Inroduction

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 Mignolo’s decolonial rhetoric, “Epistemic Disobedience,” by recognizing indigenous women’s potentiality in practicing decoloniality through non-conforming 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. It also seeks to enlarge the parameters of decolonial feminism 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.

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.

Cheng Xianye Arthur

Highlights

• Ixcanul: In this film, female body, though largely failed, is the key mechanism in resisting machismo and social inequalities. “Robachicos (child-trafficking)” and language hegemony (i.e. Spanish v.s. Indigenous tongues) are two leading neocolonial representations that are still haunting contemporary indigenous groups. As indigenous women, they also frequently face the internal hostilities from indigenous machos in both domestic and public sphere. Female body, long nurtured in indigenous-rooted ecological imaginations and maternal care in this case, manifested a great deal of insubordination towards said plights. The most powerful and rebellious scenario may be the digging of the missing newborn’s the tomb, declaring women’s discontents towards machismo agenda. The decolonial messaged is conveyed via aggressive revolting acts to racial-patriarchal-capitalist (ironic trinity) norms as well as the temporary break of indigenous conventions.

Highlights

• The Milk of Sorrow: In this film, female body serves as a lived testimony of the traumatic memories provoked by national armed conflicts. The occurred gender-oriented genocidal violence during dictatorship has left trepidation and a fictional disease that damage indigenous women’s physicality and sensibility. Their bodies’ resilience and self-resistance are informed by the chanting unique to their own culture. Female protagonist’s self-penetration of potato is the most intriguing semiotical image in this film, it underscores how radical indigenous women can be to guard their corporality in fear of potential gender violence. In addition, the film also manifested indigenous women’s bodies’ force in preserving and defending indigeneity, particularly during the cultural appropriation plotted by elite criollos. The decolonial mission is thus accomplished by reclaiming corporal autonomy and indigenous territories (figuratively).

Conclusion

Neocolonial oppression makes indigenous women’s bodies once again an unfavorable item that can only be valorized whenever desirable to either the male expectation or capitalist terms. Indigenous women’s bodies, constructed by countless micro-affects, enshrined beliefs, and memorial fragments, have contemporarily transformed into a special weapon that allows them not only to resist concrete plights, including but not limited to violence, inequality, genocide, cultural appropriation, machismo, but also to challenge western abstract, epistemic, hegemonic gender and sexual notions to reject further the deprivation of their bodies. In doing so, their bodies, abundant in female-exclusive subjectivity, ceaselessly signal decolonial potential, tight adherence to such decolonial epistemologies, and more importantly, push them into a new register.

Experience at MALCS

My entire dissertation-writing experience at MALCS was truly a gem! Initially, when I proposed my tentative topics to the dissertation panel, I felt insecure since my central theme is not Asia-related. But I was so blessed that MALCS has manifested great inclusiveness and flexibility by giving me full consent to carry out this project. Later, the assigned supervisor has provided ample constructive suggestions and insights during different stages of my writing, particularly with respect to the theoretical orientation of my piece. Thanks to my supervisor, previous courses that I have enrolled at MALCS, and rich yet accessible academic resources from HKU library, I was able to progressively make improvements regarding my project. The feedback from two examiners is also surprisingly illuminating, offering me a satisfactory termination of my master studies.