ONSDAG 1 JUNI, LUND

Global Gender Matters is a network at the Department of Gender Studies. In this event we present Dr. Rosa Cordillera Castillo, anthropologist at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin and Associate Professor Verita Sriratana, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University.
Critical Research Ethics as Decolonial Praxis

Dr. Rosa Cordillera Castillo
Critical research ethics as decolonial praxis confronts the practice of ethics within power relations between researcher and researched, and between scholars of the Global North and the Global South. It is sensitive to and critical of structures of inequalities between the Global North and Global South that have shaped research conduct of and knowledge production about the Global South. It interrogates the ethical implications of the coloniality of knowledge, the power relations between researcher and interlocutor, and the researcher’s positionality, responsibilities, and accountabilities during and after research, that is, in all acts of representation and engagement. Critical research ethics furthermore commits to just and fair collaborations between research partners, including with one’s interlocutors, and recognizing the knowledge produced in the Global South and by Global South scholars in the Global North. In other words, it considers research ethics as interwoven with the politics of knowledge production. It involves the praxis of thought-actions-reflections-actions regarding one’s positionality, place of enunciation, privileges, and biases in relation to conducting research and enacting this into ethical and decolonial knowledge production.

Short bio:
Dr. Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is an anthropologist and engaged scholar based at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin. She works on peace and conflict studies, decoloniality, and critical research ethics, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Germany. She co-leads the Affect and Colonialism Web Lab at Free University Berlin, founded the Philippine Studies Series Berlin platform, and runs the Advancing Philippine Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin project. Prior to moving to Berlin, Rosa was an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of the Philippines.
 
Decoloniality and Epistemic Violence in Thailand’s Current Pro-Democracy Movement: An Activist Academic’s Experience and Advocacy for Feminism and Marriage Equality

Associate Professor Verita Sriratana, PhD

Thailand’s anti-government protests since 2020, fuelled by resentment towards the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration’s abuse of power and mismanagement of COVID-19 pandemic crisis, have taken an interesting turn. The current movement can be characterised as not only a youth-led people’s movement of which most campaigns and activities are initiated by school and university students through various interest clusters, but also as a movement which calls for gender equality as the forefront to the fight for democracy. The focus of my talk is the more subtle form of gender-based violence (GBV), namely, epistemic violence which has been perpetrated in both online and offline domains, especially in the case of women and LGBTQINA+ persons who have been vocal and politically active on social network platforms. In the case of female activists, cyberbullying and attempts to tone police and language police them have led to a realisation that the pro-government ultraroyalists and ultranationalists are not their only battlefront. In fact, the female activists simultaneously need to seek tactics to handle misogynist and anti-feminist discourses ironically propagated by anti-government protesters who identify themselves as “progressive”, “fighters for democracy” or even “champions of human rights”. In the case of LGBTQINA+ persons, blatant GBV in the form of epistemic violence can be seen reflected in the Constitutional Court Ruling on 17 November 2021, which determined that Section 1448 of the Civil and Commercial Code (the law which defines marriage as between a man and a woman) does not violate Thailand’s constitution. I contend that, while, for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the clearest example of epistemic violence in history can be seen in various projects of imperialist discourse production of which aim is to constitute the colonial subject as Other, the clearest example of epistemic violence in Thailand can be seen in the various projects of misogynist and homophobic discourse production of which aim is to constitute female and LGBTQINA+ subjects as the deviant and depraved Other. To my analysis of GBV in Thailand’s pro-democracy movement, I shall also apply Enrique Galván-Álvarez’s views that practices of domination is legitimised and enshrined through the constant construction of epistemic frameworks. In the case of Thailand, such practices of domination by its hegemonic forces on the level of episteme can be seen as part of the necropolitical project which, according to Achille Mbembe, seeks to dictate who may live and who must die (the epistemic or hermeneutic death). I shall conclude my talk by discussing, through the point of view of an activist academic advocating for feminism and marriage equality, decoloniality in the form of the ongoing proliferation of feminist and pro-LGBTQINA+ knowledge dissemination projects in Thailand, which have mostly been initiated by young people as intersectional retaliation against epistemic violence and injustice.

Short bio:
Verita Sriratana is Associate Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She is former Visiting Research Fellow in Human Rights (Regional Asia Pacific Programme) at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) in Lund. Verita’s ongoing research project bears the title of ”In Thailand’s Dream of Democracy, ’(Not All Men, But All) Femtwits Are Trash’: Offline & Online Gender-Based Violence against Female Activists in Pro-Democracy Protest Movement and Intersectional Feminist Retaliations against Patriarchal Epistemic Violence”.

Evenemang onsdag 1 juni kl. 13.00-16.00 på Lunds universitet.