Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism Inside the United Nations

Description:

Winner of the 2016 Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, sponsored by the National Women's Studies Association

In Power Interrupted, Sylvanna M. Falcón redirects the conversation about UN-based feminist activism toward UN forums on racism. Her analysis of UN antiracism spaces, in particular the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, considers how a race and gender intersectionality approach broadened opportunities for feminist organizing at the global level. The Durban conference gave feminist activists a pivotal opportunity to expand the debate about the ongoing challenges of global racism, which had largely privileged men's experiences with racial injustice. When including the activist engagements and experiential knowledge of these antiracist feminist communities, the political significance of human rights becomes evident. Using a combination of interviews, participant observation, and extensive archival data, Sylvanna M. Falcón situates contemporary antiracist feminist organizing from the Americas--specifically the activism of feminists of color from the United States and Canada, and feminists from Mexico and Peru--alongside a critical historical reading of the UN and its agenda against racism.

Brief description: Sylvanna Falcón is professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Human Rights Counterpublics in Perú Contesting Tiers of Citizenship (Illinois, 2024) and Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism Inside the United Nations (Washington, 2016). She is also the coeditor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (Rutgers, 2021) and New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights (Routledge, 2011).

Review Quotes:

"In the ardently thought-provoking and often stirring Power Interrupted, Falcón, a sociologist and assistant professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, sets out to reveal how feminist activists of color 'advocate for a more comprehensive approach to understanding racism at the UN level' by offering a candid and, at times, caustic critique of Western feminism as practiced within the UN."