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A World in Revolution – Feminist politics in times of social uprisings

Thursday June 18, 2020 LSE Department of Gender Studies

Grassroots protests and transnational solidarity initiatives against rising authoritarianism, fascism, populisms and state violence have seen a surge over the past year. From Iran, Colombia, Algeria to Chile, Hong Kong, Kashmir, Bolivia and India, among other complex political contexts, people have come together to resist ongoing coloniality, authoritarianism, extractive capitalism and exclusionary nationalist imaginaries that undergird state policies. Young people, many of them university students, remain at the forefront of these protests and are collectivising across national borders to challenge the global rise of the right. Likewise, many politically engaged students and activists in their diasporas have formed transnational solidarity collectives that transcend geographical limits.

A World in Revolution aims to critically think through what it might mean to engage with this generative political moment from a transnational, anti-colonial and anti-racist feminist standpoint. Drawing on feminist praxis, we also want to engage with the questions of how to make sense and deal with volatile politics in our home contexts, especially as many of us are located away from home. Acknowledging the volatility of the worlds we inhabit and that inhabit us, we want to move beyond the ‘certainty’ of fully knowing the what and how, rather approach the ongoing uprisings out of feminist curiosity grounded in a critical politics of location. What then might it mean to centre feminist sensibility in making sense of these unfolding events? In what ways can feminist analysis allow us to come together despite and through our differences? It is in this context that we invite academic and activist interventions, artistic (audio, visual, photographic) analyses envisioning radical, feminist futures.

We are committed to an inclusive feminist politics that aims to build a safe space for participants to share their visions, thoughts and emotions on ongoing conflict-related issues. Productive dialogue and passionate engagements are stimulated on the basis of care and genuine respect towards our differences, agreements and/or contradictions. We believe that it is precisely in moments like this, when disagreement must be acknowledged and respectfully discussed in order to envision alternative political and social imaginaries that might bring us together.

Submission topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Queering and contesting traditional understandings of violence and the temporalities of conflict
  • Role of mainstream, alternative and new media (e.g. social media) in production and/or contestation of the ‘global crisis’
  • Role of art and its politics
  • (Re)occupation and claiming of public and private spaces
  • Attacks, erasures and marginalisation of social actors/voices such as human rights activists (feminists, sexual/gender dissidents, environmental), indigenous and campesinos communities, among others
  • Affective life of conflict and social uprisings: rage, anger and despair, joy, hope and hopelessness, etc
  • Trauma and memory: re-telling and re-imagining the past, the present and the future
  • Collective initiatives of care and political action before, during and after the ‘event’ (protest, street manifestation, occupation of spaces, etc)
  • Attacks on gender, feminism, indigenous, critical race and post/decolonial studies in relation to global uprisings
  • Rise of (neo)fascism, militarisation, police brutality, and (neo)imperialism
  • (Dis)continuities and similarities across regions and borders
  • Frames of conflict and resistance
  • Transnational feminist solidarity

Submissions are due on April 24, 2020

  • Paper proposal abstracts should not exceed 300 words
  • For proposals of artwork or visual/audio interventions, please include a 200 words description along with art samples and a brief paragraph detailing the ethics and care/safe measures you will put in place during and after the presentation

We are particularly interested in submissions from master’s and doctoral students, early career scholars, activists and artists. A few travel grants might be available for presenters. Please email your queries and abstracts to: aworldinrevolutionconference@gmail.com