VISIBILITIES AND HETEROTOPIAS IN THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

DECOLONIAL FEMINIST READINGS

Abstract

This article investigates the crossings of the notion of Coloniality of Gender, elaborated by María Lugones (2007; 2014) in the diegeses of two superproductions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther (2018) and Captain Marvel (2019), starting from the concept of “heterotopias” by Michel Foucault (2003), and the work of Margareth Rago (2006) on“ feminist heterotopias ”. It explores the possibilities offered by film materiality to weave feminist readings. In these movies, especially with regard to the visibility of female subjects, it is remarkable how the characters, in their narrative functions and their performances, for example, tension certain hegemonic patterns and negotiate with neoliberal structures. Intertwining utopian temporalities and spatialities with real historical and territorial memories, they mobilize visual signs and discourses that allows us to think about possible feminist heterotopies of collective resistance in contemporary contexts. In the effort to historicize these experiences of representation, Feminist Film Theories Cinema do not fully embrace the dimension of the constitutive coloniality of “gender”. This work starts with a brief theoretical review of this field, seeking to expand to the intersectional approach a problematization of the crossings of coloniality in Hollywood pop culture, in order to find horizons for a pluriversal feminist perspective.