Translations ans refusals: Resignifying meanings as feminist political practice

Feminist Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 200-230

  Thayer, Millie ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953312989     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (48)

1. The following are useful sources for understanding Brazilian feminist history: June Edith Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women's Rights in Brazil, 1850-1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).
2. Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991).
3. Maria Amélia de Almeida Teles, Breve históna do feminismo no Brasil (São Paulo, Brazil: Brasiliense, 1993).
4. For cross-border Latin American-North American relations among feminists, see especially Miller, Latin American Women.
5. "Latin American Feminism and the Transnational Arena, " in Women, Culture, and Politics in Latin America, ed. Emilie Bergmann et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Following the practice of activists in Latin America, I have chosen to use the language of "North" and "South" to denote the differences between early industrializing and late industrializing nations. In spite of their limitations, I find them useful in reminding us of the historical differences in development trajectories and global distributions of wealth.
6. Boston Women's Health Course Collective, Our Bodies, Our Selves (1969; Boston: New England Free Press, 1971). This very first edition of the now-classic work was circulated in 1969 and published in 1971. Later editions were published by Simon and Schuster and renamed Our Bodies, Ourselves.
7. For accounts of the processes involved in translating Our Bodies, Ourselves, see Kathy Davis, The Mating of "Our Bodies, Ourselves": How Feminism Travels across Borders (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
8. Ester R. Shapiro, "Because Words Are Not Enough: Latina Re-Visionings of Transnational Collaborations Using Health Promotion for Gender Justice and Social Change, " NWSA Journal 17, no. 1 (2005): 141-72.
9. See Millie Thayer, Making Transnational Feminism: Rural Women, NCO Activists, and Northern Donors in Brazil (New York: Routledge Press, 2010).
10. I have borrowed and extended the concept of the counterpublic developed by both Felski and Fraser. See Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
11. Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, " in her Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Post-Socialist" Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997): 69-98.
12. The term and concept of "scattered hegemonies" entered feminist movement discourse with the publication of Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds., Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodemity and Transnational Feminist Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
13. See, for example, Mary E. John, Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory, and Postcolonial Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
14. Lata Mani, "Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception, " Inscriptions: Traveling Theories 5 (1989): 1-23.
15. Claudia de Lima Costa, "Being There and Writing Here: Gender and the Politics of Translation in a Brazilian Landscape, " Signs 25, no. 3 (2000): 727-60.
16. See, for example, Teresa Carrillo, "Cross-Border Talk: Transnational Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Sexuality, " in Talhng Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, ed. Ella Shohat (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art/MIT Press, 1998), 391-411.
17. Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1997).
18. Shu-mei Shih, "Towards an Ethics of Transnational Encounters, or When Does a 'Chinese' Woman Become a 'Feminist'?" in Dialogue and Difference: Feminisms Challenge Globalization, ed. Marguerite Waller and Sylvia Marcos (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 3-28.
19. Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves.
20. Claudia Lima Costa, "Being There and Writing Here, " 749.
21. For examples of both perspectives, see Lawrence Venuti, "Translation, Community, Utopia, " in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York: Routledge, 2000), 468-88.
22. Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves, 50-81.
23. John, Discrepant Dislocations, 31.
24. This point was first made by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in "Transitions as Translations, " in Transitions, Environments, Translations: Feminisms in International Politics, ed. Joan W. Scott, Cora Kaplan, and Debra Keates (New York: Routledge, 1997), 253-72.
25. Maria Betânia Ávila, PAISM: Um programa de saúde para o bem estar de gênero, ed. SOS Corpo (Recife, Brazil: SOS Corpo, 1995).
26. Ana Paula Portella, ed., Os Direitos Reproductivos e a Condição Feminina (Recife: SOS Corpo/Liber Gráfica e Editora Ltda, 1989).
