Estudiar para que el cuerpo no duela. Las emociones en la construcción de subjetividades de clase y género Studying to release the body from pain. Addressing emotions in the construction of class and gender subjectivities

Abstract

From my “situated” and “embodied” knowledge (Haraway, 1988), I commence from the memory of my own experience as a working woman from the rural context. Together with the stories of other colleagues, I shape an emotional, embodied, individual, and also collective memory that talks about us as workers in the fruit packaging factories in Extremadura. To delve into the “cultural politics of emotions” (Ahmed, 2013), I am also engaged in reflecting on how emotions can positively reverse; how can they be engines of emancipation and transformation from a pluralistic and intersectional feminist perspective which points out to the denouncement of inequalities and, the importance of individual and collective resistances. I have considered it relevant to unravel, deconstruct and recognize emotions such as pain, fear, anger, and shame, to show the place they occupy, in the construction of class, and gender subjectivities. I have used an autoethnographic methodology from the memory of the body. I start with my remembrance by following the methodological proposal of del Valle (1995; 244), a milestone that forms my feminist and class self, enabling me to talk about the situation of female workers in these factories from the privileged place that has allowed me my academic and feminist background. These factories have a relevant presence in the region. They are temporary job workplaces where employment is highly feminized, and wherein many of them the fundamental rights of female workers are systematically violated. I intend to show the exploitative practices of the employers at the same time as the resistances of the workers.