Editorial Introduction: On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action

Editorial Introduction

On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action

Leece Lee-Oliver and Xamuel Bañales, guest editors

This special issue of Feminist Formations, “On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action,” brings together a contemporary, broad, and multivariate collection of decolonial feminist visions and expressions that build on critical knowledges, engage in social change, and offer pathways to forge futurities. The essays in the special issue elucidate current socio-political contexts locally, nationally, and around the planet, interrogate the entrenchments of structural inequities that bear their marks particularly on marginalized communities, and address current struggles for social change and liberation. The pieces demonstrate what decolonial feminist praxes look like in the imaginary and on the ground, in our lives, movements, and society. The issue has been carefully curated to explore a cosmos of feminist social justice modalities that vary in place, form, and expression, but share purpose in decolonization/decoloniality. The term “decolonial” has been central in critical conversations and spaces that have long trajectories in many parts of the planet, but particularly in the geographical area of the Americas or Turtle Island and Abya Ayala. In recent times, the term “decolonial,” and variants like “decolonize” and “decoloniality,” have gained increasing traction in academic spaces, activist movements, and social media. The visibility of these terms creates new opportunities to build upon the momentum of the times and explore decolonial feminist work today. In our commitment to this work, we are grounded in two scholarly frameworks as points of departure: (1) theories of coloniality/modernity emergent in Latin America that are used widely to examine coloniality of power through gender, heterosexualism, and racial formations; and (2) women of color feminisms in the United States that respond to the impact and simultaneity of oppressive systems through scholarship, coalition, and creative action. We embrace the contributions here as acts of decoloniality. That is, feminist praxes that: 1) identify, deconstruct, and transform ideologies of human difference, inferiority/ superiority, subordination/domination between colonized peoples and colonizing nations; 2) recognize and make visible where, when, and how coloniality

suppresses the living universe as necessarily under the power, domination, and surveillance of colonizing and imperialist gures; and 3) recollect, reclaim, and re-authorize the truth, dignity, and epistemologies of all life forms, seen and unseen.

One goal of “On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action” is to amplify decolonial feminist actions that are situated in scholarly activism and social justice movements in—but not limited to—the United States. Since the United States occupies a crucial role in reproducing and maintaining coloniality, the special issue provides opportunities to see how decolonial feminists challenge critical power structures and create other possibilities. Another goal is to present abundant voices, heterogeneous movements, and theoretical inquiries that imagine life systems extricated from the legacies of colonialism, violence, and exclusion. Finally, we are grateful that the special issue can af rm and encourage readers to continue doing the dif cult work of decolonial feminism in varying modes and multiple spaces. Given the present socio-political context that includes war, destruction, and so much hate, perhaps inspiration can lead to an expansion of generative collective horizons.

We organized “On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action” during an intensi ed time of resurging white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and the coloniality of power. Complicated by the emergence of Covid-19, isolation and exposure to failing social systems inspired us to place attention on strategies that inspire hope and healing while providing insights for social change. In the midst of ongoing disrespect for liberation, we took note of increasing and unapologetic state violence and oppression, including: the persistence of femicide in North and South America, particularly of women, girls, and trans folk in Native American and Indigenous communities and families; anti-Blackness that sustains the vulnerability, invisibility, and precarity of Black people’s lives; the sterilization, erasure, and hiding of emigrant women and girls of color incarcerated by ICE; rampant anti-Asian rhetoric, hate, and violence, evident in the Atlanta, Georgia spa shooting in 2021; and the push of politicians and others to limit, control, or discipline the bodies and subjectivities of people who are feminine, trans, queer, non-conforming, non-binary, non-normative, racialized, undocumented, living in poverty, neurodivergent, and/or with disabilities. We bore witness to many progenitors of coloniality, like those in positions of power who used legal systems to marginalize people using religious freedom as a foil. Motivated by contemporary activism for justice, we nd hope, purpose, and alignment with Jîna Amini protests and social movements, such as #LandBack, Black Lives Matter, #SayHerName, #MMIWR, and #MeToo. Thus, the special issue simultaneously highlights and is grounded by the ways in which diverse networks, community-based projects, and public protests call local and global players into discussion, action, and social change. Fortunately, there are geopolitical and intellectual genealogies within decolonial feminist methods and modalities that create space and opportunities for

On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action ·

bearing witness, forming alliances, and strategically harnessing political energies to bridge solidarities, amass technologies, and transcend heteropatriarchal, racist, capitalist systems of oppression. The special issue moves through topics that give traction to such participation, poetics, and/or resistance as in the works of Mary Roaf’s “Breakdowns to Breakthroughs: Participating in a Decolonial Black Feminism Program,” Heather Montes Ireland’s “Decolonization is Imminent: Notes on Boricua Feminism,” Stephany Bravo and Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez’s “Re ections: On Strike MoMA, Caribe Fractal and Decolonial Feminisms as Political Arts Practice,” and Harleen Kuar, Katie Byrd, Nadia R. Davis, Taylor M. Williams’ “Small Revolutions: Methodologies of Black Feminist ConsciousnessRaising and the Politics of Ordinary Resistance.”

