Original Date: February 28, 2025
Please join us as we launch the publication of “Writing African Feminist Subjectivities,” the first Special Issue dedicated to African feminism in the history of Feminist Formations.
Our invited speakers are the Special Issue guest editors Maha Marouan, Alicia C. Decker, and Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse who will discuss and share the conception of this project, its intellectual trajectory and the collaborative labor of working together as co-editors. They will be joined by the managing editor of Feminist Formations, aman agah who will share their insights from behind the scenes and offer their reflections on the collection.
This Special Issue responds to the lack of scholarship on African feminist subjectivities within the broader feminist canon by creating space for feminists of Africa to theorize, conceptualize, and critically address the multiple dimensions of their lived experiences. The contributions that comprise this issue are framed and grounded in African ontological and epistemic modalities and informed by African feminist intellectual legacies.
As editors, our intention was to 1) challenge the normalization of discourses of power that render African women’s lives invisible or only recognizable when located at the margin; 2) Confront the deliberate silencing of radical African feminist thought by dominant heteropatriarchal nationalistic discourses on African feminism; and 3) Affirm the act of writing as a liberatory practice where African feminist subjectivities are claimed, asserted and celebrated. The result is this collection that brings together both leading and emerging figures in the field of African feminisms. This dialogue is the first of several that are being planned around the Special Issue and which will include conversations with the contributors.
