Płeć, rasa, seksualność w kolonialnych ekonomiach władzy

This paper focuses on the issue of the gendered character of colonial domination and the role of the intersection of gender and race hierarchies in the structuring of colonial power. The author claims that these hierarchies not only intersected but also participated in constituting each other. The paper shows the multiple implications of this constitutive intertwining ranging from the impossibility of creating unitary subjects of anti-colonial, anti-racist or anti-patriarchal struggle to the cynical instrumentalisation of women’s rights by colonial and neocolonial discourses carried out for the sake of asserting the race difference (on which those discourses invariably depend). Discussing the gendered character of colonial and neocolonial encounters, the author points out that both colonial domination and anti-colonial resistance is often articulated in a gender idiom of asserting or regaining one’s masculinity. The issue of the instrumentalisation of women’s rights is illustrated by the example of contemporary anti-Islamic discourse, especially the headscarf controversy, that uses the status of women to assert the racialised inferiority of Muslims. The author points out that one of the contemporary consequences of the intertwining of race and gender hierarchies is that we are confronted with the false alternative of choosing between fighting against racism or fighting against gender subordination. The author concludes that it is only by transgressing this false alternative that we can start to dismantle both gender and race hierarchies.