The Knowledge of the Washer Women in the City of Goiás in the Context of Decoloniality

Abstract

Marked by the colonial enterprise, the process of exoticization and subalternization experienced by washerwomen in the City of Goiás generated pain and suffering. In order to examine the mechanisms that operated the silencing of these agents, I sought in the know-how the key to understanding the negotiations carried out in the arena of interests in the context of a society of colonial origin, locus of conservatism and patriarchy. This article deals with the work of washerwomen based on mimicked knowledge. Methodologically, I crossed the information from the interviews obtained in the field and the images (photographs) in order to identify who they were and how they used remote knowledge to assert themselves in the urbs of Vilaboense, an approach carried out in the light of the authors: Gayatri Spivak, José Jorge de Carvalho and Georges Vigarello.