Queering the Left Turn: Contested National Imaginaries in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel analyzes how queer cultural and political practices in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela navigate through the openings and foreclosures of the Latin American Left Turn. Progressive political actors in the US often uncritically align themselves with leftist nation states, to the detriment of social groups that hold legitimate criticisms of their governments. We use a queer analytic that belies any linear or unified account of the political shifts in our research sites, and aims towards a complex articulation of solidarity and engagement with environmentalist, indigenous, black, migrant, feminist, and LGBT social groups across the hemisphere.

Sub Track

• Genders, Feminisms and Sexualities

Session Organizer

• Claudia S Garriga-López, New York University

Chair

• Carlos U Decena, Rutgers University

Individual Presentations

• Decolonial Gesture: Indigenous Anarcho-Feminist Critique - Macarena Gómez-Barris, University of Southern California

• Transfeminist Praxis: Which Way Is Left? - Claudia S Garriga-López, New York University

• Sarmiento’s make-over: How the Bachillerato Popular Trans Mocha Celis is transforming Argentinian education - Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University

• Los Narcosatánicos: Christian Conservative Metaphysics and Mexico’s Rightward Turn - Brian Ray

• Ciudadana Trans: Construyendo participación y pertinencia desde la exclusión social y structural - Marcia Ochoa, University of California/Santa Cruz

Discussant

• Susana Peña, Bowling Green State University