CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Grassroots protests and transnational solidarity initiatives against rising authoritarianism, fascism, populisms and state violence have seen a surge over the past years. From Iran, Colombia, the US, Algeria to Chile, Hong Kong, Kashmir, Bolivia and India, among other complex political contexts, people have come together to resist ongoing coloniality, racial and extractive capitalism and exclusionary nationalist imaginaries that undergird state policies. In the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic these movements have only intensified, as can be seen in the Black Lives Matter mobilisations in the US and the UK, to Ni Una Menos in Latin America and farmers protests in India during the past months.
People across rural and urban areas, students, workers remain at the forefront of these protests and are collectivising across national borders to challenge the global rise of the right. Likewise, many activists groups in their diasporas have formed transnational solidarity collectives that transcend geographical limits. In A World in Revolution we aim 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. When we envisioned this conference in the winter of 2019, many of us were located away from our volatile home contexts, which pushed us to draw on feminist praxis to make sense of these movements. This conundrum, we believe, has only been magnified in the COVID-19 pandemic with closed borders and differentiated vulnerabilities of race, class, caste, gender and sexuality.
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 thinking through 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 analyses envisioning radical, feminist futures.
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 (home, municipal buildings, the toppling of statues, etc)
- Attacks, erasures and marginalisation of social actors/voices such as human rights activists (feminists, sexual/gender dissidents, anti-racist, environmental), journalists, indigenous and campesinos communities, among others
- Affective life of the pandemic and social uprisings: rage, anger and despair, joy, fear, hope and hopelessness, etc
- Queer, post/decolonial and psychosocial approaches to trauma, mourning and memory in times of ‘global crisis’
- Collective initiatives of care and political action before, during and after the ‘event’ (protest, pandemic as an ‘event’; street manifestation, lockdown occupation of spaces, communally-run kitchens, 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 March 7, 2021. We will aim to notify all applicants by April 16, 2021.
- Paper proposal abstracts should not exceed 300 words
- For proposals of art-based 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
- Do submit 100-150 word bio along with your proposals
We are particularly interested in submissions from master’s and doctoral students, early career scholars, activists and artists. The event is going to be held online. Details on the full programme and keynote speakers will be announced in due course. Please email your queries and abstracts to: aworldinrevolutionconference@gmail.com
A World in Revolution is 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.