Academic practice and intersectionality: notes from Latin American postcoloniality

Abstract

In this article, I propose a way of understanding the relationship between academic practice and intersectionality in Latin American postcoloniality. Firstly, I show how the link between intersectionality and modern/colonial issues framed the debates on “differences between women” in Latin America. Secondly, I define intersectionality as an epistemological perspective supported by a research practice that seeks to interrupt the effects of coloniality, whose tasks can include the interruption of the subject-object binary and the exercise of listening that reveals the hierarchies between differences, debunks the myths about subordinate voices and provides a language for the co-writing of files that dislocate what is narrated as violence against women. Third, I conclude with a summary of what has been written about the category of intersectionality and I raise questions about the shared and different aspects of a feminist project.