THE MARGIN AS A TERRITORY OF KNOWLEDGE: FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THE DECOLONIZATION OF LATIN AMERICAN THOUGHT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This essay problematizes the perpetuation of the coloniality of knowledge, power, and gender within higher education, challenging the Eurocentric matrices that historically underpin scientific and academic production. The central objective is to systematize key concepts of decolonial thought to advocate for feminist epistemology as an essential ethical, political, and methodological instrument for the decolonization of Latin American thought. Methodologically, the text adopts the perspective of situated knowledges and the theoretical-critical essay grounded in the researcher’s locus of enunciation, serving as a mechanism to confront the universalities of science. The theoretical framework mobilizes intellectuals from the decolonial field to demonstrate how the university acts in maintaining systems that sustain exclusionary logics and marginalize alternative knowledges. Subsequently, propositions from Latin American female authors are articulated to highlight the urgency of a counter-hegemonic investigative lens capable of rescuing silenced epistemologies and denouncing the cultural erasure masked by alleged academic neutrality. The study concludes that the questioning and structural reformulation of higher education institutions demand an emancipatory praxis aligned with decolonial critique. In this perspective, feminist epistemology consolidates itself as a necessary pathway to rewrite hegemonic narratives, restoring protagonism to subalternized subjects and transforming the academic space into a territory of intellectual emancipation and liberation.