Placing women at the centre in order to think about the present. Violence, community and the state in the 21st century Talk with Raquel Gutiérrez
If we think about the world from the point of view of what happens to women, the picture changes. Not just because women have a particular position in societies and because public policies and the market affect them differently, but also because this vantage point brings to light deep-seated systems of thought that organise the world but usually go unnoticed. What does the terrible violence that is defiling women's bodies in so many places tell us about the world? And what of the fact that the collective reproduction needs that women in so many societies fight for are always being postponed? This talk will focus on the moon, not the finger pointing at it. Because we have to deal with the underlying causes before we can overcome each and every one of the inequalities that come up every day.
In other words, what are the main problems in social autonomy processes? Why is organising inseparable from sustaining life? What is community fabric? Is it possible to transform the institutions through the rationality of the state? What are the links between progressive governments and male logic?
Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar is a Mexican intellectual. She holds a BA in Mathematics and a PhD in Sociology, and is currently researcher and professor at the Centro de Estudios Andinos y Mesoamericanos (CEAM) in Mexico City and at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Autonomous University of Puebla (ICSYH-BUAP). She participated in the Bolivian revolutionary movements in the eighties and nineties and in the popular-community uprising known as the Cochabamba Water War in 2000. She is co-founder of the group Comuna and author of the books ¡A desordenar! Por una historia abierta de la lucha social (La Paz, 1995), Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia (Durham, 2014) and Desandar el laberinto. Introspección en la feminidad contemporánea (Buenos Aires, 2015). Her book Horizontes comunitario-populares was recently published by Traficantes de Sueños (Madrid, 2017).
Programme
SATURDAY 11 MARCH, 6.30 pmVenue: Meier Auditorium
La Hidra Cooperativa
lahidracooperativa [at] gmail [dot] com