Teresa Maldonado Barahona (Bilbao, 1966) is a feminist and non-activist militant. “These are terms with different connotations. Militancy involves a collective commitment to the organization; the definition of activism is more lax, I can designate myself as an activist on social media and stop doing things if I want to go to the beach.” He has exercised the militancy of the “old school” throughout his life: from the creation of the young women’s group Matarraskak to the participation of the current FeministAlde!, taking into account, among others, the two decades of the Bizkaia Women’s Assembly.

Maldonado is a professor of philosophy at an institute and is especially committed to defending public education, even from a secular state. Another interest is the philosophy of language, and this has been reflected in several articles published by Pikara Magazin and the journal Berria, which deal with the prefix zis, the politically correct language or the nuances between that militancy and activism. In 2021 he jumped from the long articles to the short book with Claro (Catarata), which emerged from the boredom caused by clichés, metaphors, neologisms, anglicisms, circumlocutions and psychological jargons that can be found in contemporary feminist texts. He argues that its uses not only distort the feminist movement from society, but impoverish the analysis of reality.

It criticises the lack of modulation of the linguistic register. In other words, we express ourselves equally when we talk to each other and address society.

The problem is to use the same language in a concentration before the city council and in the defense of a doctoral thesis. In the transition, when we created collectives like Matarraska, there was only militant feminism, and now many women come to feminism through academia. Master's degrees in feminist studies are the result of a struggle that has brought mostly good things, but have also brought with it an incomprehensible jargon. The problem comes not only from academia, but the feminist movement seeks to find the reasons why the slogans that are incomprehensible to the majority of society are chosen, such as “Against the cirheteropatriarchal State”, rather than the more understandable slogans we used earlier, such as “Division of Labor and Employment”.

His hypothesis is that with this jargon of fear we seek to differentiate ourselves, in these times of feminism socialization.

Yes, this terminological inflation coincides with the enormous success of feminism in terms of mobilizations and social legitimacy. It may seem psychoanalytic, but I unconsciously perceive the indicators of what we lack to be a minority. To say you were a feminist was something terribly 20 or 30 years ago, but it made you special. We wanted to become a lot and we've achieved it, but being a vanguard also had its thing.

There are terms like feminicide that have made room in our basic feminist vocabulary. Why do you think the use of neologisms is a problem?

As George Steiner said, and as the feminists well know, what is not named does not exist. A new concept like feminicide explains the concrete areas of reality that were under the shadow. It is normal for feminist language to include loans and neologisms, but I am not talking about their use, but about their abuse. Sometimes, when the quantity is very large, it becomes qualitative and reveals something that is happening. Inflation of incomprehensible terms produces a paradoxical and contradictory effect: by ceasing to use the usual words, we stop illuminating reality, hiding it. We seem to be careful to use the guay catalog in full instead of finding the most appropriate word: “It crosses me”, “it questions me”, “on the margins”… Another serious problem is the one that has no end to the repetition of clichés, phrases made, slogans and slogans, because I believe that they greatly impoverish our analysis of reality and that its abuse is incompatible with critical thinking.

You focus on two of them: “It will be a feminist revolution” and “Focus care”.

The sample of Guayas forms expresses more interest in understanding which group we are, than in communicating a thought. And that seems tremendous to me. “Focusing care” was a nice and expressive metaphor. “The revolution will or will not be feminist” by Che Guevara, who paraphrased as criticism, “The revolution will be socialist or not.” But their repetition to satiety has turned them into a weathered sludge, and it has placed them much closer to the recipe, to the mantra. This endless imitation of syntactic structures (“The feminist revolution will be or will not be anti-racist”, “It will be or will not be feminist racism”, etc.) conceals the complexity and richness of feminist thinking.

In addition, you wonder what exactly we mean by “or not”, whether what we are formulating is definition, prophecy or threat.

Yes, because we say “Revolution will be feminist or not”… So were the revolutions not Sandinistas or Rusas? Slogans serve to scream at the manifestation, but the problem manifests when we take it to discourse without the development of thought, without being clear what we mean.

One of my differences is that you are based on the book Barbarisms queer to blame the queer theory of the abuse of anglicisms and neologisms. However, in pop feminism coming from the United States there have also been multiple words such as manspreading, mansplaining, slutshaming… Don’t you think this trend has more to do with globalization than with a concrete feminist trend?

Rather than being based on the book, I mention it as an example of many dictionaries who today want to clarify the vocabulary used in feminism, or in some feminist currents. I do say that the title of the book is very beautiful, because it underlines the recognition that terminology has become very difficult. And you're right, this phenomenon has not been produced solely by queer theory and transfeminism. Innovative terminologies come from different places, and this is one of them, but I think very obvious.

