The third Rendez-vous d’Alternatives meeting will address the theme of feminist resistance to the rise of fascism and the far right.
With Rita Segato, Zahia El-Masri and Nawel Hamidi.
The event is organized in partnership with the School of Ecology, Leadership, and Equity at Saint Paul University in Ottawa and the Laboratoire d’art et de recherche décoloniaux (LabARD) at UQAM.
This talk will be held in English with simultaneous consecutive and whispered interpretation.
The world has reached unimaginable levels of cruelty. From Gaza to Argentina, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan, the roots of this violence are deeply embedded in a strategy of patriarchal and colonial domination where women’s bodies have become a territory of conquest and a battlefield. Yet, resistance is also emerging from women’s bodies. Despite the rise of fascism and the far right across the globe, feminist movements continue to fight to overcome all forms of violence, whether domestic, state, military, or colonial. Zahia El-Masri and Nawel Hamidi, and Argentine anthropologist, author, and researcher Rita Segato will discuss the decline of women’s rights in the face of rising authoritarianism, fascism, and imperialist wars, as well as the experience and new forms of resistance proposed by pluralistic and decolonial feminist movements.
A renowned anthropologist, feminist, and author, 𝐑𝐢𝐭𝐚 𝐒𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐨 has written several essays on gender, violence, and coloniality. A professor emeritus at the University of Brasilia, she has been awarded nearly a dozen honorary degrees from European and Latin American universities in recent years, as well as several other important distinctions. In particular, she received the Frantz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophy Association (2021) for her entire body of work and was named Illustrious Personality of Culture by the municipality of Buenos Aires (2019). Her writings inspired the lyrics of the song “Un violador en tu camino” (A rapist in your path) during the protests in Chile in 2019.
Alongside her career in the public sector, 𝐙𝐚𝐡𝐢𝐚 𝐄𝐥-𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐫𝐢 founded the Women for Palestine collective and works tirelessly to raise awareness among the Quebec population about the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people.
𝐃𝐫. 𝐍𝐚𝐰𝐞𝐥 𝐇𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐢 is a professor at the School of Leadership, Ecology, and Equity at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Both a lawyer and sociologist, her current research focuses on the comparative study of colonialism and its effects on the governance of post-independence and indigenous societies. Her doctoral research focused on the phenomenon of systemic humiliation in Algeria under French rule and its impact on the notion of human dignity and governance after independence.
