“From the Center to the Margins: Decolonial Intersectionality” with Dr. Mara Viveros

In this talk I will reflect on the two-way journey that intersectionality has followed as a theoretical, methodological, and political perspective from the moment the term was coined in 1991 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, through the academic popularization of the term – acquired after the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, held in South Africa in 2001, to what has happened and intensified in the last decade in which feminism as a political movement has massified and at the same time have redefined the concept of the margin. In this new conjuncture Latin American feminist ideas have been more clearly articulated to the critique of racism, among other reasons because of the rapid circulation and growing acceptance of the intersectional perspective.

Mara Viveros-Vigoya holds a PhD in Anthropology (EHESS, Paris) and is currently a full Professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the National University of Colombia, in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Gender Studies, of which she has been Director on two occasions. She has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2014-2015) and President of the Latin American Studies Association, LASA (2019-2020). Her current areas of interest are the “black” middle classes in Colombia, anti-racist ideologies and practices, and the intersections between class, gender, sexuality and race in Latin American social dynamics. She is the author of El oximoron de las clase medias negras. Movilidad social e interseccionalidad en Colombia (Guadalajara: Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara-calas-2021).  Les Couleurs de la masculinité (Paris: La découverte. 2018), As cores da Masculinidade (Rio de Janeiro: Papéis Selvagens Edições) and editor of Black Feminism: Critical Theory, Violence, and Racism. Conversations between Angela Davis and Gina Dent (Bogotá: UNAL, 2019).