Feminisms from Abya Yala: Women’s Ideas and Propositions of 607 Peoples in Our America by Francesca Gargallo Celentani (review)

IN FEMINISMOS DESDE ABYA YALA, the feminist philosopher and historian of ideas Francesca Gargallo Celentani seeks to explore the epistemologies, saberes (knowledges), and thoughts of the Indigenous women of the Pueblos originarios (First Nations) in Nuestra América (a concept that embraces the cultural diversity of America, since the Latin term leaves out the Indigenous populations; it is a decolonizing and not hegemonic concept that refers to an America independent from occidental power and domination, referencing José Marti’s 1891 essay).

It is a philosophical text that was born in the context of her fieldwork that spans from Mexico to the tip of Chile with the aim to examine and understand feminisms and ideas that are emerging from the different women’s knowledge in Abya Yala,¹ which are not connected with the occidental and academic feminism ideology.

Far from following a classical philosophical methodology—which appears as a backdrop and as a theoretical framework—Gargallo Celentani analyzes these epistemologies directly from the voices of the Indigenous women. This procedure requires a participatory and horizontal approach to research, which is more closely aligned to anthropological methodologies rather than purely philosophical ones. The result is a “collection of dialogues and ideas” (2014: 9) based on many conversations that took place, including through the exchange of letters, between women from different communities along Abya Yala. The outcome is an interwoven book that tries to reflect the ideas and realities from these different voices, which are a product of their own epistemologies and different belongings.

The book provides clarity about respectful dialogue with Indigenous women from different communities (Zapotecs, Kichwas, Chocholtecas, Bribris, Gnöbes, and Mapuches, among others). Because of this, in the book we cannot see a classic interview itself; we are able to read the reflections and viewpoints that the women give to the author related to such issues as discrimination, racism, power, gender topics, and others that are entirely explained through their words.

Consequently this study is double-pronged: the first half stages a critique of feminist consciousness, as the author is critically self-reflexive about her own cultural roots in relation to capitalist and racist systems. She explains why academic standards force distance from our origins and the objectivity required of the intellectual. These privileges and contradictions, she says, mark how “the racist system has produced my subjectivity since childhood. They are [privileges] so internalized and normalized that I am unaware of them, and therefore I abrogate the right not to recognize them, unless someone could point them out” (2012: 15). It is an interesting refection that prompts academics to think critically and reflect on these racist patterns that we have internalized and may in part reproduce.

The second prong of her analysis is a critique of the road traveled in the field itself, which includes taking seriously Indigenous women’s realities, expressions, and knowledge forms. The fieldwork literally walks us through the territories of all the people of Abya Yala. Gargallo Celentani visited Indigenous such communities as Totonicapán (Guatemala), Intibucá (Honduras), Bambú (Costa Rica), Kuna Yala (Panamá), Huancavelica (Perú), and many more. As a result, the scholarship represents Indigenous thought as complex and contested even within the same ethnic group. Struggles are reflected in the results of the investigation.

In the first chapter the author, from a self-reflection through a extensive theoretical framework and from the dialogue with the Indigenous women, brings us closer to the thoughts and epistemology that are born from and intertwine their thoughts, from their bodies, history, and identity. Focusing on the debate linked to white Western feminism and the ways it produces...