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 louhaysom@mweb.co.za or admin@agenda.org.za.
No later than 18 March 2019
ABOUT AGENDA
Agenda has been at the forefront of feminist publishing in South Africa for the past 30 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: Prof. Deirdre Byrne and
Conceptual Rationale:
Gender politics in the twenty-first century have been marked by a proliferation of descriptives that precede the word feminism– neoliberal feminism, intersectional feminism, consumerist feminism, imperial feminism, trans*feminisms, digital feminisms, etc.
The call to qualify yet another may not be a feminist priority, however, as the fracturing of feminisms continues (as this list makes evident). This special issue is an attempt to recalibrate our attention to the feminist theorizing and praxis emerging from and
While Southern Feminisms may be a straightforward synonym for feminisms of the Global South, locating the South is not a practice of mere geography. The terminology of the Global South is itself predicated on debates around history, power, borders,
Indeed, for this special issue, we are invested in exploring the sites where the traditional mapping of the North/South axis might be complicated by transnational flows of activism and knowledge. Such flows might include the lives and work of feminists working in poor Black communities in Alabama; Sudanese migrant women demanding full inclusion in Sydney; lesbian and trans activists in South Africa drawing on the demands of “Black Lives Matter” for their movements; and intersectional gender activists in the US learning from the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements in South African higher education. If the Global South as a term indeed describes the “spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalization” (Mahler 2018), how might thinking through the capacious possibilities within Southern Feminisms lead us to differently conceptualize the shifting locations of gendered violence, precarity, and vulnerability?
On the other hand, definitional debates should not obscure how the local in the global South matters materially and ideologically for many women and gender non-conforming people in the postcolonial contemporary. Drawing from their postcolonial standpoints, feminist critics and gender studies stalwarts from Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyèwùmí to Chandra Talpade Mohanty, have warned us of the dangers of generalizing gender as a category across space and time.
Given the sharpest edge of their interventions pointed towards white feminist saviour-scholars who engaged in a consistent erasure of Black and brown women’s embodied experiences, intellectual production, and radical feminist activism, we agree that a feminist “theorizing from the south requires both a divestment from the usual business of intellectual extraction that positions the global South as source of unprocessed data or ethnographic case study”(Piedalue and Rishi 2017). However, Mohanty, Oyèwùmí, Zine Magubane, Violet E. Barriteau, Pumla D. Gqola, and Mrinalini Chakravorty (for example), have demonstrated the ways in which feminists of colour can also reify single stories of women’s oppression. This leads to muzzling the particular and complex shapes of marginalization experienced – and resistance expounded – by different social formations of women and gender-nonconforming folk.
Furthermore, with the mainstreaming of women’s issues, intersectionality, and transnational feminism as a discourse in the South and North, how might we better redistribute our feminist resources, moving away from a primary focus on the digital savvy stories of highly exceptional and/or respectable women of colour toward a more inclusive analysis of Southern “everyday” feminists?
If the specificities of the caste/gender matrix as a force of domination in the lives of poor Dalit women and gender-nonconforming people in India, for example, do not travel with the same facility as the #metoo movement in India’s film industry does, how do we engage in practices that build sustainable connections beyond superficial and short-term performances of care? Which Southern-centered feminist theories, imaginaries, and visions for a liberated future will inspire and inform us as we do this difficult work?
Southern feminisms in conversation across and within national borders need to be theorized within an intersectional analysis of how class, race, caste, gender/sexual identity, and location shape the stakes of our scholarship and attempts at
No other feminist project has been as intentionally and self-reflectively transnational as African feminisms. Across the Atlantic, Latin American and Caribbean, feminist activist-scholars have fostered intraregional dialogue and survived ideological fissures in a series of conferences, Encuentros Feministas Latinoamericanas y del Caribe, that have continued to generate productive transborder feminist networks for over forty years (Alvarez et al 2003). Despite
these contributions, editors of the recent Feminist Theory special issue on Southern feminisms, Raewyn Connell and Celia Roberts, argue that the global knowledge economy continues to privilege of Northern feminist theory. In fact, there is a long and august history of feminist thought and activism in the Global South that is simply not recognized in the global North and West. The colonial hegemonies which undergird
academic Eurocentric feminism have been profoundly deconstructed and challenged by scholars from the South. Thus, we propose that Southern feminisms can benefit from a critical turn away from a Northern orientation, by analyzing African feminist contributions to Southern feminist thinking, as well as examining the impacts and legacies of Third World feminist movements, which several decades ago championed forms of radical anti-militarist and anti-capitalist South-to-South alliances that are pertinent in the context of state capture, carceral cultures, war economies, and climate imperialism today.
In seeking Southern feminist practitioners, we might turn with heavy hearts to feminist Marielle Franco, whose murder last year inspired an outpouring of rage and grief in Southern feminist communities.
Mourning Franco gave voice to
For this special issue of Agenda, the editors posit that there are as many feminisms in the Global South as there are contexts.
We welcome abstracts on any of the following topics:
● How might Third World feminists organizations, coalitions, collaborations, and failed solidarities of late twentieth century inform contemporary Southern feminist thought and practices?
● How do migrations, diasporas, borders, and
● How do the politics of difference, race, and anti-Blackness complicate Southern feminist solidarities?
● What is the relationship between global LBGTI rights movements and Southern feminisms?
● How have girls,
● What intergenerational tensions and fissures mark Southern feminisms?
● How has celebrity mobilised the mainstreaming of Southern feminisms?
● What emergent digital venues serve as a tool and site for Southern feminisms?
● How
● How is affect –grief, rage, joy, and/or desire – a productive tool for building Southern feminisms?
● How do Southern feminisms articulate and draw from indigenous epistemologies and knowledge technologies?
● How do Southern feminisms attempt to decolonise the Southern (and Northern) academy?
● How do popular discourses of healing, self-care, choice, and pleasure impact and/or produce (new) Southern feminist activism?
● In what ways
● How do feminisms in and of the South differ from, and overlap with, feminisms in the North and West?
References:
Alvarez, Sonia E., et al. “Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminisms.” Signs, vol. 28, no. 2, 2003, 537–579.
Barriteau, Violet Eudine. “Issues and Challenges of Caribbean Feminisms.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, no. 58, 2003, 37–44.
Chakravorty, Mrinalini. In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Roberts, Celia, and Raewyn Connell. “Feminist Theory and the Global South.” Feminist Theory, vol. 17, no. 2, Aug. 2016, 135–140.
Gqola Pumla Dineo. “How the ‘Cult of Femininity’ and Violent Masculinities Support Endemic
Violence in Contemporary South Africa.” African Identities, 5:1, 2007,111-124.
Magubane, Zine. “Spectacles and Scholarship: Caster Semenya, Intersex Studies, and the Problem of Race in Feminist Theory.” Signs, vol. 39, no. 3, 2014, 761–785.
Mahler, Anne Garland. “Global South.” Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory, ed. Eugene O'
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Boundary 2, 12/13, 1984, 333–358.
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónké. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Piedalue, Amy and Susmita Rishi. “Unsettling the South through Postcolonial Feminist Theory.” Feminist Studies, vol. 43, no. 3, 2017, 548–570.
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, policy makers, professionals, educators, community workers, students and members of
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;
- Try to pin down reasons for contradictions and point out differences of opinion;
- Provide analysis and an argument;
- Be logical;
- Be sensitive to but not uncritical of how gender, class and race affect the reporting of an event;
- 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 gender or 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 content 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)
- An 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
a 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)
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
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
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.
