The Shoemaker and Her Barefooted Daughter: Power Relations and Gender Violence in University Contexts

Abstract

For decades, feminist researchers have been denouncing the asymmetries and violence that patriarchy institutionalizes through various mechanisms: marking bodies and performances; meanings and communications; feelings and affections; belongings and possessions; spaces and possibilities. In Latin America, Black and postcolonial feminists and researchers adhered to the critical subaltern perspective have turned this reflection into a methodological, theoretical, and political imperative, highlighting the need to change the places of enunciation of patriarchal asymmetries to identify their persistence in different corners of social life. However, there are many spaces where the reproduction of these inequalities continues to operate in a naturalized way: the world of academic and university research is, contradictorily, one of them. In recent years, we have collected stories and shared experiences with research colleagues and teaching staff from different countries who have been subjected to sexual harassment, threats, discrimination, and gender violence. Some of these situations take place at work; others invade family and domestic environments, evidencing that the violent imprint of patriarchy persists and reproduces itself transversally, even among those professionals dedicated to the social critique of these problems. The present article covers these narratives to reflect on the place of epistemic enunciation that researchers use when we dedicate ourselves to study gender violence. Is it possible to develop ethical feminist research on these issues without adhering to radical reflexivity.