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- Convenors:
-
Fatemeh Sadeghi
(Institute for Global Prosperity)
Burcu Kalpaklioglu (University of Amsterdam)
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- Chair:
-
Sertaç Sehlikoglu
(University College London (UCL))
- Discussants:
-
Nelli Sargsyan
(Emerson College)
Alysa Ghose (University of Edinburgh)
Shahana Siddiqui (University van Amsterdam)
Kristin Monroe (University of Kentucky)
Naznin Akter Banu (Independent University, Bangladesh)
Burcu Kalpaklioglu (University of Amsterdam)
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 23 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This roundtable locates itself in the middle of the conversations about anthropology’s politics and responsibility by thinking about how decolonial feminism can contribute to this conversation by challenging, expanding, and offering meaningful expositions.
Long Abstract:
There is a growing interest amongst anthropologists to address the scholarly challenges embedded in anthropological thinking, its institutional structures, and politics. While, on the one hand, anthropological thinking is criticised for its diversion from ethnographic knowledge and immersion in abstract conceptualisation, several scholars have pointed out that institutional knowledge-making practices will continually reinforce the existing inequalities in academia on the other. The discernible surge in right-wing backlash and an increase in racist movements, actions, and discourses on a global scale is bringing an added challenge to the academic scenery.
This roundtable locates itself in the middle of the conversations about anthropology’s politics and responsibility by thinking about how decolonial feminism can contribute to this conversation by challenging, expanding, and offering meaningful expositions. In this roundtable, we aim to develop a conversation on new ways of producing, sharing and practising decolonial knowledge and imagining in-between spaces within and beyond academia at a historical moment where we are witnessing global crises, wars, right-wing and racist gender politics. We ask:
What are anthropology’s capabilities and limits in developing and manifesting decolonial feminist knowledge? What is the responsibility of anthropology in providing conceptual grounds to address global injustices and practising them? How does the “awkward relation” (Strathern 1987) between feminism and anthropology enable and impede knowledge production? How can feminist communities push the limits of anthropology? How can they shape decolonial knowledge and create a solidarity network in the face of structural inequalities and growing precariousness in academia?
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Tuesday 23 July, 2024, -Naznin Akter Banu (Independent University, Bangladesh)
Contribution short abstract:
This paper argues how the transnational framework of human rights has become authoritative in feminist knowledge production and constructs a monolithic knowledge of violence against women which often ignores diverse and multiple experiences of women and the locational politics of violence.
Contribution long abstract:
The human rights paradigm of feminist knowledge production often does not come under the purview of the decolonization debate. The paper critically examines contemporary feminist knowledge production on violence against women (VAW) and its practices in Bangladesh. It draws from my doctoral research project on the understanding of feminist knowledge production and the construction of violence against women discourse in Bangladesh. The paper shows how the transnational framework of human rights and the power field of NGOs have been instrumental in constructing a new language of VAW in Bangladesh that is universal. Therefore, its emphasis constructs a monolithic narrative of “gendered violence,” ignoring women’s diverse and multiple experiences and positions and also ignoring the various locational politics where women are situated. The paper specifically argues how the technology of survey and the tool of “awareness building” are being employed in constructing such universal knowledge on VAW, which constructs knowledge on gendered violence, reducing the contextual meaning of the events and their subjects. The paper will show how such technology, i.e., surveys and “awareness building,” produces the idea of “progress” and gender equality for developing countries as an antidote to gendered violence.
Nelli Sargsyan (Emerson College)
Contribution short abstract:
In this performance-presentation, I show that in the wake of large-scale projects of death-making, feminist performance and, through it, inherited transnational feminist (anthropological) knowledge, makes space for rehearsing moments of livability, allowing us to imagine a world beyond coloniality.
Contribution long abstract:
What do feminists need to dis-order, dis-organize, un-discipline in anthropology so that the moves they make as scholars are moves to holding life as precious everywhere and not moves to innocence (Tuck and Yang 2012) that treat “decolonization” as a metaphor for the optics, turning it into an unrecognizable lifeless distortion, a façade? In this presentation-performance, I creatively touch the past as a palimpsestic fresco, to tell a feminist story of livability with text and song, as I ethnographically listen to some mothers (and speculatively to others) who lost children to wars. Drawing on embodied feminist praxis, I create affective resonances between the mothers, the ethnographer, and the listener to touch and feel the (un)familiar people in (un)familiar places deeply and with care as I rehearse and collage a livable life from what’s left, to see and feel anew, oriented toward sustaining life, without losing sight of any neocolonial ideological violence across nation-state borders. Weaving together ethnographic knowledge and feminist performance, I enliven all the senses through which to rehearse a more livable life (Gilmore 2023), since just like death-making projects, such as colonization, life-making projects, too, are multisensory. Through this performance, then, I show that in the wake of complex and interwoven large-scale projects of death-making, feminist performance and, through it, inherited transnational feminist knowledge, anthropological and otherwise, makes space for rehearsing and accumulating moments of livability which will allow us to imagine and enact a more livable world beyond coloniality.
