Dissident feminisms, anti-racist politics and artistic interventionist practices (2014)

Dissident feminisms, anti-racist politics and artistic interventionist practices
by Marina Gržinić

In this article, I will discuss dissident feminisms that disrupt the monolithic history of a feminism that is heterosexual and white and based on a defined feminist subject that is supposedly a woman as a predefined biological reality (meaning, based on a natural category, as it were, of “woman”). As such, dissident feminisms intervene in the history (and present) of this monolithic feminism with marginalized positions causing antagonistic differentiations based on class, race and gender. These positions are marginalized in society in relation to a white majority in the Western world. Moreover, these positions conceptualized as minoritized consist of people who are immigrants, refugees, and undocumented immigrants from Latin America, Africa, and former Eastern Europe, which means that they come from geopolitical sectors that are minoritized in relation to the European Union, in general, and Austria, in particular. These people perform jobs that are seen as “minor” within a hierarchy of a white, middle-class “decency;” as these jobs are abusive and exploitative in terms of the basic life conditions of reproduction and economic remuneration. Therefore, in this article based on such a designated position of dissident feminism, I present artistic interventionist practices that in relation to sex, gender, race, and class develop agencies cited as transfeminist, transmigrant, and transsexual positions.

read more: http://www.p-art-icipate.net/cms/dissident-feminisms-anti-racist-politics-and-artistic-interventionist-practices/

Article published as part of  ISSUE 4: Intervene! Artistic interventions. Collaborative and self-organized practices [Focus: Anti-racist, feminist and queer perspectives]. Content Coordination: Rosa Reitsamer / Elke Zobl.

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