gender, and power relations. SRI adopted a feminist approach to knowledge production, using active listening and co-production as ways to design and analyze a research issue.
In these reflections, we pay special attention to the methodology of intercultural dialogues as a way to include diverse understandings of sexuality, gender and embodiment, and as a way go beyond gender-bound and culturally fixed understandings of sexuality. We explain how different research areas (involving sexual politics, queer ecology, sexual violence, politics of knowledge, Tuberculosis, youth sexuality, middle class sexualities and sexual reproductive rights and health) emerged through the intercultural dialogue process where SRI could create the space for participants to identify connections and common interests for further research.
This collaboration offers at least three unique contributions:
(i) It expands the debate on geopolitics of knowledge and the position of female scholars from the Global South beyond the United States as a site of experiences;
(ii) It is interdisciplinary, both in the composition of the group and in the way the contributors write their narratives; and
(iii) It reveals alternatives to resist epistemic violence within corporate academia.