A Note from the Editor

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeA Note from the EditorSuzanna Danuta WaltersSuzanna Danuta WaltersNortheastern University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreLeo Tolstoy may be right that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but feminist scholars know that whatever their varying levels of happiness, family remains a fraught place, so often where the seeds of sexist inequity and gender normativity are planted. But familial roles—performed differently and imagined otherwise—can also be sites for transformative self making, political engagement, and creative resource management, as Brady G’sell articulates in her analysis of the “multiple maternities” of poor women in the Point neighborhood of Durban, South Africa. Family and home crop up in another manner in Leanne Trapedo Sims’s article on prison writing in Hawai‘i, where the space of home is “both wound and desire” (224) for incarcerated women, refracted through the lies and violence of domesticity and the realities of reconfigured attachments.Reconfigured attachments also appear in this issue through some robustly queer and queerly feminist scholarship. I admit I’ve been a bit disappointed that we haven’t received more queer work, especially queer scholarship working within a feminist analytic. So it is exciting indeed to include the pieces by Hélène Frohard-Dourlent et al., Carla Rice et al., and Anahi Russo Garrido, all of which engage with the complicated—and often contradictory—ways in which people live and name their sexual practices and gender identities. From the creatively queer and polyamorous relationships in post–same sex marriage Mexico City that engage radically with existing state traditions even as new names are invented; to the trans youth of Canada who employ both essentialist and social-constructionist renderings of identity in an attempt to make, as Judith Butler would have it, livable lives; to the queer women participants who reimagine body politics in a video project, these contributions are all testaments to the determined ways in which feminists mold self and collectivity in the face of intractable odds. Questions of representation also crop up in Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr’s methodologically innovative piece on the varied responses to racialized and sexist advertising throughout the London transport system.And speaking of intractable odds, it’s hard to overstate the persistence of sexual violence in women’s lives, and our scholarship reflects this harsh reality. Nary a month goes by without numerous submissions from across the globe analyzing and contesting and bemoaning. In this issue, Rupal Oza examines how complicated the question of false narratives can be in a context in which female sexual agency is always already suspect and how hegemonic discourses of “false cases” attempt to undermine all women’s credibility, just as some attention is finally beginning to be paid to the prevalence of sexual violence in Indian women’s lives. And turning to the United States, Rosanne Kennedy and Hannah McCann examine feminist responses to campus sexual assault through a broad and generous/critical engagement with the work of legal scholar Janet Halley in conjunction with the controversial film The Hunting Ground.In this same tradition of thoughtful interrogation of our own intellectual production, Sami Schalk and Jina Kim ask “what would feminist disability studies look like if it were grounded in feminist-of-color theory?” (31) and provide a rich framework that adds much to contemporary theorizing. And last, but certainly not least, Lindsey Stewart’s (re)investigation of Zora Neale Hurston’s complicated and contested racial politics as refracted through Beyoncé’s epic visual album Lemonade exemplifies the kind of creative interdisciplinary scholarship that Signs has always championed: bold, innovative, edgy. Once again, a treasure trove of feminist scholarship from Signs: enjoy! Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 46, Number 1Autumn 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709253 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.