From the Centre to the Margins: Decolonial Intersectionality

CLAS EVENTS - Easter 2025

Talk in collaboration with Gender Studies

From the Centre to the Margins: Decolonial Intersectionality

Mara Viveros Vigoya (Simón Bolívar Professor – CLAS)

Chair: Lauren Wilcox (University of Cambridge)

Abstract: In this talk, I will reflect on the two-way trajectory of intersectionality as a theoretical, methodological, and political perspective. From its coining by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1991 to its academic popularization following the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in South Africa, the concept has evolved significantly. Over the past decade, as feminism has expanded as a mass political movement, the notion of the margin has been redefined. In this new conjuncture, Latin American feminist thought has become more explicitly linked to critiques of racism, driven in part by the rapid circulation and growing acceptance of the intersectional perspective.

Mara Viveros Vigoya has a PhD in Anthropology from EHESS (Paris). She is tenured professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, teaching in the Department of Anthropology (1998-2017) and the School of Gender Studies. She is co-founder of the School and has been its director three times.

Throughout her career as a researcher and lecturer, she has been guided by the theoretical, political, and ethical dimensions of critical feminism. Her research has focussed on the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, and race and ethnicity in the social and cultural dynamics of Latin American societies. Her current interests include Black middle classes in Colombia; anti-racist ideologies, practices, and cultures in Latin America; and the study of men and masculinities from a feminist perspective. As translator into Spanish of Aimé Césaire’s work, she has recently become interested in the unsung contributions of women to the Négritude movement.