Decolonizing the American Family Unit
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2022-04-22
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This thesis combines possible dialogues between decolonial feminist, María Lugones with feminist activist, Silvia Federici to explore how Western attitudes towards gender and race reinforce reproductive imperatives for women. The research will explain how these imperatives are resisted through a recognition of one’s multiplicity inside and outside a fragmenting, modern bourgeois society. Specifically, this thesis examines families of the Texas borderlands as models of resistance to dominant social constructions of motherhood which exclude “non-traditional” borderlands families from the larger American society. Using Federici’s historical analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, I will employ a decolonial feminist approach to evaluate the dynamics of family units in the Texas borderlands. Federici’s critique of primitive accumulation will show that the capitalist mode of production utilizes mechanisms of power that negatively alter the perceptions and roles of American mothers within the family unit. Moreover, a decolonial analysis, following Lugones, will show how Western attitudes towards gender and race create social and political norms which subordinate women of color and mothers in particular. The collective research will reveal that families of the borderlands are found outside of the dominant social organization and refute Western social determinations of gender and race. Concepts such as capitalism, arrogant perception of women, and fragmentation will explain how women of color are reduced in society and within the family unit through attempts to impose corresponding social relations with modern/colonial roots. A recognition of the struggles endured by women of color against dominant social classifications will help to explain how the positionality of women in society is centered upon being subordinated by white men. The family unit is a source of struggle for women that reinforces the self-estrangement of mothers as objects of an oppressive white male arrogant perception. In this respect, I will address the gap in decolonial feminist literature to expand upon a decolonial viewpoint that the nuclear family operates as a microstate. This thesis creates new discussions surrounding family units in philosophy. Families in the borderlands must reject Western, Eurocentered feminism insofar as it misses the colonial perspective. Instead, families in the borderlands can navigate society by embracing their double- consciousness and multiplicity. An analysis of Lugones and Federici will contribute to conversations of this counterculture, identifying the fragmentation of women of color in the family unit and the mechanisms of colonial power that oppresses them.
Description
Keywords
decolonial theory, deconstruction, multiplicity, identity, mind-body problem, capitalism, primitive accumulation, double-consciousness, borderlands, Glasscock Summer Scholars