CCSC Seminar with Prof Gretchen Larsen (Durham University) and Adriana Guedes Arcuri (Sao Paulo School of Business Administration)

Using Decolonial Feminism and Border Thinking to Dismantle Atmospheres of Silence in the Global South

Abstract
How can we understand discourses of oppression embodied in lowered voices and bowed shoulders? Embracing non-Western perspectives such as decolonial feminism and border thinking can be a path for unveiling epistemological blindness and atmospheres of silence surrounding vulnerable girl’s consumption and non-consumption experiences of contraceptive methods in the Global South. Their identities are shaped by four axes of intersectional oppressions: gender, social-class, age, and race, that work as a barrier to their consumption choices and free will. Building on Anzaldua’s (1987) ‘border thinking’ and ethnographic inspired in-depth interviews, our research makes a key theoretical contribution, that is, the conceptualization of ‘atmospheres of silence’. Within atmospheres of silence, borders are understood as liminal and ambiguous frontier zones where heavy forces reveal what is happening behind the un-spoken discourses and inside the emptiness. Disclosing the oppressions held in place by atmospheres of silence enable us to address and challenge them.

More about Professor Gretchen Larsen