The Epistemological and Political Use of “Sex” and “Race” Categories in Gender Studies

Volume 10|Issue 37| Summer 2021 |Translation

Abstract

Starting from a reflection on Black Feminism this article deals with the inter-relationship between gender domination and racism as one of the most important theoretical and political questions in Anglo-Saxon feminism: how far does racist segregation shape sexist segregation and create an obstacle to the political unity of feminism? If the ideological subject “women” has imploded under the impact of the critique of patriarchy what about the subject of feminism itself “we women”? Our thesis is to demonstrate how the discourse of domination provides oppressed groups with ahistorical frameworks that constantly reify these same groups including in their positive statements. In these conditions, wanting to “de-essentialise” the subject of feminism, women runs the risk of renaturalising them in a myriad of sub-categories (black women, headscarf-wearing women, migrant women...), which become preconditions to struggles. Our ability to act and be future political subjects depends on our capacity to reveal the historicity of the inter-relationship of the categories of “sex” and “race” and to use chaos techniques capable of inventing another political language.

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​Professor of Political Philosophy at the Department of Political Science, University of Paris 8, France.

Research Professor in sociology, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Morocco; Post-doctoral fellowship, Arab Council for the Social Sciences.

Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Morocco.

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