The object is to rescue a notion of identity, from anti-essentialist feminist theories, that allows enough cohesion and freedom to be viable options for feminist identifications and help widen what is considered a political subject in feminism. To highlight this affirmative ground from which to continue challenging identification categories, especially those constructed around or intersected by gender, while solidifying an ethical and political approach to identity.
This will be accomplished by, first, understanding the ways the traditional definition of identity, as something fixed and predetermined, has installed different forms of violence towards subjects being defined without their own agency considered. Especifically, from anti-essentialist feminists theories, who struggle to widen the category of being a “Woman”. From these fights for emancipation, freedom, and agency, I will highlight the need for being able to define oneself without being constricted into one way of identification.
Then, I will bring to the discussion some lessons learnt from queer theories, using Butler's concepts of gender and representation; and black feminism and anti-colonialism, with notions of intersectionality, recognition v/s sovereignty and subalternity, from authors like Lugones, Carby and Simpson; which have all questioned who is “the” subject of feminism, and demanded their experiences to be considered and fought for as well. This has both theoretical implications, by re-defining “womanhood” or “patriarchy” as they are mainly white cis-heteronormative categories; and political ones, considering the limits established for representation. These demands for recognition and criticisms to traditional and hegemonic feminism, remind us that new exclusions from identification can come from unexpected places. These debates move us to continue asking who is the political subject that fits into this category of a “Woman”, and what avoids that the movement itself becomes another force of exclusion.
