Feminist theologies and Women's Movements in Argentina: contributions to think about the construction of popular power

Abstract

Reflections on power represent a demand of the hour for the peoples of Latin America. Although they have always been present in the academy and in social movements, the categories of understanding about power have been multiple and in dispute: from the understanding of power as a negative value, to the relativization of hegemonic structures, and the disappearance of the subject as a social agent. It is in this historical, political and social framework that it is essential, from the field of communication studies, to re-conceptualize power from a popular perspective; to understand the social and cultural processes present in "peripheral" countries in the face of the hegemonic blocs that represent a real threat to the processes of emancipation and sovereignty. Recovering the discussions about power and subjects, raises the need to find keys that allow us to generate articulation and unity in popular movements, as well as generate more solid-based political transformations. In this sense, women's movements today present the challenge of consolidating themselves as a retaining barrier for neo-fascist projects, breaking with conservative visions of the social order, and with "fend for yourself" discourse, to make way for another form of relationship-link that allows to draw bridges of understanding and sisterhood with the suffering of otherness. The present work tries to recover reflections and practices within the women's movements in Argentina in order to evaluate the proposals for the construction of popular power that their actions represent in the public space, inside and outside traditional political organizations. Likewise, this reflection incorporates the articulation of said movements with Latin American Feminist Theology, under the hypothesis that the ethical proposal of said religious discourse is articulated with the practices of transformation of the social order proposed by the movements of women, femininities and diversities in the national orbit.