ANNOUNCEMENTS: Midterm prompts posted on wordpress Office hours by appointment on MW, 1 to SSB 243 Feel free to send s, but give 24 hour turnaround! First group presentation W 8/14 individual 2 pg summaries by 6pm Tues 8/13

ME X ICANA CHALLENGES BUILDING A PLANETARY CIVIL SOCIETY THROUGH PLACE CONSCIOUSNESS

GENDER, RACE, GLOBALIZATION Race and gender both “render the body into a text upon which histories of […] differentiation, exclusion and violence are inscribed” (Ferguson 192) Biological inheritance vs social construction  naturalization of subjugation vs analyses of freedom & power Globalization = breaking down of borders, exponential enhancement of mobility and interconnectedness because of expansion of global capital Globalization  the feminization of transnational labor (survival circuits)

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER 1.What does it mean according to Mohanty to engage in anticapitalist transnational feminist practice? 2.What does it mean to possess “place consciousness” and why is it so important to Mohanty? 3.Does Rosa Linda Fregoso demonstrate “place consciousness”? Why or why not?

ANTICAPITALIST TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISM Recognition that “capital as it functions now depends on and exacerbates racist, patriarchal, and heterosexist relations of rule” (Mohanty 510) “the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers – one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of one’s work are taken by someone else” (Smith 67) race & gender dehumanize individuals into producers and products of capitalism Capitalist values = private property & profit Anticapitalist value = justice no matter cost

PLACE CONSCIOUSNESS & TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISM “If we pay attention to and think from the space of some of the most disenfranchised communities of women in the world, we are most likely to envision a just and democratic society capable of treating all its citizens fairly” (Mohanty 510) Reading up the ladder of privilege vs top-down analyses – example of indigenous medicine & WTO (513) “’place consciousness… encourages us to come together around common, local experiences and organize around our hopes for the future of our communities and cities. While global capitalism doesn’t give a damn about the people or the natural environment of any particular place because it can always move on to other people and other places, place-based activism is concerned about the health and safety of people and places’” (Boggs via Mohanty 515)

TOP-DOWN VS BOTTOM-UP Global Capitalism Local Communities Multinational Corporation NAFTA Local & national governmental agencies Mexican Patriarchy Femicide in Ciudad Juarez

FREGOSO’S PLACE CONSCIOUSNESS Ciudad Juarez – space where Mexican state and transnational capital collide (NAFTA) Export processing zone = where materials can be landed, assembled and exported internationally without tariff/tax “globalism is a monolithic, top-down analysis that neither captures nor explains the complexity of feminicide” (Fregoso 8) Gloablism absolves state’s complicity and even direct involvement in the murders of poor and dark women in Juarez (Fregoso 17) Planetary civil society (Fregoso 22-23) – pursuit of justice across borders with recognition that the specific identities of women make them targets for violence Not a singular transnational female identity but solidarity through difference  “Common Differences”