“A Place of Speech” according to Djamila Ribeiro

Djamila Ribeiro is a black Brazilian feminist philosopher, that wrote a didactic and accessible book called “Lugar de Fala” (Place of Speech), which is at the center of this conversation.

The concept of ‘place of speech’ (lugar de fala) is a controversial one. Around it, there is a certain fear that certain subjects would be silenced. According to Ribeiro that is not the case. In Ribeiro’s view, each and every one of us has a social locus in the world, a place of speech, and what we are able to say and how what we have to say is received by others depend on it. She highlights that it is a matter of ethics to recognize that we all have a place of speech. The right ethical attitude to approach social and political problems is to engage in conversations acknowledging that we still live in a world marked by a white and male norm regarding who has a right to say and know the “truth”. Place of speech is a concept related to Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of feminist standpoint and establishes a conversation with Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that woman (supposedly a universal woman) is the other of man. Collins and Ribeiro as many other black female thinkers put in question the idea that there is one universal woman. Hills argues that black women are the other of the other. 

This is the first of ten free introductory lectures given by Caroline Stampone, supported by the Bergen Network for Women in Philosophy. The lectures are open to the public and followed by a conversation about the thoughts of female thinkers, with special emphasis on female thinkers from the Global South.