In an open public lecture, University College London professor, Claire Lindsey, will speak o n the impact of ‘women travellers’ in Latin American history, and how the experience of these women hold rich potential for new feminist movements.
Harry Allen
It is often said that Latin American feminism differed, and perhaps still does, from Anglo-American feminism with a slant towards reproductive rights, equal pay, and equality of legal rights. A world apart from the suffrage and voting rights effort that characterised the historical debate in Britain and US America.
Latin American feminism has always been viewed as something bolder, more revolutionary than its global counterparts. For every 100,000 women, 6.8 in Latin America, were victims of femicide. This is nearly 10 times the global average according to the Wilson centre.
Feminism had to evolve differently, and its responses were more complex in this environment. Repressive governments, very often “machista”, and often catholic-centric societies don’t always bode well in a modern landscape of bolstering rights and opportunity. And the renewed rise of ‘strongmen’ politicians like Jair Bolsonaro and Nicolas Maduro hardly help the situation. A historical timeline dominated by explorers and revolutionaries like Columbus and Bolivar also leave little room for a female perspective, only now being told with more enthusiasm.
This whole phenomenon is what professor of Latin American Literature and Culture, Claire Lindsey calls “errant feminisms”.
As men have conquered, crusaded and colonised their way across the landscape, Lindsey affirms that female travellers have left a much more “collaborative” and “prolific” impact in their journeys across the continent.
Those “women travellers”, according to Claire, will argue their “practices have rich potential for feminism” suggesting lessons we can learn in modern feminist thought.
A certain “unruliness” and “roaming” spirit, Lindsey says, of a few, is not just an exception to the “masculine hero” narrative woven into the fabric of Latin American lore. This line of argument will form the central part of Claire Lindsay’s lecture entitled ‘Errant feminisms’ in Latin America, organized by the University College London. Her approach and purpose of the talk is based on her over 25 years of Lindsey’s research at universities such as UCL and Goldsmiths.
Date and time: Wednesday 22nd May, 5:30 pm. to 8:00 pm. Venue: Gustave Tuck, Lecture Theatre, UCL Main Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. For more information and/or to register, visit Eventbrite and UCL School of European Languages Culture & Society.
(Photos: Pixabay)
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