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Paper short abstract

The application of feminist and queer theory, from an anthropological perspective, raises issues at the cosmological and social levels. This paper explores clashes arising from encounters between these global political movements and other ontologies, and the consequent anthropological reflections.

Paper long abstract

For decades, debates have emerged around the need to decolonise feminism and various sexual dissidence movements. The social critique initiated by Black Feminists since the 1960s, along with subsequent critiques from other culturally subaltern and indigenous groups, is further enriched by an epistemological critique of Western philosophical ideas that underpin Global North feminism. Feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements are today global phenomena, but their reception varies depending on the ontological and social positionality of the individuals involved. Many tensions and contradictions arise in the feminist analysis of various patriarchal systems when they intersect with different human geographies.

From ethnographic research in Bolivia and interactions with militant indigenous Aymara groups, it emerges that hegemonic feminisms and LGBTQIA+ movements, rooted in Western ideological frameworks, both serve as social catalysts for various political struggles and are identified as new forms of colonisation. The racialisation of bodies and cultures of the Global South, perceived in the dominant narratives of these ideologies, fosters alternative class consciousnesses. Meanwhile, assumptions of mainstream Feminism and the LGBTQIA+ movement conflict with some fundamental ontological principles of indigenous cosmovisions.

This paper explores how these tensions emerge at ontological, political, and material levels during fieldwork, and how global ideologies are rejected or renegotiated from a decolonial perspective, leading to a deconstruction of the ethnographer's positioning. It also reflects on how the involved individuals configure as liminal subjects at an epistemological level and considers the implications for the anthropological view on these issues.