De-constructing the Gender Binary: an Inquiry on the Invention of Women

This thesis project aims at analyzing the tenets of the gender binary by uncovering how differently gender was organized in precolonial societies as opposed to its contemporary, hegemonic, Western configuration. In particular, I aim at dissecting the impact of European colonialism–in conjunction with capitalism and the patriarchy–on gender identities and societal organization, maintained by indigenous communities, that did not fit into the gender binary and/or into the European patriarchal organization of society. Starting from the premise that these societies existed, I am interested in uncovering how European colonialism, on the one hand, used these differences to produce an otherness that served to justify racism, violent subordination and the exploitation of labor and resources; and on the other, negated them through the epistemic violent act of erasing/rewriting their history. I argue that this process served–deliberately or not–to strengthen the gender binary “back in Europe” and enforce it, albeit in a different way, in the rest of the world. Therefore, my goal is to bring to light how the aforementioned systems of oppression historically concurred to produce the current configuration of the heteropatriarchal structure.