Jamila Mascat

Utrecht University

If I Can’t Speak For You, It’s Not My Revolution! Feminist Politics Between the Personal and the Political

5 March 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In the genealogy of feminist and postcolonial critique, the act of “speaking for” another – that is, representing their voice on their behalf – has long been condemned as a violation, undermining the legitimacy and agency of marginalized subjects. However, as Adrienne Rich perfectly phrases it in her “Notes towards a Politics of Location” (1984), if “You cannot speak for me,” “I cannot speak for us,” and the use of pronouns becomes a “political problem,” feminist praxis risks being reduced to a collection of “ego-histories” and “singular pasts” (Traverso, 2022). Drawing from the predicament of pronouns as it emerged in contemporary feminist politics, the paper critically engages with the role of personal experience, first-person accounts, and individual feelings in feminist narratives. In conclusion, it advocates for revisiting the Hegelian form of the concrete universal to rethink radical feminist partisanship.