Feminist Practice Research Articles

“I Am A Feminist, But . . .” Practicing Quiet Feminism in the Era of Everyday Backlash in South Korea

In this study, we investigate the practice of feminism among young South Korean women in the era of backlash. Drawing on interviews with 40 female college students in South Korea, we found that most of the participants self-identify as feminists who engage in feminist activities primarily in private offline settings on their college campuses. To understand this phenomenon of quiet feminism, which contradicts the global trend of postfeminist attitudes and online feminism, we link the students’ offline practice of everyday feminism with what we term everyday backlash. Our findings reveal that these young women have encountered widespread antifeminist sentiments in both online and offline everyday contexts since the rapid popularization of feminism in South Korea in the late 2010s. We argue that this pervasive everyday backlash not only motivates the students to create safe spaces within their college campuses but also discourages them from publicly disclosing their feminist identities. Through this research, we contribute to the literature on contemporary feminist practice and its relationship with backlash by offering a nuanced understanding of the local context in South Korea.

Intersectionality and humanity: A keynote for “remapping the feminist global”

ABSTRACT That Modern Feminist Thought shares its lineage with the liberal Enlightenment and Humanism has continued to render certain feminist practices assimilable to the colonial-racial regime of knowledge that has long underpinned what we normatively uphold as political modernity and its foundational assumptions. This article, originally presented as a conference keynote address, revisits the familiar feminist aporia through exploring the multiple genealogies of feminisms to highlight their theorizations of difference, the human, and other ways of being and caring. It also reconsiders how “intersectionality” – a concept originally forwarded as an alternative legal doctrine yet extensively deployed for various political ends such that the term appears to have lost its original relevance for some – can be repurposed as a critical methodology with which to challenge the universalism of liberal humanism/feminism and the attendant compartmentalization of academic knowledge, but ultimately, to strengthen coalitional possibilities. The article addresses how some of the largely North America-based conversations can resonate transnationally and effectively with some of the most urgent feminist engagements that have unfolded across and beyond plural “Asias,” however imagined.

Extending Voice Work

“Extending Voice Work” documents a 2018 transdisciplinary research project (with an actor, director, musician, and philosopher), which explored the rehearsal space as feminist praxis and culminated in a production of the one-woman show Sabina’s Splendid Brain, by Canadian playwright Carol Sinclair. The rehearsal process included an extended or expanded voice workshop by Fides Krucker. The article traces a first-person, first-time experience of undergoing a voice workshop. It draws on a thick description of this experience to argue that voice work revolutionizes an understanding of key feminist philosophies of embodiment. In allowing a person to unearth and tangibly connect to preverbal bodily memories, voice work enables an experience of aspects of these feminist theories in practice. However, the article claims voice work also illuminates the limitations of these feminist concepts in their overall theorization of embodiment and the voice. An attentiveness to the practice of voice work demonstrates the inadequacy and undesirability of any one or any final theorization of embodiment. Instead, the article claims, voice work opens up a space for an ongoing rethinking of the intertwining of meaning and embodiment. It concludes that voice work can be a practice that allows us to connect with, write, resist, and rewrite the ever-emerging stories of our own, always embodied experience.

Framing Black feminist pedagogy through the contours of Black feminist thought: Black feminist praxis in and beyond the traditional classroom

ABSTRACT Marked by the tireless labour and contributions of Black women, the Black feminist tradition has significantly influenced the field and practice of education, broadly conceived, in which pedagogy plays a vital part. Little scholarship, however, has explored the relationship between Black feminist thought’s knowledge validation process and Black feminist pedagogy. This conceptual paper addresses that gap, using the contours of Black feminist thought to structure Black feminist pedagogy. Two primary questions are explored: 1) In which ways are Black feminist thought and Black feminist pedagogy compatible? and 2) How can Black feminist thought’s contours serve as a framework for analysing practices of Black feminist pedagogy? Illustrating how the contours of Black feminist thought help operationalise Black feminist pedagogy, the paper draws on diverse cultural examples from politics, religion, higher education, and public media to demonstrate that Black feminist thought and Black feminist pedagogy are deeply compatible and that their merger represents one form of Black feminist praxis. This paper contributes to scholarship seeking to uplift the work of Black women through critical appraisals of their labour and that which seeks to further Black feminist theories and practices in the interest of intersectional racial justice.

