The Aníbal Quijano Chair

The Aníbal Quijano Chair is a space of thought that pays homage to the memory of the great Peruvian thinker, a critic of the coloniality of power, and aims to open a channel of collective reflection-action, incorporating it into the multiple viewpoints that today find colonial modernity stripped of its primeval promises.

This fourth edition, concerning the relationship between coloniality and gender, pivots on the following question: Is feminism with patriarchal episteme possible? This question draws inspiration from Aníbal Quijano’s celebrated utterance: “Is a Left with right-wing episteme possible?”, the theme running centrally through the 2021 edition. On this occasion, the reflection is aligned towards certain feminist approaches which manifest a posture of moral, inquisitorial, authoritarian, controlling, monopoly-based, expurgatory, purist and exclusivist superiority, characteristics of the patriarchal episteme we seek to leave behind. “Tomorrow’s woman should not be the man we are leaving behind” is the phrase Rita Segato perplexingly heard uttered by a National Police chief in El Salvador and which prompted her to reflect on these questions. 

The programme starts with a seminar in which, with Segato and Elisa Fuenzalida — the director and coordinator of the Chair, respectively — local transfeminist activists participate. It continues with a conversation between Rita Segato and Teresa Ralli, founder and member of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, to set up a dialogue with the Expanded Theatricalities Chair, and ends with a public lecture by Segato.

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Marina Echebarría Sáenz is a professor of Mercantile Law at the University of Valladolid and a well-known LGTBIQ+ activist, specifically in the struggle for trans people’s rights. She is a professor and researcher at the University of Valladolid, where she also became vice-dean and director of the Mercantile Law Department. She is currently part of the Equality Union at the same university. Furthermore, she has been vice-president of Fundación Triángulo and participated in the process to draft Law 3/2007, of 15 March, regulating the registral rectification of the mention of people’s sex, and the drafting of different regional laws aimed at trans people. She currently chairs the Participation Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersexual People (LGTBI), under Spain’s Ministry of Equality.

Elisa Fuenzalida (Lima, Peru) is a researcher, writer and activist with an MA in Advanced Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her practice sits at the crossroads between the field of gender, memory, migration, eco-territoriality and decolonial studies. She has directed research projects like El futuro era tu cuerpo, Ensamblajes del Cuidado and Afectos en re-existencia, and currently contributes to the magazine Arts of the Working Class and is a mediator on the Redes por el clima (Networks for Climate) citizen laboratory platform. 

Rosa María García is an independent researcher and translator. She holds a degree in Philosophy and an MA in Applied Sociology from the University of Murcia and is currently studying her PhD in Philosophy and Gender at Universitat Jaume I. Moreover, she has translated the books Whipping Girl. El sexismo y la demonización de la feminidad desde el punto de vista de una mujer trans, by Julia Serano (Ménades, 2020), and Trans. Un alegato por un mundo más justo y más libre, by Shon Faye (Blackie Books, 2022). Notable among her latest contributions are “Migration, Gender and Sex Work: A Complex Perspective”, an article published in No. 38 of Asparkía. Investigació Feminista. 

Teresa Ralli is a founder and member of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, where she has co-directed La Primera Cena y Cambio de Hora (The First Supper and Clock Change), and works as an administrator and has overall responsibility for its archive and documentation. As an actress-artist, she participates in the conception and mise en scène of Yuyachkani’s collective shows and pedagogical events. She was honoured with the 2011 Lima Warmi Award from Lima City Hall in recognition of her cultural and teaching work, and for her contribution to the country’s standing and development, and, with Miguel Rubio, received the Senior Fellows distinction from the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University (NYU). She was the organiser of the Theatre-Women Encounters held in the Casa de Yuyachkani over a ten-year period. Moreover, she holds a baccalaureate in Communications and a degree in Performing Arts from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where she has lectured since 1998, primarily exploring the body and the voice on her courses.

Rita Segato is a professor of Anthropology and Bioethics in the UNESCO Chair at the University of Brasilia. She was an expert witness on the trials of the Sepur Zarco case in Guatemala, where sexual violence was first tried and prosecuted, in the form of domestic and sexual slavery, as a war strategy used by the State. Her main fields of interest include new forms of violence against women and the contemporary consequences of the coloniality of power. Her most important works include: La Nación y sus Otros: raza, etnicidad y diversidad religiosa en tiempos de políticas de la identidad (Prometeo Libros, 2007) and La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos y una antropología por demanda (Prometeo Libros, 2015).

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