Notes
In addition to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Bolivia also experienced longer or shorter processes of military coups and governments, from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, with the latter decade representing a common moment of finalization of these military dictatorships. About feminisms in Brazil and Latin America see the works of Joana Maria Pedro (2006, 2008) and Sonia Alvarez (2000), among others.
Femenías (2006) ironically makes a reversed sketch of the ‘origins’, of Latin-American feminism recalling Mexican Sister Inês de la Cruz, in the seventeenth century. For a criticism of the historicization of feminism in different phases, see Hemmings (2005).
Karla Galvão Adrião developed this idea of the spheres of Brazilian feminism in her doctoral thesis of 2008. The study provides an interesting review of the Brazilian feminist field from an analysis of feminist forums and meetings in different spheres (academic, government and social movement).
Other Latin-American countries such as Uruguay, Chile and Ecuador have also created government agencies dedicated to women's rights. See Alvarez (2000).
One of the demands of the participants at the first National Meeting on Gender and Science, also financed by the Special Women's Ministry (SPM) in 2006, was that the political platform approved, in addition to being government policy, be consolidated as State policy.
For a critical discussion about this notion see Álvarez (2009).
See Alvarez (2000); Thayer (2001); Piscitelli (2005), among others.
Formed in the preparatory moment of the participation of the Brazilian activists at the Beijing meeting, in 1995, AMB became one of the main political forces in Brazilian feminism. See Alvarez (2000).
International network and movement, with its origins in Canada, with the aim to unite women from different countries around a common project articulating the feminist struggle with an anti-capitalist project.
Responsible for the campaign ‘Su boca es fundamental contra los fundamentalismos’ (‘your mouth is fundamental against fundamentalism’).
Like the MMTR, Rural Women Workers Movement and the MMC, Peasant Women Movement. About the peasant women, see Thayer (2001) and two dossiers of REF: Agriculture Women in the South of Brazil (Vol. 12, No.1, 2004) and Women in rural areas of North and Northeast of Brazil (Vol. 15, No.2, 2007).
For an analysis of the meetings, from the first, in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981, to the ‘last of the Millennium’, the eighth Meeting at Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, see Alvarez et al. (2003). For an analysis of the tenth Meeting, see Maluf (2007) and Adrião (2008).
On the circulation of theories, see Piscitelli (2005); Costa (1998, 2004), among others.
About this dynamic among feminists from Chile, see Schild (2003).
This has been the issue of two editions of the Thematic Seminars Subjects of Feminism: theories and politics, coordinated by myself, Telma Gurgel and Karla Galvão Adrião, organized at the seventh and eighth Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero. It is also the theme of the research project that I have conducted since 2004, entitled: For an Anthropology of the Subject: dialogues between feminist theories of the subject and anthropological theories of the Person.
The same debate took place on the issue of affirmative action policies and of quotas for Black people at Brazilian universities, regarding who can be considered a Black woman or man and thus be eligible for quotas, through antagonist proposals for self-identification and of hetero-identification (that is, a committee designated by the university must confirm or not the self-identification).
I discuss this question of the use of the category ‘woman’ and of the politics of subjectivity in Brazilian feminism in Maluf (2007).
At several moments the discussion about where the line is for who is or is not feminist circulated through several meetings (see Alvarez et al., 2003).
Femenías (2007: 18).
I refer to persons, groups, discourses and hegemonic languages that have greater visibility, legitimacy and recognition.
About the pressures of the GLBTT movement at the United Nations for homosexual rights, see Butler (2004).
See Femenías (2006). On the ‘otherness’ of Latin-American feminism, marked by the opposition between (Latin American) experience and practice, and discourse and theory (of central feminisms), see the critiques by Nelly Richard (2002).
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented as part of Feminist Review's Conference celebrating 30 years of the journal. The ‘Feminist Theory & Activism in Global Perspective’ Conference was held at SOAS, The University of London, on September 26, 2009.
I would like to thank Ana Veiga for translating this text from Portuguese in a very short time and Jeff Hoff for the revision.
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Maluf, S. Brazilian feminisms: central and peripheral issues. Fem Rev 98 (Suppl 1), e36–e51 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2011.28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2011.28