South/South Movement is convening a collective reading series on the coloniality of being and gender. We will question how colonial/modern power persists in normalising who counts as human, whose lives are deemed worth living, and how gendered identities are produced, regulated, and resisted in a global capitalist and patriarchal order. Bringing foundational and contemporary texts in conversation with each other, the series invites participants to engage with decolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives to scrutinise the enduring structures that order and perpetuate racial, gendered, sexual, and (bio)political hierarchies.
Through collective reading and discussion, we will think through the coloniality of being and gender from a place of coalition-building and resistance in order to read, through this prism, the past, present, and future of decolonial feminist and queer struggles. Word-for-word, we reiterate the guiding questions raised by María Lugones (2010) in working towards decolonial feminist and queer praxis:
How do we learn about each other?
How do we do it without harming each other but with the courage to take up a weaving of the everyday that may reveal deep betrayals?
How do we cross without taking over?
With whom do we do this work?
How do we practice with each other engaging in dialogue at the colonial difference?
How do we know when we are doing it?
Our suggested reading list includes:
- Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument’. CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (3): 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.
- Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. 2015. ‘Unparalled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations’. In Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, edited by Katherine McKittrick, pp. 9-89. Duke University Press.
- María Lugones. 2007. Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22/1, 186-209. [link to the text]
- Pedro Paulo Gomes Pereira. 2019. Reflecting on Decolonial Queer. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 25 (3): 403–429. [link to the text]
- Sara Ahmed. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press. [link to the text]
- The Invention of women – Oyeronke Oyewumi [Link to the text]
- Ryan Conrad. Ed. 2010. Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage. Ak Pr.
Lineup of sessions:
Session 1: Wynter 2003 and Wynter/McKittrick 2015 — 15 July 2026, 18:30 CEST
Session 2: Conrad 2010 — date tbc
Session 3: Lugones 2007 — date tbc
Session 4: Ahmed 2006 and Pereira 2019 — date tbc
We welcome further reading suggestions and additional session conveners if you are keen to contribute to this series (we’d love to hear from you via organize@southsouthmovement.org!). We encourage participants to read the text in advance and bring their questions/impressions/critiques to the session. All are welcome to join, listen, and contribute. Reading materials will be shared with participants after registration.
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