This talk’s aim is to show how decolonisation in both feminist studies and feminist activism is not that simple to achieve in our countries of the global South and especially in the Mena region. This is not to say that all the difficulties one can face in this task are related to this specific anchorage as if it were something preventing us from adopting this particular scheme. My point is rather that we have to deal with a very complex configuration in which local interpretations of decoloniality should match our understanding of ourselves. This means that decoloniality has not to be adopted and applied only because it IS decoloniality, but instead it has to be carefully read, subverted, and if needed, dismissed.

Soumaya Mestiri is Professor of Political and Social Philosophy at the University of Tunis. She works on the history of liberalism and republicanism, global and local theories of justice, the Arab-Muslim political tradition but also on decolonial feminism, especially when applied to the Global South. Among her publications are the following books: Décoloniser le féminisme. Une approche transculturelle, Paris, Vrin, 2016; Elucider l’intersectionnalité. Les raisons du féminisme noir, Paris, Vrin, 2020 and Pour un féminisme décentré. Recadrer, Résister, Paris, Vrin, 2024.

Funding provided by the Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities Initiative.

Speaker: Soumaya Mestiri, Professor of Political and Social Philosophy, University of Tunis

Moderator: Paola Bacchetta, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley

Contact Info:

Gillian Edgelow
510-643-7172
gilliane@berkeley.edu