This is the text of a lecture I delivered at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, on August 21, 2026.

It reflects decades of thinking and writing and engagements with other feminists and with students in my courses. At the end I have listed my works from 2004 to 2024 that make earlier forms of these arguments. Full references and citations to other scholars’ work whom I mention here, can be found in those. Here I post only the text of the lecture. A link to the recording is  given at the end.

Doing Feminism from the Global South

Joaquin Torres Garcia America Invertida 1943

I am deeply honoured to be invited to speak on this very special occasion celebrating UNAM’s 75^th anniversary. I congratulate you all on this occasion, and would like to express my deepest gratitude to the university for giving me this opportunity.

As you can see from the title of my lecture, we will use the term “doing” feminism rather than “being” feminist because I prefer to see feminism as a set of practices that take different shapes in different contexts rather than something that essentially constitutes the self. Of course I would call myself a feminist, but that identity is produced by my understanding and practices, not some essential core. In claiming feminism in this way, I draw on feminisms of the global South that have been suspicious of the idea of a Universal subject of feminism – Woman. Any mainstream feminism that claimed universal Woman has been challenged as representing the dominant identity of the region – caste, race, class. Continue reading Doing Feminism from the Global South →