Speaking from the interstices: Latin American Decolonial Feminists Theorizing the State

Sammanfattning: Latin American decolonial feminists are concerned with deconstructing the colonial legacies that persist and multiply today albeit formal colonialism has ended. This thesis engages with Latin American decolonial feminism’s political project of decolonization in relation to the state, to see whether it follows the state-phobia tendency popular in other emancipatory political discourses. It focuses on the scholarly production of decolonial feminists so as to situate it in a scholarly dialogue with other traditions of critical thinking. A thematic analysis was carried out, which showed that decolonial feminists make use of emancipatory techniques for theorizing, and that they think of the state as context specific rather than universal. Furthermore, they offer a strong critique of the coloniality present in today’s Latin American states and a nuanced critique of the plurinational projects advanced by indigenous movements. The thesis shows an incipient theorization of a friendlier state for decolonial feminists and the ways they make use of theory as a liberatory practice to imagine sustainable alternatives and horizons of hope for these troubling times.