Feminism, today more than ever-present in the public space

The unprecedented presence of feminism in the public space, as well as the urgency and need to analyze, understand and make visible how the R's of feminism interact and how the tension between them can condition what happens in politics and its alliances.

Feminism, today more than ever-present in the public space
Today, feminism, more than ever present in the public space. Photo by Billie / Unsplash

The never before seen presence of feminism in the public space, as well as the urgency and need to analyze, understand and make visible how the R's of feminism interact and how the tension between them can condition what happens in politics and its alliances, makes indispensable a new form of critical pedagogy, and above all self-criticism in the different feminisms, assured the director of the Center for Research and Gender Studies (CIEG) of the UNAM, Marisa Belausteguigotia Rius.

When launching, together with the general director of Humanities Dissemination, Ángel Figueroa Perea, the twenty-eighth edition of the International Colloquium on Gender Studies "GRRRRR Gender: Rage, Rhythm, Rhyme, Noise, and Responsibility", she said: it is an exercise of opening doors and windows, of imagination, fabulation, and confabulation; of how to deal with the fury, the anger, the frustration that awakens impunity, the arbitrariness with the immense damage caused to so many families, women, to the country, by the lack of access to justice, disdain and neglect.

"This colloquium points that, to self-criticism in feminism itself, also to combine politics, pedagogy, and action with imagination, to work together. We need convergences, conversations, alliances of all kinds, with actors, not only among ourselves, but also with those who do not think like us," said the also academic of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, and the University of New York.

And she added: we are interested in debating among collectives, students, academic staff, artists, and activists based on questions such as: what mechanisms and practices should be put in place to strengthen the academy as a space of resonance and construction of the common, equality and justice, on the border with activism and militancy; what role do artistic practices play in the generation of non-violent critical thought and action; what role do artistic practices have in the generation of non-violent critical thought and action? We seek to make visible how academia, activism, and art come together to make politics and alliances happen.

On behalf of the coordinator of Humanities at UNAM, Guadalupe Valencia García, Figueroa Perea explained: we need to foster and build new generations of girls and boys "natives of gender equity", who do not contemplate discredit, abuse, harassment, hatred, superiority, objectification, and aggression. In that sense, it becomes more than fundamental, the enormous drive and anger, and the noise of millions of young people around the world, in our country, in our University.

Rage mobilizes

In the keynote lecture "Already forever enraged: a small dictionary for today's mobilizations", writer Cristina Rivera Garza recognized the university space as critical and productive and addressed the genealogy of the classroom as well as the spaces of academia in a form of activism, where emotions emerge as collective practices that produce reality and transformations to generate equality.

Rage mobilizes, questions, links and allows to make visible the small and big violence, it is a way of calibrating the world. When it is experienced collectively, by groups of women exhausted from not being able to bury those lost bodies, women "forever enraged", it emerges as a work of mourning, of consciousness, as the making/collecting/sharing of memory and care, she said. In the face of this tiredness, what she calls the School of Rage appears as the need to follow in the footsteps and echoes of the knowledge that has presided over us. Thus, rage oscillates between collective mourning, vigil, conscience, and path.

Commenting on the conference, Belausteguigoitia Rius asserted that "to do politics is to confabulate voices and traces", which we must know how to walk together. He wondered if it is necessary to burn everything and break everything to obtain answers, and how to integrate imagination to the use of rage so that it is not devastating. It is worth mentioning that in the working tables of this day, there were comments on rage and rhythm, the reconfiguration of the public through interventions, protests, and other forms of representation. Likewise, the connection between the stories of women victims of violence and those who take over spaces to make violence visible, among other topics, was discussed.