Contributors are invited to submit manuscripts on the above topic from the point of view either of researchers or activists. Abstracts and contributions must be written in English and in a style accessible to a wide audience. Please submit abstracts to leverne@eject.co.za or admin@agenda.org.za.
No later than 4th April 2022
ABOUT AGENDA
Agenda has been at the forefront of feminist publishing in Africa for the past 35 years and raises debate around women’s rights and gender issues. The journal is designed to promote critical thinking and debate and aims to strengthen the capacity of both men and women to challenge gender discrimination and injustice. The Agenda journal is an IBSS/SAPSE accredited and peer-reviewed journal.
GUEST EDITORS:
Lyn Ossome – University of the Witwatersrand, Athinangamso Esther Nkopo – University of Cape Town & Danai S. Mupotsa – University of the Witwatersrand
Conceptual Rationale:
The aim of this special issue is to offer situated contemplations of transnational movements in defense of Black lives and against anti-blackness (James 1999, Terrefe). We ask, in what ways does the history of a people shape the nature of their demands (Abbas 2012)? In other words, how does structural power shape both the modes of domination and the modes of resistance against it? This is a question that haunts the boundaries of Black transnational feminist organizing (Okech and Musindarwezo 2019), often necessarily complicating the narratives through which we understand the nature and character of Black feminist movements across spatial and historical distance.
How, for instance, are our struggles nuanced by various points of proximity to power? How does transnational feminist solidarity account for structural inequalities between those located in advanced capitalist countries and those in the peripheries (Ossome 2021)? Here we are concerned with the emergence of the Third World through imperialist processes that encompass the spectrum of cultural, economic and political conquest, and the uneven development that they entrench. Black transnational feminist solidarities are an important lens through which to examine this historical trajectory as a structure of domination that is not necessarily transcended by virtue of location in the Global North. The social basis of transnational solidarity also emerges in the debate as a crucible of the political relevance of transnational feminist movements. That is, at the core of our insistence that Black Lives Matter (#BLM) is the social question and critique of the structures, conditions and institutions that reproduce Black life as immaterial.
We offer a space for reflections on the social and cultural basis of our shared demands and visions of liberation: that is, what is it in our present and historical contexts that lend to us the continuities and affinities of speech (prose, poetry, music, dance, healing practices) despite the reality of our unequal integration into the postcolonial world order. How do the structural inequalities that organize the worlds we inhabit complicate and/rationalize transnational feminist politics and solidarities (Brown-Vincent 2019, Rutazibwa 2019)? Still on speech (Isoke 2018, Kidane) we might also inquire into the fate of the transnational [feminist] subject who speaks from the farthest margins of the state and its neoliberal capitalist economic structure – those people who are ‘so far removed from the logics of capitalism’ that to speak of/for them in the dominant register of ‘feminism and power’ is to altogether erase the nature of their subjectivity. In other words, how do poverty, inequality, and suffering structure relationships of solidarity in Black transnational feminist movements?
We invite papers addressing Black Transnational Feminisms and the Question of Structure, investigating of or several of the following themes:
- The transnational circulation of BLM
- Historical legacies of Black women’s activisms
- Interventions against the decontextualization of Black women’s intellectual and activist work
- Engagements with Black women’s anticolonial and decolonial praxes
- Aesthetics and symbolic economics of Blackness
- Black Feminist Methodologies and Ethnographies
- Transnational Solidarities
- Black Feminist Friendship
- Transnational economies of care
- Land, nature and the politics of survival
- Abolitionist Futures
References
- Hakima Abbas. 2012. People-led Transformation: African Futures. Development55 (4): 519-525).
- Layla D. Brown-Vincent. 2019. Seeing It for Wearing It: Autoethnography as Black Feminist Methodology. Taboo 18(1), 109-125.
- 2018. Black Ethnography, Black(Female) aesthetics: Thinking/ Writing/ Saying/ Sounding Black Political Life. Theory and Event 21(1): 148-168.
