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Engaging Latin American Feminisms Today: Methods, Theory, Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Abstract

This paper articulates a methodological strategy for creating a “conceptual home” whose aim is the enabling and promotion of Latin American feminist philosophy in the context of Latin American feminist theory's concern for the relationship between theory and practice. The author argues that philosophy as a discipline is still too compromised by masculine‐dominant, Anglocentric, and Eurocentric ways of representing knowledge such that discursive and ideological impediments make it difficult to conceive and develop ways of feminist theorizing that arise from an interpellation of the philosopher by the Latin American conditions affecting her social and cultural life. The author offers a fourfold approach to grounding knowledge, based on the principles of pursuing a critical approach to knowledge, a concern for the relationship of theory and practice, an orientation toward progressive political projects of freedom and liberation in the context of Latin American history and politics, and a transformative politics of culture. It is argued that through such specific methodological concerns, Latin American feminist philosophy can attain a distinct identity and stop depending for its articulation on paradigms of knowledge whose premises are not necessarily best attuned to understand the issues it must confront in its sociocultural practice.

Type
Responsibility and Identity in Global Justice
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

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