The Expanding Photographic Archives of Feminist Movements in Chile

Name
Angeles Donoso Macaya, Professor

Department
Modern Languages

Type of Leave
Fellowship Award for Research
Full year starting Fall 2020

Project Description

Image credit: Angeles Donoso Macaya. The photo in this magazine spread was taken by Chilean feminist photographer Kena Lorenzini, also member of Mujeres por la Vida and Asociación de Fotografos Independientes.

I used my Fellowship Leave to begin drafting my second book manuscript, tentatively called “The Expanding Photographic Archives of Feminist Movements in Chile.” Historically, feminist movements and feminist theory have given significant weight to the consideration of visuality in a broad sense—historical invisibility of “women,” political underrepresentation, overrepresentation of white women in media, and so on. Yet, what is rendered (in)visible when “women” are rescued from/in the archive?

What does the category “women” name and erase? Is it possible to articulate forms of feminist criticism that do not attend to the politics of identity and representation, to develop methodologies that do not reinforce patriarchal paradigms and discursive tropes? By adopting a feminist lens and a decolonial approach, in this book-length project I explore these questions and critically consider the counter-visuality displayed in alternative feminist media in Chile—these media are preserved in the Women and Gender Archive in Santiago, Chile, and in other minor archives—as well as the patriarchal, settler-colonial visuality of illustrated media consigned in official Chilean archives.


Angeles Donoso Macaya is an immigrant educator, researcher and organizer from Santiago, Chile. Her research centers on Latin American photography theory and history, counter-archival production, human rights activism, documentary film, and feminism