PLEASURE AS A KEY FOR TRANSFORMATION: PRACTICES OF PLEASURE IN FEMINIST ACTIVISM

Abstract

Since the Twentieth-century seventies, pleasure has been at the centre of the feminist vindi-cations, mainly understood in relation to sexuality. In this article, I propose both a theoret-ical reconceptualization of pleasure as well as an analysis of what I will refer to as feminist practices of pleasure, based on a broad and complex concept of it, and understood as a process in which all kinds of social, cultural and political phenomena and conditions inter-vene. Likewise, the practices of pleasure are defined as corporal, politically located within a feminist context, where joy is an important element, aside or even confronting capitalist frameworks, which gives way to a problematization of happiness as synonym or culmination of pleasure. This article also shows how pleasure can be considered an element of social transformation that (re)configures the militant practice and actions in which feminist activ-ists participate, as a way of doing politics from — and through — all that is pleasurable.