“EPISTEMOLOGIAS DA IGNORÂNCIA” E AS PERFORMANCES TEÓRICAS DE BRANQUEAMENTO DA INTERSECCIONALIDADE

o debate entre Sirma Bilge e Nina Lykke

Abstract

In this paper I introduce to the Brazilian audience the academic debate on intersectionality—as both a concept and an analytical tool—between Turkish-Canadian sociologist Sirma Bilge and Danish-Swedish gender studies scholar Nina Lykke. The debate begins in 2013 when Bilge brings out her criticism in an article titled “Intersectionality Undone: Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectionality Studies.” She argues that disciplinary feminists downplay the centrality of race in intersectional thought and praxis depoliticizing intersectionality by “whitening” it. Lykke’s reply was only written seven years later, in 2020, when she takes responsibility for the blind spots of her past writings makes herself accountable for her “epistemologies of ignorance,” but asserts that it does not imply that socialist/Marxist feminism has to be dismissed as white theory altogether. Considering epistemological constructions as performances of theory, my study is developed in the field of Feminist Studies aligned with that of Cultural Performances.