Editorial Introduction: Feminist Teaching for Social Justice

Abstract

Editorial Introduction:Feminist Teaching for Social Justice Patti Duncan 2018 marks the thirtieth year of Feminist Formations. As we celebrate this milestone and reflect on a history of publishing cutting-edge feminist writing, poetry, and art, we also consider the futures of feminist intellectual projects within the current political climate. How might Feminist Formations continue to engage in solidarity with movements for social justice, imagining a different world in these difficult and precarious times? In terms of envisioning the politics and stakes of feminist knowledge production within and beyond the academy, what kinds of work can and should we engage in, and what are the epistemological, political, and coalitional labors that could best inform such collective imaginings and actions? Conventional forms of knowledge production within the neoliberal university have failed many of our communities—especially those marginalized by multiple systems of oppression. In fact, as scholars including Sara Ahmed and Roderick Ferguson remind us, they were never intended to support our struggles. Along with the increasing privatization and professionalization of the university comes greater policing of scholarly work that challenges the status quo, contributing to a sense of precarity for many of us working within the academy in today's political climate. To reflect on these questions in this special issue commemorating our thirtieth year, we invited feminist scholars, artists, leaders, and movement builders to share their thoughts on feminist teaching for social justice in order to initiate conversations and share skills and resources that will broaden the scope and impact of feminist knowledge production. Many of these writers have a history with Feminist Formations as published authors, reviewers, and members of our Editorial Board. Some of them will also be participating in a special panel discussion at this year's National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss these, and related questions. We engage this year's NWSA conference theme, Just Imagine: Imagining Justice, as a way to remember and honor the history of Feminist Formations, which began thirty years ago as the NWSA Journal. We compiled what follows as our collective engagement with what it means to teach now—in the current political and [End Page vii] social climate—and to consider what strategies might help us move forward in ways that resist pressures for increased institutionalization, opting instead for new ways of knowing, insurgent practices, and radical futures. Authors in this special issue also consider how our collective project of publishing intersectional feminist scholarship can function as a kind of "resistant imaginary," to use Vivian May's words, that unsettles dominant imaginaries and imagines justice. Fittingly, our cover features a piece by artist Cristy C. Road entitled "Justice," from Road's self-published 2017 Next World Tarot, in ink, marker, and acrylic paint. Road, a Cuban-American artist, writer, and musician, created the Next World Tarot as a deck of cards focused on resilience and resistance. This striking piece, "Justice," unsettles dominant imaginaries and brings together images of collective resistance, activism, revolutionary love, and joy in the struggle. The image centers representations of people of color, queer and trans resistance, and in Road's words, features "body outlaws, endangered cultures, and anti-colonial belief systems." "Justice" is the ideal art for the cover of this special issue, which brings together writings on various strategies for seeking justice within and beyond the academy, particularly through the application of feminist pedagogies, broadly imagined. We begin this special collection with Qwo-Li Driskill's powerful short prose piece, "Boneset," in which they consider what it means to break, and how we navigate our way through trauma within the academy, and within the larger world around us. Radical teaching, Driskill reminds readers, "is vital activist work. As radical scholars, we shouldn't dismiss the academy as a space from which to create radical change." Reflecting on the way that the limits of the neoliberal academy are frequently taken to mean that real social justice work occurs only outside of academic spaces, Driskill urges us to realize the potential of our teaching and scholarship for social justice. "We can create new spaces," they write. "We, after all, create institutions." Carrie N. Baker, in her article, "Teaching to Empower...