Patriarcato e femminismi postcoloniali

Abstract

The announcement of the death of patriarchy marked, in the second half of the Nineties in Italy, the birth of a “feminism of difference” that has re-emerged in the past ten years in a completely changed national and international context. The issue has now gone way beyond national borders. Postcolonial criticism to the universal subject, on the one hand, and to mainstream feminism, on the other, testifies to the explanatory power of patriarchy, caught at the intersection with capitalism (and its crisis) and the many forms of contemporary social domination, with sexism and colonialism – material and metaphoric –, with the dynamics of production and reproductive choices, psychological structures and cultural stereotypes. Thus, investigating the horizon of postcolonial feminisms, as a system of theories and epistemological and cultural practices that are “re-oriented” also through the lens of patriarchy, seems now the less obvious way to challenge our time in transformation through a “gender oriented” approach.