Short Abstract

This panel investigates the role of gender in literary expressions of decolonial solidarity in African literatures from the 20th century to the present. Adopting a transhistorical comparative angle, it traces how literary formations of gender and solidarity emerge and transform across time.

Long Abstract

Panel investigates the role of gender in literary expressions of anticolonial and decolonial solidarity in African literatures from the early 20th century to the present. Solidarity, understood as mobilization across divides to challenge inequality, builds upon the formation of imagined collectives across difference, bringing into play relations of hierarchy and power. Gender, despite its significance for solidarity-building, is often

relegated to the backseat in critical discussions of political solidarities. The panel interrogates how gender “as a contextual, socio-historically shaped category of multiple interrelated structures of oppression” can both be a faultline and a gathering point in literary formations of solidarity (Scheele et al 12).

The various frictions generated by gender in solidarity-building emerges as a key component in literary responses to key decolonial moments, particularly in African history. Whether manifested through women's resistance, issues of reproduction and motherhood, or sexuality and LGBTQ rights, the contested terrain of gender in revolutionary struggles resurfaces in literary engagements with solidarity in a spectrum of historical moments of crises.

Adopting a transhistorical comparative angle, we trace how literary formations of gender and solidarity emerge and transform. We invite papers that examine how gender is imagined in African political solidarity across time by asking:

• How has gender historically shaped literary imaginings of solidarity in response to historical and political crises of decolonization across time?

• What trajectories emerge in literary representations of solidarity and gender across historical moments?

• How might literary expressions of solidarity and gender transform current theoretical understandings of political solidarity?

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