Beyond "epistemic disobedience" : contemporary decolonial representations of indigenous women of Abya Yala in Ixcanul and The Milk of Sorrow

Abstract

This dissertation aims to explore the utter significance and the scope of application of the indigenous female body and corporality in contemporary Latin American decolonial discourses. The theoretical discussion centers on the subversive and transgressive nature of the female bodies as a supplementary criterion to Walter D. Mignolo’s decolonial rhetoric, “Epistemic Disobedience,” by recognizing indigenous women’s potentiality in practicing decoloniality through bodily acts and serving as culturally inscribed substrate of rebellious consciousness. The fundamental objective is to investigate the ways in which female bodies are represented and culturally informed in contemporary Latin American cinematic productions. Through scrutinizing and examining the films Ixcanul (2015) and The Milk of Sorrow (2009), the project highlights the precariousness and plights faced by contemporary Latin American indigenous women from both national and individual ends. Despite the nuanced mechanisms and modes of expression, both films manage to represent the volatile nature of indigenous women’s bodies and their predominant force in resistance to a wide array of neocoloniality manifested by armed conflict and machismo. Via detailed analysis of pivotal sequences, the aid of gender-oriented perspectives, and the reiteration of relevant socio-historical backgrounds, this present project seeks to enlarge the parameters of decolonial feminist in cultural studies and reveal multiple pertinent aspects of indigenous women’s agency in realizing contemporary decolonial missions, including but not limited to subjectivity, beliefs, notion of body, psyche, and confrontation with alterity. Special attention shall be paid to the intricate relations amongst female bodies, indigeneity, and decoloniality and their evolving power dynamics.