Under the shadows of colonial discourse: subalternity and gender setups in a launderette in the countryside of Minas Gerais

• Autor(a) principal: Rosa, Alexandre Reis
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Medeiros, Cintia Rodrigues de Oliveira, Júnior, Valdir Machado Valadão
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos EBAPE.BR
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/cadernosebape/article/view/5269

In this paper, we approach the gender issue from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Our aim is to analyze gender setups in a launderette located in the countryside of Minas Gerais, where only women work under the leadership of a poor black woman. We relied on the postcolonial thought, specifically on reflections about the inferiority of women in Mohanty (1984), Spivak (1988), and Suleri (1992). The efforts of these authors to understand the gender dynamics brings up issues which are rarely observed by traditional theories, especially those with a dual nature addressing gender as a simple relationship between the sexes. In turn, the postcolonial thought leans on the concept of subordination, no–place, and other ones to reflect upon the postcolonial subjects who speak through representatives whose legitimacy is related to the place, instead of their speech itself. As a method, we use the shadowing technique to observe the daily work of the launderette’s manager and to identify the gender dynamics emerging from her everyday interactions. As a result, we present the configurations of gender relations, which consist of our interpretations, which are, thus, subjective ones, of the discursive practices that emerged during the daily work of Cida, the manager who was shadowed in the launderette.