From shared experiences of gendered racism to converging interpretations? Exploring the formation of a decolonial standpoint by women of Moroccan descent in postcolonial France

Abstract This article invites a dialogue between decolonial perspectives on diasporas and feminist standpoint theories by exploring processes of standpoint formation by women of Moroccan descent who grew up in postcolonial France. The article draws on 18 interviews with women aged in their 20s to their 40s, as well as a long-term engagement with these questions through ‘patchwork ethnography’. While emphasising that these women were neither exposed to identical experiences nor have the same worldviews, the article shows that they have navigated a set of shared experiences that pertain to their social position and that they are thus aware of the manifestations in their everyday lives and of the workings of gendered and racialised social hierarchies that affect them. The article explores participants’ experiences of racism and of its gendered inflections; the formation of ‘shared angles of visions’ (Hill Collins, 1997) around specific issues as a result; and finally, participants’ assessments of the different terms used to describe them in public and in everyday discourses. The article seeks to contribute to thinking through empirically the formation of an epistemological standpoint at the crossroads of feminist and decolonial approaches.