Colonial Detachment in research with women in Southern Patagonia. From when methodology and militancy become traps of opacity

Abstract

This work brings us both together to reflect on our research work within the framework of our doctoral theses that have in common the territorial context, the gender perspective, and the personal and political implications of the issues. One is about the practices and knowledge of prostitution in Río Gallegos and the other is about the working and living conditions of mining women in Río Turbio, both locations in Southern Patagonia. With this, we set out to do an exercise in awareness of our processes of formation of political subjectivity as feminist researchers who embrace critical theories and epistemologies, so that our practices allow constructions that recognize the doing-thinking of the subjects and the continuity of our critical thinking training processes.

We both set out to reflectively narrate the research itineraries from our first approaches to problems until to think about the contradictions, crises and transformations that we were unfastening. From this dialogue, we shared the analysis of our investigative processes in relation to two aspects: the first was linked to the interpellations that the territories make to us in contexts of displacement and the second with the proposals of decolonial doing to get rid of the methodologies and activist trajectories with which we began the investigation.