Decolonial FeminismPapers

This research critically examines how feminism and social work have historically participated in colonial projects, perpetuating structural violence rooted in white supremacy. The author proposes an Indigenous decolonial feminist framework, emphasizing that social work should reorient its justice goals toward collective liberation and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples.

A place-based Indigenous feminist analysis showing that mining violence acts on bodies, water, land, and community relations - and that women’s refusal defends this entire web of life.

Sylvia Tamale analyzes how colonial law, organized religion, nationalism, and contemporary politics manufacture supposedly timeless African sexual norms and police nonconforming bodies.

Simpson rethinks education through Nishnaabeg knowledge, centering land, story, embodied practice, relational accountability, and Indigenous resurgence.

Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill challenge feminist theory to confront settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, heteropatriarchy, land, and the colonial relations that can be reproduced through knowledge production.

Sylvia Tamale examines Baganda women’s erotic knowledge as a contested archive shaped by female instruction, colonial morality, religion, commodification, and feminist struggles over pleasure.

Andrea Smith connects Native feminism with sovereignty, anti-violence organizing, anti-colonial struggle, and social transformation, challenging separations between feminism and Indigenous nationhood.

Obioma Nnaemeka theorizes African feminist agency through negotiation, give-and-take, and the strategic navigation of institutions rather than a universal script of confrontation.

Sharmila Rege responds to and extends Gopal Guru's argument, proposing Dalit women's experience as a critical standpoint rather than a fixed boundary of difference. The essay matters for Indian feminism, anti-caste politics, and feminist epistemology.

This foundational text of postcolonial feminist theory questions the possibility of Western intellectuals representing the oppressed. Through analyzing colonial discourse on Indian widow immolation (sati), Spivak reveals the imperialist logic of 'white men saving brown women from brown men,' arguing that subaltern women are structurally silenced under the dual oppression of colonialism and patriarchy.

This influential essay critiques exclusionary practices within the feminist movement, arguing that using the tools and methods of oppressive systems to fight oppression is doomed to fail. Lorde calls for recognizing and embracing difference as a source of strength, emphasizing that true liberation requires creating entirely new frameworks rather than seeking reform within existing power structures.