27. BEMFAM/DHS, Pesquisa sobre saúde familiar no nordeste, cited in Edna Roland "The Soda Cracker Dilemma: Reproductive Rights and Racism in Brazil, " in Race in Contemporary Brazil: From Indifference to Inequality (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 201.
28. Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Junior, "Weaving Tradition: The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast, " Latin American Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2004), 42-61.
29. For rural Brazilian women's rights, see Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León, Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America, ed. Billie R. DeWalt et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).
30. Beatriz Maria Alasia de Heredia, A Morada da Vida: Trabalho Familiar de Pequenos Produtores do Nordeste do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1979).
31. Cheywa R. Spindel, "The Social Invisibility of Women's Work in Brazilian Agriculture, " in Rural Women and State Policy: Feminist Perspectives on Latin American Agricultural Development, ed. Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 51-66.
32. Simone Grilo Diniz, Cecília de Mello e Souza, and Ana Paula Portella, "'Not Like Our Mothers': Reproductive Choice and the Emergence of Citizenship among Brazilian Rural Workers, Domestic Workers, and Housewives, " in Negotiating Reproductive Rights. Women's Perspectives across Countries and Cultures, ed. Rosalind P. Petchesky and Karen Judd (New York: IRRRAG/Zed Books, 1998), 31-68.
33. Sonia Alvarez, "Advocating Feminism: The Latin American Feminist NGO 'Boom, '" International Feminist Journal of Politics 1, no. 2 (1999): 181-209. Similar trends toward professionalization were seen in the United States, although for a somewhat different set of reasons.
34. Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin, eds., Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995).
35. Diniz, de Mello e Souza, and Portella, "'Not Like Our Mothers.'".
36. All translations of foreign language quotes and citations are my own.
37. In 2000, the groups embarked on a collaborative research project; this time MMTR members were trained as researchers and participated, along with SOS Corpo staff, in discussions of the theoretical framework and interpretations of results. For a fascinating account of the research process for this project, see Ana Paula Portella, Carmen Silva, and Simone Ferreira, Mulher é Trabalho na Agrtcultura Familiar (Recife: SOS Corpo-Gênero e Cidadania, 2004), 13-39.
38. The number of nongovernmental European development agencies, an important source of funding for social movements in Latin America, grew from 1, 600 in 1980, to 2, 970 in 1993, and their spending rose from $2.8 to $5.7 billion in current dollars. See David Hulme and Michael Edwards, "Conclusion: Too Close to the Powerful, Too Far from the Powerless?" in NGOs, States, and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? ed. David Hulme and Michael Edwards (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 4.
39. A study of women's organizations by Cindy Clark et al. found that agencies were shifting their funds to larger organizations and away from those with budgets under $100, 000. In the same study, 14 percent of those from Latin America reported that their funding in 2005 had decreased relative to 2000, the highest percentage reporting a decline of any region of the world. Latin American respondents to the survey also reported greater conditionalities and a tendency for donors to channel larger proportions of their aid through states, resulting in less money being available to NGOs or social movements, a narrowing of the issues that would receive support to the least controversial, and more bureaucracy involved in applying for and receiving funding. See Cindy Clark et al., Where Is the Money for Women's Rights.?' Assessing Resources and the Role of Donors in the Promotion of Women's Rights and the Support of Women's Organizations (Mexico: AWID/Just Associates, 2006).
40. Alvarez, "Advocating Feminism, " 182.
41. Clark et al., Where Is the Money? 14-18, 75-76, 84-87.
42. Author's interview with an NOVIB staff member, 2006.
43. Adrie Papma and Ellen Sprenger, "NOVIB and Gender: State of Affairs and Current Issues, " in Engendering Development: Experiences in Gender and Development Planning, ed. Maruja Barrig and Andy Wehkamp (The Hague: NOVIB, 1994), 207.
44. Silvia Camurça and Margarita Argott Cisneros, "Feminismo y cooperación para la democracia y el desarrollo en América Latina" (Mexico: Red Entre Mujeres, 1998).
45. Everjoice Win, "ALPS: AAI Accountability, Learning and Planning Systems" (paper presented at the AWID Money and Movements International Meeting, Guanajuato, Mexico, November 2006).
46. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1.
47. Rosalind P. Petchesky, Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights (New York: Zed/UNRISD, 2003), 22.
48. Nancy Fraser, "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Post-socialist' Age, " in her Justice Interruptus, 11-39.