The eve of 8-M, the philosopher Chiara Bottici (Carrara, Italy, 1975), a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, stopped by the Fundació la Caixa Social Observatory to talk about anarcha-feminism (with a)a tool to explain (and transform) an increasingly incomprehensible reality, including Putin’s dire dynamic.
What is anarcha-feminism?
The different forms of oppression – imperialism, capitalist exploitation, sexism and racism – form a ball with different threads, and each one has to be pulled, at the same time. Without combating the culture of domination, based on the idea that some people are superior to others, you will never get out of ‘homocracy’ [‘menocracy’, en inglés].
‘Homocracy’? Does the word ‘patriarchy’ no longer work?
In New York or Barcelona, where the man is no longer the only breadwinner for the family, patriarchy is dying out. So how is it possible that men are still the first sex? That is why I propose to speak of ‘homocracy’.
Go ahead
It encompasses the contexts in which men retain privilege, but also the forms of right-wing authoritarianism that, when those privileges are challenged, declare war on what they call gender ideology.
Does Putin fall into any category?
Putin represents the alliance between the plutocratic oligarchy and the vindication of masculine power in an almost caricatured way. The same male chauvinist imperialism that in Russia declares that fighting for homosexual rights is illegal, promotes the deployment of force in Ukraine.
“My maternal grandfather was assassinated by the Nazis, and the paternal grandfather was in a prison camp in Germany”
There will be those who see the argument forced.
My maternal grandfather was assassinated by the Nazis, and the paternal grandfather was in a prison camp in Germany. In fascism the male component was central, as it is in Putin’s imperialism.
Dismantling the scaffolding is not easy.
When it is said that the system is impossible to dismantle, it is done from a very poor knowledge that in ancient times there was no systematic association between economic exploitation and oppression of women or people of color. At the same time that European women were demanding the right to vote, Cherokees were participating in community councils. It was colonization that introduced a less egalitarian economy and a hierarchical system where men were the ‘first sex’.
“The different forms of oppression – imperialism, capitalist exploitation, sexism and racism – form a ball with different threads. You have to pull each one at the same time”
How to make the men take the flag?
We must make it clear to them that they have three possibilities: 1/ Join the reactive machismo of Putin or Bolsonaro; 2/ the complicit silence with a political organization that, despite allowing it to maintain certain privileges, reproduces forms of domination for which they also pay a price; and 3/ sign up for a society based on relationships free of privilege and exploitation. We must insist that feminism is not for women, it is for everyone.
If it is not a collective decision, individual steps are of little use.
In contemporary societies no one says “I am a misogynist”, but the imaginary built by and for men is still there. We must listen to the voices that come from the margins, because they have an epistemological privilege: they see how global capitalism creates mechanisms of oppression at all levels, more than those who are located in the geopolitical center of the circuit of capital.
“In contemporary societies nobody says “I’m a misogynist”, but the imaginary built by and for men is still there”
And once heard?
The imaginary of capitalist modernity starts from the individual, and I propose the transindividual philosophy, where all human and non-human beings –the plants that nourish us, the animals, nature in short– only exist in relation.
Not all women have it internalized.
Even the most feminist of us have internalized forms of misogyny. Once I scolded Enrique Dussel because in the 600 pages of his Ethics of Liberation he did not mention a single female philosopher. Two days later I wrote an article in which he had only quoted one.
You too!
From the ages of 6 to 29 I only read novels, poetry and philosophy by men, especially French, English and German. It is the ‘coloniality of power’, a Eurocentric and masculinist system that dominates the circuit of global knowledge production. So, systematically, I bring back marginalized voices.
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In which century will we see anarcha-feminism triumph?
I hope to see you in this one. The feminist revolution is like a river: there are times when it seems to have dried up, but the current continues below and re-emerges with force.