Alysa Ghose (University of Edinburgh)
Contribution short abstract:
Following ethnography at the intersection of race and gender conducted in spiritual spaces of Afrocuban religiosity in Havana, this contribution queries how anthropologists with a commitment to liberatory politics and feminist praxis can conceptualise and practice modalities of decolonial knowledge.
Contribution long abstract:
Following lessons learned at the intersection of ethnography on race and gender conducted in spiritual spaces of Afrocuban religiosity in Havana, this contribution queries how anthropologists with a commitment to liberatory politics and feminist praxis can conceptualise and practice modalities of decolonial knowledge. These traditions centre collaborative and creative methodologies of communication with spirits that are predicated on feeling (both embodied and emotional). These methodologies foster forms of diffuse power which go beyond zero-sum understandings of power. To makes sense of this religious work, I explore experiences shared with practitioners through the lens of Lordean erotics, a kind of nonrational knowledge that bridges the political, spiritual, affective and sensual ([2007] 1984). On one hand, this religiosity offers a comparative framework as a practice of knowledge cultivation that can speak to Social Anthropology’s responsibilities as a post and decolonial corrective that attempts to enact justice work that can never be ‘completed,’ but is instead always ongoing. To think through this side of the dynamic, the contribution turns to insights such as Tuhiwai Smith’s critique of research ([2021]1999), Harney and Moten’s (2013) notion of studying and Raschig’s (2023) understanding of stress. At the same time, the disparate contexts of the institution of academia as compared to small scale domestically practised religious traditions means there are also sizable limitations regarding the lessons the former can mean for the latter regarding the politics of who is participating in these knowledge making practices.
Kristin Monroe (University of Kentucky)
Contribution short abstract:
Black feminist thought has been at the forefront of efforts within the academy to decolonize theory and praxis for the last several decades. In my presentation, I discuss how Black feminist thought helps us to reflect upon relations of power that shape our teaching and the production of knowledge.
Contribution long abstract:
Black feminist thought has been at the forefront of efforts within the academy to decolonize theory and praxis for the last several decades. In my presentation, I discuss the ways in which Black feminist thought can help us to reflect upon the kinds of relations of power that shape our teaching practices and the production of knowledge in and beyond the classroom. This discussion has two throughlines. First, I draw, by way of autoethnographic example, on my own teaching experiences and trajectory over the last decade, in order to demonstrate how “teaching to transgress” (1994), as Black feminist scholar bell hooks termed it, might be realized through the incorporation of certain modes of pedagogical practice. We can consider education and the site of the classroom, in other words, a space for the work of social justice. Second, I engage Black feminist scholarship and highlight its insights for the inclusion of diverse epistemological positionings that represent the everyday experiences of members of marginalized communities.
Shahana Siddiqui (University van Amsterdam)
Contribution short abstract:
Are we bad feminists? Are we bad Muslims? Do we speak out against the genocide of Palestinians or do we save our jobs? Whom do we even go to when European academic institutions and governments are squeezing spaces for dialogues, debates, and dissent? What is the relevance of feminism in such times?
Contribution long abstract:
As the horror of Gaza unfolds in front of our screens in real time, the global community is united in feeling both enraged and disempowered by the political decisions of a powerful few. Everyday new statistics come out telling us that everyday two mothers die in Gaza or that this is a war against children or that the rate of miscarriages have gone up. Simultaneously, we are witnessing blatant silencing and repression of activists wanting a permanent ceasefire. "Western" countries and their academic institutions are systematically tightening spaces for dialogues, debates, and dissent. In this situation, what is the role of Muslim feminists working in the global North? How do we navigate through difficult terrains of ensuring our livelihoods while speaking up against the genocide? What is the relevance of Islamic feminism in the light of such horror? How did we get here? And where will we go from here? This paper aims to bring some of these difficult thoughts together to engage with fellow feminist anthropologists to somehow make sense of this dystopian reality.