- Joy James. 1999. Resting in Gardens, Battling in Deserts: Black Women’s Activism. The Black Scholar29 (4): 2-7.
- Luam Kidane. 2015. Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from Anti-Imperialist Self-Defence. Feminist Africa 20: 116-122.
- Awino Okech and Dinah Musindarwezo. 2019. Building Transnational Feminist Alliances: Reflections on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. ContextoInternacional41(2): 255-273.
- Lyn Ossome. 2021. The Care Economy and the State in Africa’s Covid-19 Responses. Canadian Journal of Development Studies 42(1): 68-78.
- Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa. 2019. What’s There to Mourn? Decolonial Reflection on (the End) Liberal Humanitarianism. Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 1(1): 65-67.
- Selamawit D. Terrefe. 2020. The Pornotrope of Decolonial Feminism. Critical Philosophy of Race 8(1-2): 134-164.
Submission Guidelines for Agenda Journal
The following guidelines are intended to assist authors in preparing their contributions.
General
Agenda invites contributions from feminist and gender scholars, activists, researchers, policymakers, professionals, educators, community workers, students and members of womxn’s organizations and organizations interested in and concerned with gender issues.
Submissions should contribute to developing new thinking and fresh debate on women’s rights and gender equality in Africa and other developing countries.
Writers need to
- Write in an accessible and understandable style;
- Inform, educate or raise debate;
- Provide analysis and an argument;
- Ensure the introduction encapsulates the contents of the piece and that it attracts the reader’s attention by either making a controversial statement, providing a thought-provoking or new insight into the subject;
- Utilize a Black feminist lens.
We publish articles in various formats, which range from 6,000 words for more theorized articles, which form the main reference pieces in an issue, to shorter pieces with a minimum of 1,500 words.
Formats of Contributions
- Article (6 000 words max) should be based on new research and contain analysis and argument.
- Briefing is an adaptable format for writers to write on a wide range of subjects (2 500 – 4 000 words)
- Focus examines an aspect of a chosen theme in detail (4 500 words max)
- Profile looks in detail at an organisation, project or legislation, or a person (2 500 – 3 500 words)
- Report-back covers reports on meetings, conferences workshops etc
- (1 500 – 4 000 words)
- Review typically reviews books or films (1 500 – 3 000 words)
- Interview can record a conversation among a group of people or a one-on-one interview in which the writer asks the interviewee/s questions on a subject (1 500 – 3 000 words)
- Open Forum is a vehicle for debate and argument, or pieces which deal with argument and difference of opinion on a subject/issue (2 500 – 4 000 words)
- Perspective is an adaptable format in which writers are able to use a more personal reflective, narrative style (1 500 – 3 000 words)
- Poetry
Contributions should be submitted in the following format:
File type: Microsoft Word
Font: Arial
Size: 10 pt
Line spacing: single
Justification: left
Referencing: Harvard style
All submissions should have the following:
Abstract: 200 – 300 words
Keywords: approx 5 keywords
Bio: 100 – word author biography, including email address
Bio picture: head-and-shoulders photo in 300 dpi jpeg format
Contributors are encouraged to provide photos and/or graphics to illustrate their submission
Selection and Editing Process
All submissions are peer-reviewed. Articles, briefing and focus pieces go through a double-blind peer-review process, while all other contributions are reviewed by at least one member of Agenda’s Editorial Advisory Group.
Reviewers comment on the suitability of a text for publication in the Agenda journal, as well as provide comments to help develop the piece further for publication if required. Contributors will be asked to rework the paper accordingly.
On resubmission, the piece will be assessed by the Agenda editor and a final decision made regarding its publication in the journal.
Please note that Agenda reserves the right to edit contributions with regard to length and accessibility or reject contributions that are not suitable or of poor standard.
Agenda also invites the submission of poems on the topic of women’s rights and gender.
Please note, as per Agenda’s policy, writers who have published in the journal within the last two years WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to publish – to allow new writers to publish in Agenda.
