Written in racialized bodies. Language, memory and (Post)colonial genealogies of femicide in Latin America

• Autor: Karina Bidaseca
• Páginas: 205-230

205

controVersias y concurrencias latinoamericanas

issn 2219-1631 Vol.6 no. 9 abril 2014

coedición: Journal of latin american communication research

ISSN: 2237-1265

WRITTEN IN RACIALIZED BODIES.

LANGUAGE, MEMORY AND POSTCOLONIAL

GENEALOGIES OF FEMICIDE IN LATIN AMERICA

Karina Bidaseca

Dra. en Ciencias Sociales. CONICET/UBA y UNSAM

karinabidaseca@yahoo.com.ar

ABSTRACT

Since 1993, the term femicide has referred to a continuous wave of crimes com-

mitted to women due to gender or race, a structural feature of our societies. This

paper inscribes the question on the limits of the representation of the unutterable

in our local post-colonial genealogies. How could we write a feminist narrative sym-

bolically able to inscribe the losses within it, and question the world outside? This

shows that all eorts in favor of Politics of Memory must be founded in the recovery

of silenced First People languages, and in the cross-disciplinary junction of Art and

Social Sciences.

Key words: femicide, colonialism and post-colonialism, racialized bodies, langua-

ges, memories.

206 Karina bidaseca • Written in racialized bodies. Language, memory and (Post)colonial genealogies of femicide in Latin America

INTRODUCTION1

Gender violences have inhabited our world forever, and I conrmed it at an early

stage in my life, when I read “The Bloody Countess” [

La condesa sangrienta

] (1968), by

the Argentinian writer Alejandra Pizarnik. Later on, as I examined her “Proper Name

Poem” [

Poema del nombre propio

], bearing the architecture gure of the tower of a

medieval castle ruled by the Countess Erzébeth Báthory, I found that the abjection of

violence within women victims of femicide is at the core of the falogocentric social

order:

Alejandra, alejandra

Debajo estoy yo

Alejandra.

Literature is to thank, denitely. With the help of the Aesthetic Theory and Post-

colonial Feminist Theory, I will attempt to parallel and analyze the languages of gen-

der violence as represented by two dialogic artistic expressions, literature and visual

art. Seduced by the alienating, “quite simply fascist” (Barthes, 1982:461) power of lan-

guage proclaimed by Afro-American writers such as Toni Morrison and Marlene Nou-

rbese Philip, and the First People’s poet Liliana Ancalao, and aiming at sublimating

the real violences, I will delve into excerpts from their work so as to elucidate the best

way to articulate a cross-disciplinary Memory Politic.

Thus, I became fond of Alma López’s art, a Chicana visual artist who works within

the artistic political borders. Her outstanding work will not be able to overthrow the

archaic power, but it can change the regime of visibility (Rancière,

The Emancipated

Spectator

).

1 This paper is part of the Proyecto CONICET

“Violencias en las mujeres subalternas. Representaciones de

la desigualdad de género y la diferencia en las políticas culturales”

[Violences Against Subaltern Women:

Gender Inequality Representations and the Dierent Cultural Politics], headed by K. Bidaseca at Instituto

de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín. A preliminary version of this research was

presented at the “Tercer Feminismo y Arte: Políticas de la memoria y genealogías (pos)coloniales de la vio-

lencia en el XXXI” - International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington DC, 2013;

in the Panel “Decolonial Feminisms: Art, Practice, and Scholarship Decolonial Feminisms: Art, Practice, and

Scholarship, coordinated by Sonia Alvarez (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Tara Daly (Holyoke Co-

llege) and Claudia J. De Lima Costa (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil). The author would like

to express her upmost gratitude to two exceptional women, Liliana Ancalao and Rita Segato, for sharing

her goals and dreams. This paper is dedicated to all women victims of femicide.