“Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic” - Audre Lorde (1984)

 

“Living as I have argued we do in the wake of slavery, in spaces where we were never meant to survive, or have been punished for surviving and for daring to claim or make spaces of something like freedom, we yet reimagine and transform spaces for and practices of an ethics of care (as in repair, maintenance, attention), an ethics of seeing, and of being in the wake as consciousness; as a way of remembering and observance that started with the door of no return, continued in the hold of the ship and on the shore.” - Christina Sharpe (2016)

 

“So what kind of feminism exists in an African context? […] in view of what I have argued as well as the realities of Africa, we should more correctly say: What feminisms exists in Africa? Indeed there are many feminisms, depending on the centre from which one is speaking or theorizing around the junctures of race, class, caste and gender; nation, culture and ethnicity; age, status, role and sexual orientation.” - Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (1994)

 

Following in the steps of authors such as Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Feminist Readings in Motion? seeks to provide a platform from which to engage with the richness and diversity of the many feminisms that have been proliferating particularly in Africa. As a point of departure, the conference embraces reading understood not only as a critical and scholarly activity but also as a key aspect of feminist political and creative interventions. Through this lens, the conference will tackle particularly the issues of migration, border-crossing and nomadism that include not only the literal movement of people, but also the migration, border-crossing and nomadism of thought, practices, epistemologies and aesthetics.

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In her book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), Christina Sharpe explores how the contemporary capitalist world has been fundamentally structured by cartel slavery. The “wake” of the book’s title refers to “the track left on the water’s surface by a ship; the disturbance caused by a body swimming or moved, in water; it is the air currents behind a body in flight; a region of disturbed flow.” She argues for a theorisation that stays in the wake and acknowledges the ever-present impact of slavery on the present, including the movement of migrants and their inhumane treatment. While primarily focussed on contemporary movements, one of the questions to be addressed at the Feminist Readings in Motion? Conference is also what this necessary “wake work” would look like in the (South) African context, keeping in mind not only the wake of the slave ships but also of colonial ships: What would a specifically feminist version of this African “wake work” look like? By grappling with such questions, Feminist Readings in Motion? seeks to critically explore the unjust global hierarchies along the axes of race, gender, class, sexuality, geography and language, and other and unseen axes which negatively affect particularly those who are Black, women, queer, trans, from working-class backgrounds, in the Global South, the differently abled and migrants, and thus open a space for imagining ways in which these hierarchies can be contested. 

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The conference was initially slated to take place in April 2020, but due to the global Covid-19 pandemic we decided to postpone it to April 2021 and to take it online. While taking away from the embodied experience of a specific place (Pretoria, South Africa in this case), the online platform allows for more participation by those who are immobile or unable to travel. It also allows for conversations about the possibilities and limitations of virtual (communicative as well as political) movements.

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We welcome readings including but not limited to the following topics:

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• Localising feminist (e)motion 

• The body in resistance and protest

• Queering feminist readings

• Problematising ‘gender’ through African feminisms

• Reading the legacies of feminist thought and practice in Africa

• Feminism in the wake of slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism

• Transnational feminist conversations and solidarities 

• Readings on critical race theory 

• Challenging neoliberal ways of living and working

• Sexuality in (e)motion

• The politics and poetics of women’s indigenous knowledges and practices

• Institutionalising feminisms - contestations in nations, universities and trade unions

• Justice in an unjust world - rethinking the violence embedded within race, gender and class

• From the spirit(ual) to the religious - women’s practices of beliefs, healing and their sacrificial roles

• Looking back in order to think forward: the work of memory, witnessing, and mourning

• Migration, border-crossing, nomadism and gender in African scholarship, literature, film, visual arts, and music

• Tensions between global connectivity and the immobility and violence of sheltering in place during Covid-19 lockdowns

• Inequalities in digital access in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic

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Keynote addresses will be delivered by:  

 

Prof Akosua Adomako Ampofo (Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana)

 

Dr Danai Mupotsa (African Literature, University of Witwatersrand)

 

Dr Nthabiseng Motsemme (The National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences)

 

 

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Abstracts

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Scholars whose abstracts were accepted for the 2020 conference should consider their applications accepted and do not have to reapply.  In addition, we are reopening the call in order to allow those who would not have been able to travel to South Africa, but will be able to attend the virtual conference, to apply. Abstracts of 200-300 words for 20-minute presentations, including a short biographical statement (max 100 words), should be submitted to the conference organisers to feministreading@gmail.com by 15 February 2021. We particularly welcome proposals which are collaborative and that involve novel, experimental and audience-inclusive formats such as workshops, discussions, conversations, collective reflections and performance presentations (keeping in mind the opportunities and limitations of the online format of the conference).

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Conference Fee and Assistance

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The conference fee is R200. If you do not have access to institutional funding, please apply for a conference fee waiver by attaching a cover letter (200-300 words) justifying your claim along with the abstract and biography in your application. 

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Prospective participants and applicants will be notified on the decision regarding the accepted abstracts from the beginning of March 2021.

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On behalf of the conference steering committee,

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organisational team: Natalia Flores, Motlatsi Khosi, Leandra Koenig-Visagie, Bibi Burger and Lenka Vráblíková

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