In addition, we center Native American and Indigenous decolonial feminists who reclaim knowledge and self-determination. Diverse approaches to these themes include Ashley Cordes and Micah Huff’s “Decolonial Feminist Storying on the Coquille River: A Digital Humanities Approach to Human and Non-human Communication and Prevention of the Fall Chinook Salmon Extinction,” Susy Zepeda’s “Xicana/x Indígena Futures: Re-rooting through Traditional Medicines,” and Luhui Whitebear’s “Resisting the Settler Gaze: California Indigenous Feminisms.” As we look to structures of oppression, several essays interrogate and offer decolonial feminist social justice modalities for change, such as Bao Lo’s “Anti-Asian Violence and Abolition Feminism as Asian American Feminist Praxis,” Joanna Beltrán Girón’s “State Disappearances in the United States: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis About the Enactment of State Terror on Undocumented Immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Leilani Sabzalian, Michelle M. Jacob, and Roshelle WeiserNieto’s “Resurgent Education as Decolonial Feminist Praxis,” and Marcelle Maese’s “Lxs Caravanerxs and Nonsecular Protest: Rethinking Migrant Family Separation with Un llanto colectivo.”

The creative essays, poetry, and art herein offer subtle and electrifying engagements to confront the dulling effects of coloniality and explore the possibilities of decolonial pleasure, erotics, and joy. We invite you to pause and meditate on the transgressive work and creative erotics of Annie Isabel Fukushima in “A Multiplicity of Selves-in-Coalition: A Decolonial Feminist Witnessing Through Autoethnography” and Xamuel Bañales’ “A Conversation with Favianna Rodriguez: World-Making through Decolonial Feminist Artivism.” We nd thought-provoking opportunities in the illuminating poetry of Delaney R. Olmo, Victoria Bañales, Rawiyah Tariq, Hannah Blackwell, and Brenda Quezada. Finally, we call your attention to the cover piece by Victor Manuel Escoto Sánchez entitled “Decolonial Feminisms,” whose dark and bright colors illustrate ancestral forces that activate creative, intellectual, and political energies into action, movement, and power.

As editors, we nd solace, comradeship, and comfort in this project. The culmination of the special issue grows out of our decolonial feminist friendship

and politics that came together when we met as graduate students over a decade ago in a course on decolonial theories and philosophies. Committed to decolonial feminist practices of collaboration, we have ebbed and owed together since then, discussing political concerns, sharing intuitive insights, and building upon each other’s liberatory work and praxes. This collection of decolonial feminist works is de ned by actions against any one or number of the myriad entrapments of the state, imperialism, and white supremacy, including authoritarian feminism that suppresses peoples’ bodies, minds, and spirits. In many ways, the special issue is a continuance of the self-determination of our elders, teachers, and movements.

In this spirit, we thank all contributors who offered a glimpse into or treatise on their engagement, praxes, and actions. We are grateful for the conversations that they generate, the spatial analytics they provide, their embrace of transdisciplinarity and the tools that inspire, transform, or build upon decolonial feminism ideals, dreams, and futurities. “On Decolonial Feminisms: Engagement, Practice, and Action” is decolonial feminist work that aims to “undo” the logic of coloniality with the intention of moving society towards liberation and sovereignty. Scholars, protectors, culture bearers, artists, poets, and activists take readers on critical journeys by examining how decolonial feminism operates within, or disentangles from, enduring technologies of western colonialism and imperialism, often exposing the ssures that impact futurity. We invite you to travel through the special issue and to go beyond epistemological, ontological, and transnational borders to imagine and shape new horizons grounded in transformative knowings of decolonial love, joy, pleasure, healing, action, and possibility.

Leece Lee-Oliver (Blackfeet/Choctaw) is an associate professor of American Indian Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Director of American Indian Studies at California State University, Fresno. Lee-Oliver completed her doctorate degree from UC Berkeley and has authored essays on Native American, Indigenous, Third World and Transnational feminist responses to national policies and ideologies that pose challenges to sovereignty, safety, and security. Her community work engages Native American cultural bearers and urban Indian efforts to protect sovereignty and navigate anti-“Indian” violence today.

Xamuel Bañales is an associate professor and former chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at California State University, Stanislaus. Bañales completed their doctorate degree from UC Berkeley and has authored essays in many critical anthologies and journals, including Ethnic Studies Review; Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society; The Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe; and North American Congress on Latin America.