Identity, difference, and recognition: a look at the indigenous women's movements in Brazil and the agenda for the fight against gender-based violence/Identidade, diferenca e reconhecimento: um olhar sobre os movimentos de mulheres indígenas no Brasil e a pauta de enfrentamento a violencia de genero.
| Autor | de Almeida, Jaqueline Reginaldo |
-
Introduction
The conditions of vulnerability and oppression of women in society have been a recurring agenda in recent times, especially in relation to issues involving gender violence - gender understood as the social role assigned to the female sex. Faced with degrading situations of human dignity, whether due to lack of identity and/or economic recognition, social movements are important tools of transformation that historically enabled the conquest and recognition of countless fundamental human rights, overcoming arbitrary practices and contexts of tyranny.
The situation is no different when analyzing the way indigenous movements operate in Brazil, which had--and still have--an essential role in defending their rights and interests. Alongside these movements, indigenous women's movements emerge, which fight for the realization of collective rights--identity and economic--, while also bringing to the debate new specific guidelines related to women's rights. In other words, are the general economic-political guidelines sufficient to overcome various vulnerabilities, or "within them" is it important to maintain specific guidelines, for example, revealing gender violence?
With that in mind, the research aims to reflect, based on contributions on identity, difference, recognition and social movements, how indigenous women's movements are articulated in Brazil, and how the issue of fighting gender violence is debated within these movements. To do so, at first, the work discusses aspects of the claims for identity, difference and recognition, pointing out the difficulty in the field of indigenous identity recognition, since being a woman and belonging to an indigenous group within a colonial and patriarchal context and reveals a picture of serious oppression, deepening the gender violence. Afterwards, it advances in the debate on the role of social movements, highlighting the paradigm shift in the social and legal recognition of the various indigenous identities after the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. Finally, it addresses the indigenous women's movements in Brazil and the agenda for fighting against gender violence, underlining the importance of indigenous women's movements to wield the agenda of identity recognition, denouncing and seeking alternatives against the violence suffered within their own communities, as well as the surrounding society. In terms of methodology, the study used the technique of bibliographic research, based on deductive reasoning and hermeneutic and critical-dialectical approaches.
-
Notes on identity, difference and recognition
From the central objective of this study, it is necessary to discuss, initially, the categories identity, difference and recognition, in order to be able to enter the issue of claiming them. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize that identity and difference are inseparable. Identities are marked and constituted by differences. According to Kathryn Woodward (2000), identity is relational, it is distinguished by what it is not, that is, it depends on something outside itself, on other identities that provide conditions for its existence, it depends on difference. Likewise, Stuart Hall (2000) states that identities are constructed through difference and not outside of it, and thus, only through the relationship with the Other can they be produced.
Identity was conceived in an essentialist way, as a fixed and permanent category. According to Hall (2006), this idealization becomes contested in post-modernity, in which identity becomes a mobile celebration, formed and transformed continuously. In this sense, it is defined historically, not biologically, so that the subject can assume different identities at different times, because "as the systems of meanings and cultural representation multiply, we are confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities, any one of which we could identify with - at least temporarily. (HALL, 2006, p. 13). On the subject, Bauman (2005) observes that identity is revealed as something to be invented, to be freely constructed, and not to be discovered. "A cohesive, firmly riveted and solidly constructed identity would be a burden, a constraint, a limitation to the freedom to choose." (BAUMAN, 2005, p. 60).
In harmony with the thinking of Silva (2000), the marking of difference in the processes of construction of identities occurs both through symbolic systems of representation and through forms of social exclusion, always demarcating borders: "Affirming identity means demarcating borders, it means making distinctions between what is inside and what is outside. Identity is always linked to a strong separation between 'we' and 'them'" (SILVA, 2000, p. 82). Thus, it is necessary to consider that the struggles for the affirmation of identities are also surrounded by power relations, considering that "while the human subject is placed in relations of production and of signification, they are equally placed in very complex power relations" (FOUCAULT, 1995, p. 232). For Foucault, power is not simply a relationship between individual or collective partners, but a mode of action of some over others. From this point of view, the exercise of power consists of "conducting conducts", it is a set of actions on possible actions, it operates on the field of possibility where the behavior of active subjects is inscribed, it incites, induces, diverts, facilitates or makes more difficult, governing and structuring the possible fields of action of others, as Foucault ponders (1995).
As products of language, identity and difference cannot be understood outside the systems of meaning in which they acquire meaning and, thus, their definitions are subject to vectors of force and power, often used to privilege certain identities over others. Identity and difference are closely related to the ways in which society produces and uses classifications and, in this case, dividing and classifying means hierarchizing, which guarantees the privilege of assigning different values to different groups (SILVA, 2000). Along these lines, difference can be conceived as a source of diversity, heterogeneity and hybridity, or it can be negatively constructed by the marginalization of people who are defined as others, as outsiders", a concept still very present in today's society (WOODWARD, 2000). The main form of classification is structured in binary oppositions of dualisms: indigenous and non-indigenous, for example. Based on the work of Jacques Derrida, Silva (2000) observes that such binarisms do not express a simple division of the world into two symmetrical classes, since one of the terms always receives a positive value while the other a negative connotation.
Silva draws attention to the fact that "to fix a certain identity as the norm is one of the privileged forms of creation of a hierarchy of identities and differences. Normalization is one of the most subtle processes through which power manifests itself in the field of identity and difference." (SILVA, 2000, p. 83). Following the author's considerations, normalizing means arbitrarily electing a specific identity as a parameter, from which other identities are evaluated and ranked, situations that have recurred throughout history. Based on moral, religious, cultural and biological pseudo-justifications, certain groups began to assert their identities as superior, as standards of "normality", disqualifying and attributing negative meanings to other differences, such as national, male, white, Christian, European, heterosexual identities, among others.
And it is in this field of disputes that indigenous peoples are inserted. This context of inferiority of identity differences engendered serious violations and deprivations of human rights, situations of marginalization and sub-citizenship that are reflected to the present day. There began to be a kind of demonization of differences, in which inferior identities are demonized as a tool of repression, oppression and imposition of certain values propagated by dominant groups. According to Santos and Lucas, this was the case "with Muslims, women, Indians, Jews, blacks and homosexuals who, in some way, were figures that materialized the capital sins that strongly structured the Christian doctrine of salvation" (SANTOS; LUCAS, 2019, p. 24). (1)
Colonialism and the question of the Modern paradigm were also decisive in the processes of domination and exclusion. In the context of Latin America, colonization was overwhelming, especially in relation to traditional peoples, imprinting a civilizing method in the light of European, white and masculinized premises, notions incorporated in the formation and development of colonized societies (EINSBERG, 2000). It should be noted that, throughout history, several factors have combined and contributed to the hierarchy of differences, in order to privilege some and make others inferior, generating prejudice, discrimination, oppression, violence and even deaths against marginalized identities, situations that, despite many social and normative advances, have a very serious repercussion nowadays.
In this scenario of demonization of difference, to the point of denying the very humanity of some people or social groups, struggles for recognition arise, which seek respect for human dignity and the realization of basic rights of populations made invisible and/or marginalized. In this sense, three theorists of recognition will be briefly presented: Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser with different ways of perceiving recognition involving identity and difference.
Axel Honneth (2009), in his theory of recognition, resumes conflict as the generator of struggles for recognition. The conflict corresponds to the experiences of disrespect suffered by the subjects as the moral grammar of social conflicts. For him, there are three spheres of recognition: love, law and social esteem, without which...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