Promises of Cyborgs: Feminist Practices of Posthumanities (Against the Nested Crises of the Anthropocene)

ABSTRACT The cultural technologies of gender, race and empire drive much of the present Anthropocene crisis, now and in the past. Everyday algorithms reproduce and multiply our cultural biases on a global scale. Anthropocentrism, humanistic supremacy and individualistic territorialism are rampant, making us all less humane. Society awakes slowly from the modern illusion of categorical identities and divides that keep nature from culture, human from animal, environment from embodiment, technology from biology and arts from science and society. The argument here is for taking stock of ways of cyborg knowing—also beyond the academic confines. It is time for new knowledge integrations forged in intellectual generosity. The cyborg, as a discipline-crossing figure, proposed theory-practices and practice-theories for how to readjust our high consumption, high energy and hyper-instrumental society, and ourselves, adaptively. In this piece, I proposed that feminist STS and cyborg knowing work as a prominent entry into the transformative multiverse of feminist posthumanities in practice.A

"There are lots of new faces this year… I'm not entirely sure when I became one of the old ones": a psycho-ethnography of the self at #PoWESconf five years in.

Conferences have been discussed as spaces for academic work to extend beyond the confines of one's institution, fostering environments of collaborative working, learning, and social bond-making. The British Psychological Society's Psychology of Women and Equalities Section hosts an annual conference, attended by feminist scholars from around the world. Drawing on auto-ethnography and psycho-biography, this paper presents a 'psycho-ethnography of the self' with reflections centred on: 'Scholarship', 'Feminist Praxis'; '(Safe) Academic Spaces'; and 'Positioning the Self'. This article contributes to a small, but growing body of literature critically reflecting on conferences as spaces for personal and professional development and academic growth.

Room to Grow and the Right to Say No: Theorizing the Liberatory Power of Peace in the Global South

ABSTRACT This article builds on feminist and decolonial perspectives and engages with political geography literature to rethink the way that peace and violence are understood in the Global South. Building peace that is coherent with planetary and ecological limits and that does not further direct structural violence necessitates breaking with the extractivist model of development that benefits growth and accumulation over the well-being of humans and more than human lives. By theorising the way that degrowth strategies can be understood as furthering climate resilient peace in the Global South, this article proposes two ways that we can understand peace as a liberatory praxis based on the ‘room to grow’ and ’the right to say no’. Through these two strategies, I aim at centring a liberatory praxis for peace on the need to negate both material and symbolic systems and structures of oppression that produce climate and environmental changes, as well as reproduce direct, structural and cultural violence. A peace praxis focused on the liberation of the Global South identifies that different types of violence linked to climate and environmental changes and underdevelopment are not only connected but that they share their roots in deeper structural systems of extractivism, exploitation and colonisation.

Embodying Homeland: Palestinian Grief and the Perseverance of Beauty in a Time of Genocide

In this essay, the authors theorize that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians teaches us that a central focus of colonialism is not simply to annex Native land and accumulate resources, but to also transmit anguish and grief into the bodies of the colonized and onto the landscape. Through an ongoing dialogue interwoven throughout the essay, the authors share their reflections on grief as holding liberatory potential in the face of the colonial weaponization of loss, conveying how they have come to understand Palestinian grief as a critical enactment of decolonial love in what they call the “perseverance of beauty.” Awartani, a survivor of a near-fatal attack against his body and life, speaks with coauthor Atallah about these layers of loss, rage, and anguish built into the settler-colonial project and the power of revolutionary grief as liberatory praxis.

More Than Abortion: Why Reproductive Justice Matters in Cincinnati Post-Roe

ABSTRACT This study examines Reproductive Justice (RJ) for Black women in Cincinnati. While recognizing the importance of ensuring safe, legal, and affordable abortion access, RJ extends beyond this narrow focus and delves into the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social class. Employing principles from Black feminist praxis in utilizing Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methods, we conducted qualitative interviews to center the voices and experiences of 24 self-identified Black women. The research uncovers three main themes: 1) Ideological violence against Black women, with subthemes: beauty and body image, strength and resilience, and stigmatized mothering; 2) Distrust in daycare services; and 3) Hurdles for low income women in accessing abortion care. These findings shed light on a post-Roe reproductive justice landscape for Black women in Cincinnati.

I Am Hippolyta, Discoverer: Genres of Being Human beyond the Prevailing Order of Man

Following Sylvia Wynter’s call to historicize the human, we bring the posthumanist deconstruction of humanism in conversation with the Black feminist praxis of sociogeny. By situating modern categories of race, gender, sexuality, and the human itself within their colonial legacies of knowledge production, we trace the colonial archetype of the human as Man, and how we might disrupt this ever-present monolithic paradigm. To that end, we turn to Hippolyta Freeman, a character in the afrofuturist science-fiction horror television show Lovecraft Country, to explore genres of being human beyond the prevailing order of Man.

