Popular Feminism: Considering a Concept in Feminist Politics and Theory

An analysis of popular feminism as a category in Latin American feminist studies from its origins in the 1980s and its disappearance in the 1990s to its resurgence in the present through the protagonism of the World March of Women, asks what is at stake in this contemporary claim to popular feminism in relation to the multiplication of feminisms. The contemporary use of the concept specifies a feminist praxis that is contentious, materialist, and counterhegemonic in permanently unsettled relations both with other feminisms and mixed-gender movements on the left. Despite converging agendas for redistribution, it also remains in considerable tension with black and indigenous feminisms. As a racially unmarked category, contemporary popular feminism continues to reproduce an elision of race and colonialism common to mestiza feminism and the political left. Un analisis del feminismo popular como categoria en los estudios feministas latinoamericanos, desde sus origenes en la decada de 1980 y su desaparicion en la decada de 1990 hasta su actual resurgimiento a traves del protagonismo de la Marcha Mundial de la Mujer nos lleva a preguntarnos que esta en juego en esta reivindicacion contemporanea del feminismo popular cuando lo consideramos en relacion a la actual multiplicacion de feminismos. El uso contemporaneo del concepto especifica una praxis feminista que es polemica, materialista y contrahegemonica dentro del marco de relaciones permanentemente inestables, tanto con otros feminismos como con movimientos izquierdistas de genero mixto. A pesar de las agendas convergentes de redistribucion, tambien mantiene una tension considerable con los feminismos negros e indigenas. Como categoria racialmente inespecifica, el feminismo popular contemporaneo mantiene sus elisiones de raza y colonialismo, asunto caracteristico del feminismo mestizo, asi como de la izquierda politica.