Call me “mamacita”: Afro-descendant and Caribbean women negotiating hope and desire
Panel 32 / Quinto Convegno Nazionale SIAC “SPERARE / DISPERARE / DESIDERARE”
Matera, 25-27 settembre 2025
Proponenti: Elena Zapponi (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia), Elise Hjalmarson (University of California, Berkeley)
Abstract
This panel explores the intersections of desire, hope and despair in the experiences of Latin American and Caribbean women, particularly those who are Afro-descendant, within transnational economies of intimacy. Legacies of slavery and the sugarcane economy have historically framed Caribbean and Brazilian women as desirable and consumable, perpetuating colonial stereotypes that continue to shape women’s representations and social positioning. Constructing women as static objects of desire rather than actively desiring subjects, such racialized and gendered imaginaries infiltrate intimate relationships, orient migration trajectories and exacerbate economic precarity, compelling women to respond. Rather than reproducing narratives of exoticization, this panel examines how women navigate racialized and gendered constraints, self-representing and actively subverting, refining or reclaiming the mamacita figure – a male-constructed, reductive and sexualized image – in some cases, turning it into a tool of agentic self-definition. We invite contributions that engage with these themes, bridging historical legacies with contemporary configurations of desire. By foregrounding women’s lived experiences, this panel challenges deterministic accounts of sexual tourism and hypersexualization, instead offering a nuanced understanding of how hope and desire are negotiated across intersecting differences of class, gender, status and borders.
Keywords: Desire, Hope, Caribbean, Women, Racialized Sexualities
Lingue accettate: Italiano / English / Français / Español
Per sottomettere un paper scaricare il seguente format e inviarlo a: elena.zapponi@unive.it; elise.hjalmarson@graduateinstitute.ch
To submit a paper download the following format and please send it to: elena.zapponi@unive.it; elise.hjalmarson@graduateinstitute.ch
