Decolonizing Feminisms: Lecture and book launch with Françoise Vergès
To mark the Czech publication of Un féminisme décolonial (La Fabrique, 2019) by Karolinum Press, join us for a lecture by Françoise Vergès, followed by a debate moderated by Zuzana Uhde.
Friday, May 15, 2026, 4:15 pm
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
nám. Jana Palacha 2, Prague 1
Room n. 104
What is decolonization, and why should feminism be decolonized? In what ways do certain forms of feminism contribute to colonization, dispossession, and exploitation? Françoise Vergès will answer these questions by examining Western feminist history and theory and exploring what decolonial feminism proposes.
Françoise Vergès opens her book Decolonial Feminism with the question: Who cleans up the world? Her interpretation of decolonial feminism is rooted in the experiences of underpaid and undervalued work that women—most of whom are racialized as “others”—do every day worldwide to keep society functioning. Vergès advocates for decolonizing feminism that is anti-racist and anti-capitalist, challenging Western feminism, which sometimes upholds in the name of women’s rights a civilizing mission and structural injustices tied to colonial histories and present-day racialised hierarchies.
Françoise Vergès is currently Senior Fellow Researcher at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at UCL, London, winner of the Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship 2025, and a member of the scientific board of the Fondation pour la mémoire de l’esclavage. Her latest publications include Making the World Clean. Wasted Lives, Wasted Environment and Racial Capitalism (Goldsmiths Press, 2024).
The event is organized by Karolinum Press in collaboration with CEFRES, the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the French Institute in Prague, and the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.
The book will be available for purchase at the event with a 20% discount.
