College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Graduation Date

6-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Department/Program Conferring Degree

International Studies

Keywords

coloniality, decoloniality, knowledge, women of color, feminism

Abstract

Using Facebook and Instagram pages, women of color create virtual communities for epistemological transformations and community healing. In this thesis, I show that online communities of women of color constitute a decolonial feminist virtual space that serves as a site of knowledge production. I argue that these online communities can be conceptualized as a decolonial project existing and expanding from online spaces to public places and characterized by a deliberate rejection of anti-blackness, a critique of the capitalist/colonial/imperial world system, and liberating conceptions of sexuality and gender. I focus on Latina Rebels, Xicanisma, and Lindas, Libres pero Chingonas in order to examine the ways these spaces emerge as into discursive arenas whereby subjugated knowledges get centered, uplifted and validated. Through an analysis of three relationships – knowledge production and coloniality, knowledge production and the three platforms, and these three platforms and myself – I position these sites as feminist insurgencies that created an online Latina culture challenging the coloniality of knowledge production. I also engage in a systematic discourse analysis of posts curated by these three platforms to highlight the ways in which they actively challenge knowledges informed by discourses of colonial power.

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