Rethinking Radical Anti-Racist Feminist Politics in a Global Neoliberal Context

Abstract

Abstract This article rethinks the challenges of radical politics within a global neoliberal context by rekindling conversations about the history of Afro-Latin American women's movements. The article explores the current economic crisis and its dehumanizing effects primarily on racialized populations, poor people, and women, and locates these groups in relation to the rise of the world-system. Likewise, it identifies the theoretical contributions made by Afrodescendant Latin American women to decolonial thought, not only in relation to the historical domination of the significance of the nation-state but, more importantly, as regards to the dependency relation of political subjects within capitalism, western modernity, European colonization, and the processes of racialization and sexualization of social relations. Acknowledging that the Afro women's movement in Latin America and the Caribbean is going through difficult times, this article considers the role of radical decolonial politics in the creation of a particular strain of thinking that would allow the movement to understand the specific configuration of these systems of domination, to overcome the binarism of theory and practice, to promote the creation of political alliances, to reconceptualize autonomy, to question essentialism, and to reconsider social class.