Abstract

This paper addresses the professional trajectories of women in geography who were or are based at the University of São Paulo (USP) and who belong to generations which faced the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985). Theoretically inspired by the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia in the Foucauldian sense of resistance and ‘fearless speech’, this paper extends recent literature on feminist historical geographies and histories of radical geography, and responds to pressing needs for challenging Anglo-American hegemonies in these fields. To this end, I draw upon exceptional sources, such as autobiographical archival materials and three interviews with ‘privileged witnesses’, to make internationally known outstanding cases of female leadership that disrupt narratives on ‘big men’ which have hitherto hidden these stories. Although most of these women do not display explicitly a feminist label, their trajectories show how feminist practices were put in place, sometimes implicitly, by female scholars mostly coming from working-class and migrant backgrounds. These cases from the Global South further expose the feminist and radical principle that emancipation should not be conceded from above but taken from below.

摘要

本文探讨了曾经或现在在圣保罗大学 (USP) 并属于面临巴西军事独裁统治 (1964-1985) 的几代人的地理学女性的职业轨迹。在理论上受到福柯式的反抗和“无畏言论”中古希腊的直言概念的启发，本文扩展了最近关于女权主义历史地理学和激进地理学史的文献，并回应了在这些领域挑战英美霸权的迫切需求. 为此，我利用特殊的资源，例如自传档案材料和对“特权证人”的三个采访，来制作国际知名的女性领导力案例，这些案例破坏了迄今为止隐藏这些故事的“大人物”的叙述。尽管这些女性中的大多数人没有明确地贴上女权主义标签，但她们的轨迹显示了女权主义实践是如何由主要来自工人阶级和移民背景的女学者实施的，有时甚至是隐含的。这些来自全球南方的案例进一步暴露了女权主义的激进原则，即解放不应自上而下，而应自下而上。