Description
As soon as life experiences are addressed, resistances are materialised in the body. For this reason, Hyndman argues: “Epistemology is embodied” (2004:315). However, this is not the case for the discipline of International Relations, nor in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies.
To bridge this gap this research presents a dialogue between poststructuralism and decolonial feminism, in order to break down some of the (post)liberal assumptions. These, far from establishing an environment of peace, (re)produce multiple forms of violence, both epistemically and empirically by denying the plurality of experiences, what is called in these pages feminist decolonial heterotopias.
In this sense, daily experiences permit addressing alternative narratives (Mateos & Rodríguez, 2021) which are spatialized in the bodies that resist a ‘continuum of violences’, using Sjoberg’s feminist concept (2014). It is by understanding the body as a legitimate space and scale that allow its conceptualisation as a somateca: “a living political and cultural archive” (Preciado, 2012:1).
Adding therefore the spatial dimension is a way to reverse the subjugation of other knowledges (Foucault, 1980). Consequently, its politicisation entails the imbrication of heterotopias (Foucault, 2004), other/alternative spaces of struggle against the (post)liberal model. To illustrate this is presented the case study of Congolese protests against the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in DR Congo.
