One way of telling the story of feminism is to tell it as a story of protest: protest against, protest for, protest within. In this issue, we invite contributors to reflect on the histories, presents, and futures of protest through a feminist lens.
The current moment is often hailed as „the age of protest,“ one in which the recent women’s marches, originating in the US but soon spreading globally, were seen to be a culmination. Such declarations, however, depend on a very particular notion of what counts as protest, and indeed feminist protest, often reifying the global North as an originary site of feminist protest; or disregarding movements that do not explicitly foreground gender or women as their primary agenda.
We contend that popular „age of protest“ narratives risk obscuring other key moments and sites of long standing protest, particularly when led by racialized or otherwise minoritized populations. The rich histories of centuries of protest by working class and poor women, immigrant women, women of color, and anticolonial, indigenous and transnational feminists still remain understudied. And yet, it is difficult to deny that globally, protest has been revitalized by mass participation on a larger scope than has been seen in the almost two decades since massive protests spawned global networks that came to be known as the alterglobalization movement. Such protests have been diverse in issues and tactics – from the revolutions of the Arab Spring, to the ceaseless protests in Kashmir against Indian occupation, to the anti-rape protests in India, to the #niunamas and anti-femicide movements in Latin America, to the Women’s Marches, BlackLivesMatter movement, Dalit women’s self-respect marches, Idle No More and the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the US and Canada, to name only a select few of a plethora of protests globally that have thrown up key questions for feminism. Beyond the streets, the digital domain has been a lively site of protest and organizing, particularly in zones where the presence of protesting bodies on the streets may be met with deadly violence. We invite our contributors to think broadly and critically about the relationship between feminism and protest as one that emerges from multiple and overlapping locations and communities, on and beyond space of „the streets.“
See the full CfP here.
Deadline for submission of full articles: Sept. 15, 2017.