Decolonial Feminisms and Literary Theory: Alternative Critical Pathways

Abstract

Over the past four decades, feminist and postcolonial/decolonial criticism have profoundly transformed literary studies. These approaches have sought to incorporate marginalized voices into literary canons — including women, racialized individuals, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQIA+ subjects, and authors writing in peripheral or non-hegemonic languages — challenging the dominant Eurocentric, white, and male tradition. Beyond critiquing representation and hegemonic aesthetics, they have proposed new forms of writing, such as *escrevivência* by Conceição Evaristo, which merges body, experience, and narrative.

These literatures raise theoretical and methodological questions that call for a reassessment of traditional literary theory, still largely shaped by a European and exclusionary paradigm. Concepts like authorship, fiction, narrator, lyricism, and the very foundations of narrative analysis are being reexamined. In light of this, the text calls for a critical revision of literary theory from a feminist decolonial perspective — one that responds to the transformations brought by contemporary marginalized literatures and opens new paths for rethinking literary analysis and theory.