Abstract

ACEVEDO ZAPATA, Diana. About the Oppression on Women by other Women: A Grey Zone in the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Folios [online]. 2021, n.53, pp.183-197.  Epub Nov 19, 2021. ISSN 0123-4870.  https://doi.org/10.17227/folios.53-11258.

The purpose of this reflective paper is to describe an opaque and gray zone of oppression in which words cover up damage and lend themselves to a system of complicity and shared responsibilities. In order to do this, I will use Primo Levi's concept of "gray zone", in Claudia Card's interpretation of the term, in order to address the ambiguous condition of a victim turned into a perpetrator. I am interested in illustrating an example of how damage upon women functions through discourse or words, this is, how oppression is enforced in contexts in which victims of the patriarchy are also its replicators. I especially explore how the rhetoric of protection, exercised by a mother who has suffered damage because of being a woman, reproduces the patterns of victimization upon her daughter in the novel En diciembre llegaban las brisas byMarvel Moreno. I will use an intersectional perspective to analyze the way in which race, class and gender are intertwined in complex ways within the mother-daughter relationship. I will show that systemic oppression tied to gender, race and class has effects upon women's daily lives, feminizing and racializing our bodies, minds, experiences, and the frameworks that make them meaningful. All this might occur without the intention of those who harm women, and it can even happen from the "best of intentions". Sometimes, violence is exercised, reproduced, expanded, and transformed through words, through well-intentioned formative discourses.

Keywords : Grey zone; moral injury; intersectionality; feminism; Marvel Moreno.

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