Reconceptualizing feminisms and social movements : praxes of resistance and theories of conjuncture in Latin America

Abstract

Within our postcolonial era, the contemporary crises of late-capitalism, modernity, and development have not only marginalized subaltern peoples throughout the world, but have also led to the alternative and eclectic challenges and imaginaries of these very same peoples to overcome these crises. It is understood by this study that within the theories of feminisms and social movements, there is a need to reconceptualize the notions of oppression and marginalization, of resistance and emancipation beyond a singular primacy or master-narrative. The concepts of identity, subjectivity, difference, plurality, and the political must also be reworked in order to make sense of contemporary struggles on the margins. Together, these reconceptualizations have come to manifest themselves in the perspectives of third world feminisms and new social movements.

Within the richness and diversity of Latin America, women have come to be engaged with and participate in third world feminisms and new social movements. It is through their collective identity, based on their lived subjectivities in the everyday social and cultural, that Latin American women are recasting the political. This takes its form in Latin American women's ideologies and collective actions for transformation, not only within the household, but also within society at large.

It is therefore through Latin American women's praxes of resistance where the conjuncture of third world feminist and new social movement theories occurs. This thesis argues that theories of conjuncture which stem from both the practical manifestations of women's new social movements and the theoretical reconceptualizations within feminisms and social movements, must begin to be addressed. Thus, the conclusions of this study will enter into the open-ended theoretical debates about this conjuncture, while at the same time avoiding grand generalizations across theory concerning women's participation in and engagement with new social movements and third world feminisms in Latin America.