CALL FOR PAPERS “Living Archives” Past and Present of Intersectional-Feminist Movements in Theory and Praxis

June 27-28, 2024 | University of Bremen

Conference of the Section „Politics and Gender“
in the German Political Science Association
in cooperation with the DFG Research Training Group „Contradiction Studies“ and the Research Network „Worlds of Contradiction“

On the occasion of the Section’s 30th anniversary, the 15th Speakers’ Council of the DVPW (German Political Science Association) Section “Politics and Gender” will organize the conference “Living Archives”. The conference is dedicated to the overdue appreciation of the history of intersectional feminisms in German-speaking contexts (and their transnational connections). In decades of community organizing, intersectional feminists have highlighted the pervasive influence of racism and antisemitism on (academic) knowledge production. They have fought for the recognition of class struggles, and of migrant, Jewish, Afro-German and Black, Rom*nja and Sinti*zze, anti-ableist and queer*feminist perspectives. However, the status of these perspectives in academia and in social movements often remains precarious. By putting “Living Archives” center stage the conference will focus on the lived experiences of people and communities who are/have been part of intersectional (political) movements. We want to provide a space to explore diverse knowledges, forms of theory production, and political practices. These diverse archives have played a vital role in pluralistic, post-national-socialist, and post-colonial democratization processes.
The “Living Archives” of intersectional movement history offer a rich reservoir for emancipatory and transformative present and future politics. Nevertheless, they have as of yet not been sufficiently recognized within the political science canon and within academic women’s and gender studies. However, the aim of the conference is not merely to expand the existing university canon. Rather, resistant genealogies can become the starting point for critiques of current modes and mechanisms of exclusion in academic knowledge production. In this way, potential forms of complicity with various forms of domination and inequality in academic knowledge production become visible.
The conference will also establish a link between intersectional-feminist theory and practice, and Contradiction Studies, as they are currently being developed at the University of Bremen. We therefore invite contributions which address emancipatory forms of contradiction and talking back against hegemonic archives of feminist knowledge production and movement with an eye towards marginalized perspectives and their intersections as well as the contradictions, ambivalences, and histories of living archives.
Since knowledge production does not only take place in academic contexts, the conference specifically invites submissions that highlight non-university-based, political, artistic, and cultural knowledge production and social movement formations.

SUBMISSIONS

The organizers are looking forward to a board range of topics and presentations in order to discuss intersectional movement histories in theory and practice, past and present. We are also interested in contributions which explore conflictual and ambivalent connections as well as their inter- and transdisciplinary locations.

We look forward to receiving abstracts (200-300 words in German or English) by March 15, 2024, to PolitikUndGeschlecht@dvpw.de. Please put “Section Conference 2024” in the subject line.

The submitted abstracts may address some of the following aspects, but we are also welcoming contributions which consider other critical perspectives:

  • The emergence of Afro-German and Black feminist, Jewish feminist, and feminist movements of Rom*nja and Sint*izze in German-speaking countries and their transnational connections
  • Heterogeneous and plural articulations of migrant and diasporic feminisms in German-
  • speaking countries and their transnational connections
  • The feminist “Bündniskonferenzen” of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s
  • Anti-, post- and decolonial feminisms; queer feminisms; queer and trans* of color critique
  • Intersectional-feminist disability movements, queer-feminist disability activism
  • Alliances and solidarity between movements
  • Struggles for reproductive justice and against anti-/natalist nationalist racist ableist policies
  • Self-organization of sex workers in historical and contemporary perspective
  • Different arrangements of care and kinship
  • Anti-racist and racism-critical feminist theory and practice
  • The diversity of materialist and Marxist feminisms, including queer and trans* Marxism; classstruggle and feminist strikes; community organizing at the neighborhood level
  • Anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles, self-organization against right-wing extremism and racist terror
  • Abolitionist feminisms and transformative justice
  • Feminist refugee movement struggles against camps, deportation, and border regimes
  • Ecofeminist theories and movements in transnational connections
  • Histories and genealogies of specific feminist groups, initiatives, and (self-)organizations
  • Cultural and artistic practices and interventions in a wide variety of genres (film, literature, art,
  • music, digital and social media), grassroots publishing

ORGANIZATIONAL MATTERS

The keynote will be held by Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (Goethe University Frankfurt/Main) in conversation (tbc) with Serpil Unvar (Bildungsinitiative Ferhat Unvar Hanau). On the second day of the event, the general assembly of the “Politics and Gender” section will host a networking brunch. This is also an opportunity to find out about the section’s work and how to join it.

The section endeavors to make the conference as accessible as possible and welcomes inquiries and information about their specific requirements from interested parties and contributors. Free childcare is available with advance notice. We will probably be able to cover travel costs, accommodation and meals for contributors. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at PolitikUndGeschlecht@dvpw.de.

Back to overview
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”

Norman Sieroka