From the Ocean Crossroads: Paths of a Feminist Decolonial Pedagogy in Exile

Abstract

Historically, in patriarchal societies, women have been responsible for educating children and transmitting culture at various levels: linguistic, food, artistic and customs. In anti-colonial struggles, women are seen as fundamental to the consolidation of nationalist revolutions; however, their political and intellectual contributions are erased in official histories. This paper presents the action and international circulation of a group of Timorese women who, in exile in Portugal and Mozambique, developed a decolonial feminist pedagogy and represent an important layer for the transmission and circulation of knowledge, practices and wisdom. In contact with the cultural crossroads that exile forced, they generated new forms of struggle and political understanding for this group of women. In dialogue with decolonial theories, this paper is part of an ongoing doctoral research and proposes the perspective of a decolonial feminist pedagogy.