Claiming a kinship between Postcolonial and Decolonial Feminisms via Spivak and Rivera Cusicanqui

https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n30.01

Kiran Asher
Orcid ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3256-8077
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
kasher@umass.edu

Abtsract:

In the last few years, postcolonial and decolonial feminisms have been pitched against each other. In this commentary I make a case for treating them as kin. I do so by juxtaposing some of the ideas found in the writing of Gayatri Spivak and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Neither claims to be a postcolonial or decolonial feminist, though their writings are regularly cited in reference to these fields. Both grapple with the thorny matter of representing subalternity and indigeneity, not only in Eurocentric scholarship, but also by migrant and diasporic academics and national elites. I contend that it is their persistent critiques of representation that can help foster a dialogue between postcolonial and decolonial feminist scholarship. Such dialogues entail reaching across linguistic, historical, geographical, political, and theoretical boundaries to establish anti-colonial alliances.

Keywords: Postcolonial, decolonial, feminisms, Spivak, Rivera Cusicanqui.