¿Qué vendes morena?: unpacking the bodily territorialization of Black women in Buenos Aires

Abstract

A recurring experience for many Black women in Buenos Aires is the assumption that they are ‘prostitutes’. This article examines how assumptions that violate the black feminine body by assigning it stigmatized roles become trivialized and normalized in Argentina, a nation many Argentines claim is devoid of antiblack racism. I draw from the concepts of ‘bodily territorialization’, ‘space invaders’, and ‘overdetermined nominative properties’, as conceptualized by feminist scholars, to analyse assumptions about Black women in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My analysis entails a critical reading of cultural texts and images, blog posts, interview data, and autoethnographic accounts. My data show that the territorialization of Black women is rooted in colonial histories and contemporarily reproduced through misrecognitions. I argue that such a reading offers a decolonial feminist vantage point from which to explicate the processes by which ‘overdetermined nominative properties’ of Black women become trivialized and normalized in Argentina.

Keywords:

• Argentina
• Black women
• bodily territorialization
• gender
• race and the body

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the Black women in Argentina who shared traumatic memories with me and created intimate and cathartic spaces where I could share my own. They further theorized on the underpinnings of our shared experiences and pushed me to think beyond a singular analysis. This work is for us. I also with to acknowledge my community at UT-Austin, Williams College, and University of Nevada, Reno (professors, mentors, colleagues, and friends) who read this work and gave feedback, especially Dr. Simone Browne, Dr. Maricarmen Hernández, and Kate Dunkelberger. Any errors that may appear are of course my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethics approvals

Office of Research Support, the University of Texas at Austin, IRB Expedited Approval Protocol Number 2017-02-0088.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was made possible by a Tinker Field Grant, the U.S. Student Fulbright Program, and the Argentine Studies Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes on contributors

Prisca Gayles

Prisca Gayles is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Gender, Race, and Identity at the University of Nevada, Reno. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American studies, with doctoral portfolios in African and African Diaspora studies and Women’s and Gender studies, from the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the University of Nevada, Reno, Dr. Gayles was the Gaius Charles Bolin Dissertation Fellow in Africana Studies at Williams College from 2018–2020. She is a former U.S. Fulbright and Tinker Foundation Fellow. Dr. Gayles investigates how blackness is politicized to demand racial justice in spaces of black invisibility. Her current research includes a 22-month ethnography of how emotions permeate the macro and micro-politics of Argentina’s Black social movement.