You relate to narcissism to the interpretation of Donna Haraway’s “located knowledge”, which is part of the explanation from which each person makes his/her own speech. Seeing gives you concern more about the subject than about the predicate. In addition, he considers paternalistic to legitimize the voice of some people because they are part of an oppressed collective only to talk about a social reality, without valuing if his discourse is supported. But who judges this? Is there not too much sign of legitimacy to say nonsense on any subject? I think Pikara Magazine has understood that there was a lack of gypsy or transversal voices, and that it was important to hear what they had to say to start with.

I address this issue of socially legitimated knowledge by referring to the most successful authors in this field: Susan Harding and Donna Haraway. Each in its own way, but both have defended – with controversy among them – the criticism of science written in capital letters, and have pointed out that objectivity is impossible. All knowledge is situated, what happens is that suddenly in feminism there is a obligation to explain from where we speak, understanding this as a position in time and space, and in social conditions. If so, I understand that talking about “black feminism” is a way of denouncing that feminism that has been described as colorless is really white. And the same with lesbofeminism. The problem arises when you emphasise so much of where you talk and remove almost the whole focus on what you say, I think that is what we have to discuss. And I argue that we can all participate in those debates, regardless of our identity determinations.

Speaking of identities: you relate to neoliberalism the proliferation of labels to precisely define the sexuality and gender of people (fluid gender, asexual spectrum…). How can we reconcile these individual needs with the construction and/or consolidation of strong political subjects?

I believe that the permanent and compulsive need to stress who and what I am, the self, the ego, to always put the spotlight, whether from the point of view of sexual identity and gender or from another, is an emerging need, as was said before. Generated by the interests of financial power, that is, as it is. Calling ourselves an individual need for Ni's exhibition, we've lost the battle. The legitimizing ideology of capitalism, what we call neoliberalism, gathers needs and desires, and amalgamates with them, incorporating the fiction of what we and others are ours, even of our most innate “self.” They are manoeuvres to divert the attention we swallow happily. And there we are, carefully, to use a specific term with us, so that we do not go ahead when competing for other people’s attention… and far from what really matters. I do not think it is a conciliation, but rather not to swallow hooks, even if they come in the form of caramels.

In the book he tries to distinguish complex texts, which require intellectual effort to understand them, from hermetics. What is the limit? Many of us haven't been able to with Judith Butler's gender confusion. Is it necessarily a difficult book or is it an excessively cryptic book?

Butler is highly criticised for his form of expression. I have read a lot, and I will not deny that it has good ideas… I do not have machineries with magic formulas to differentiate the boundary between the complex and the cryptic. It is true that there are texts that we have to read slowly, insist and return to. The topics addressed by feminism are complex, they are made with very strong postulates from philosophy, psychology, sociology… There are authors who require minimal training, but in trying to understand them it is possible to reach a good port and get something clear. On the contrary, there are authors that cannot be understood because they write so many circumlocutions, because what they do basically is round the circle.

You also call to round the circle some of the formulas that have been tested to make an inclusive use of language: throw, ixa, the letter “e”… Why interpret the circle as rounding and not as essay? We realized that the arrobes converted the words into hyperlinks, then we learned that the ixa hinders the reading systems of blind people… [as it is a Spanish conversation, which is a grammatical gender language, it refers to formulas for speaking and writing without gender marks].

Perhaps you are right, I think it is reasonable to understand it as a trial and error process. Maybe we'll need a historical distance to analyze it. We feminists care about language, because we want to change reality and we don't want to collaborate with racism, machismo or classism that implicitly hides in the language we use. But we can't invent a language that's just for us, right?

She has compared the words that feminism has used in different historical eras and those that say about the social moment of the time: feminine emancipation, feminine liberation or empowerment of women.

If we type “women’s liberation” into a search figure on the net, black and white photos of the women who are going to demonstrate: it was a very political term, a movement’s struggle. On the contrary, if we are looking for the “empowerment of women”, there are mainly UN posters. It seems to me more beautiful to think of the movement in terms of liberation and emancipation. The premise now is that we have overcome these phases, but we are not talking about “reaching power” in political terms, and less about “taking power”, but about “empowerment”, very psychological.

This influence of psychology is another concern you point out. But all of them, neologisms and anglicisms, complicated sentences, cliches, are not just a matter of feminism. Why focus criticism on feminist language? Isn't it much criticized by ladies?

Regarding the use of the term exhibitor to use at all times, pedagogy and development cooperation are two other very high areas in the ranking. But feminism is the field that matters most to me. I have been told that I have few examples, but the truth is that I did not want to point out to anyone in particular, but to create a general reflection. When I started writing the book, I had on my computer a folder with phrases and paragraphs (with its authors, of course), many of which are friends or colleagues. My partner, Itziar Abad [neighbor of Pikara Magazine], helped me understand how important the thought I raised and the invitation to continue debating was, and not document exactly what I say so much. It has also helped me to eliminate interior evil.