Racialisation and Imagined Publics in Southern Feminisms’ Solidarities

Abstract

abstractDrawing upon Clenora Hudson-Weems’ Africana Womanist theory and the conceptualisation of multiple public spheres by Nancy Fraser, Rita Filske and Lauren Berlant, I discuss how the African and African Diaspora feminist archive can be deployed across black public lives and Southern feminist solidarities. The article, singles out racialisation as particularly pertinent to African feminist discourses at a time when black people across the globe are continuously racialised as the other and there are ongoing racial contestations which have since necessitated public racial engagements, such as #RhodesMustFall, #BlackLivesMatter and the #MeToo movements. The article presents arguments for counterpublic spheres, intimate publics and popular imaginaries to locate African feminist solidarities through transnational Southern feminist theorisation and public-isation. The concepts serve to illuminate how ideas about race are constructed and have meaning in Southern feminisms, and how such ideas are acted upon in public life. As African feminism/s, and in particular Africana Womanism, undergo continual reconfiguration, it is not only cognisant of the decolonial project in Africa and the African Diaspora but also facilitates critical public engagement with contemporary racial and gender problems. Thus, the article will explore the ideas of racialisation and imagined publics in Southern feminisms. It does so through an examination of the discursive and conjunctural points of reference at the intersections of black women’s subjective experiences with social struggles in movements in Africa and the African Diaspora, #BlackLivesMatter, #RhodesMustFall and #MeToo from a race, class and gender perspective.