Hyper-femininity as radical resistance: re-envisaging the starlet through a feminist practice of solidarity in It’s Sophie! (2018)

ABSTRACT This article challenges the often-derided role of the young and apparently naive ‘starlet’ figure in film and stage performance. My engagement with the concept of the starlet originates from Laura Mulvey’s influential psychoanalytical feminist essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1989 [1975]), which investigates women in classical Hollywood cinema as objects of a misogynistic gaze. My definition of the starlet builds on this work and identifies her as a conventionally yet unattainably glamorous and attractive young woman, who is groomed and policed by patriarchal structures. Mulvey explains how, within the patriarchy of the Hollywood studio system, the ‘determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly’ (1989: 16). This article analyzes how my performance practice seeks new ways of resisting and deconstructing the male gaze to produce innovative alternatives to heteronormative femininity. Specifically, I examine It’s Sophie! (2018), which presents a starlet who explodes the idea of a fixed masculinised archetype. The starlet personae in It’s Sophie! engage in subversive hyper-femininities through endurance-based posing that serves to explore their magnified sexuality and monstrous potential. This article presents wonderous and worrying states of unbridled femininity that directly challenge the masculinised gaze.

‘Walking on eggshells’: Exploring tensions and ambivalences in platformised feminist practices on Instagram

Feminists have long taken advantage of social media platforms for political and activist practices. While these efforts can take place in a varied digital media ecosystem, different platforms, with their distinct affordances and cultures of use, can help shape different modes of feminist expression. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews with a varied group of feminist Instagram users, this article explores how Instagram, and particularly its Stories feature, can be used for feminist purposes. Adopting a holistic perspective, this article engages with participants using Instagram in different capacities – personal, professional, and activist – and is attentive to both highly visible social media practices and small acts of engagement, such as sharing to one's Stories, that embed feminisms in everyday social media uses. These interviews present a wide array of political action within Instagram, highlighting how Stories’ ephemeral affordances, interactive functionalities, and casual cultures of use can contribute to their perceived political potential. However, these interviews also help to foreground the tensions, complexities, and contradictions that can emerge in these feminist practices, addressing how political responsibility, platform logics of algorithmic visibility, and an uneasy relationship between the two can coalesce in pressures for constant online presence. This article thus offers a reflection on Instagram as an ambivalent vehicle for platformised feminisms, balancing platform limitations with critical users’ agency.

The Collectors: �Quiet� Acts of Feminist Praxis

The Collectors: �Quiet� Acts of Feminist Praxis

Private Practices, Promiscuous Archives

Abstract: This essay mobilizes critical archival studies and Tonia Sutherland’s notion of “the carceral archive” in dialogue with Asian American feminist praxis to propose the framework of promiscuous archives, which seeks to harness the power and resources of archives towards unconventional, liberatory aims directed by community need. I draw principally from the concrete archival practices employed by the “Private Practices: AAPI Artist and Sex Worker Collection” at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive to ask: What can abolitionist knowledge practices look like? What can archives learn from sex workers? Weaving critique of carceral narratives around sex workers with interrogation of the logics of capture and surveillance that direct archival practice, the essay presents promiscuity as an exploratory strategy of collaboration, proliferation, and usurpation that radically expands the porosity of archives, challenging the temporality, affective charge, and social role of archival repositories.

“Itai Amen Satani Abhoikane”

On a typical Sunday afternoon, while roaming around the streets of TikTok, a social media application, my eyes landed on a video in which a female preacher was dancing vigorously on the pulpit. The comment section was abuzz with both words of admiration and notes of displeasure. It was clear in that moment that her theological pedagogy was unsettling for most. Yet, I found it intriguing. It is also on TikTok that I encountered the tagline, “itai amen satani abhoekane” [say amen and make satan bored]. I was sold on her disruptive use of language, the singing of secular music in church, and dancing with abandon on the pulpit. Her name is Chaplain Christabel Phiri, a woman who in my view is reshaping theological discourse in Zimbabwe. Beyond that, she redefines what it means to be Christian and troubles the dichotomy that exists around Christianity and feminisms. Drawing on Chaplain Christine Phiri as my case study, I reveal, in this paper, the possibilities of feminist praxis within the church space. I offer an analysis of five of her sermons, referred to here as theological performances, as well as other performance elements such as costume, gestures, conduct, and props, including language.

A gestão orgânica de conflitos desenvolvida em empreendimentos formados por mulheres da economia solidária: uma análise pós-colonialista sobre uma prática feminista de autogestão

Abstract This research arises from Martin’s (1993) studies of women’s management practices.However, it is articulated from the place of self-management within the scope of the Solidarity and Feminist Economy Network (SFEN). Therefore, a new construct to identify some practices that are performed in the Solidarity Economy (SE) was developed:feminist practices of self-management (Bauhardt, 2014; Faria, 2017; Vieta, 2015). The objective is to analyze one of the practices observed in the field: the organic management of conflicts. The main theoretical contributions used to mediate the discussion depart from Martin’s approach (1993), from the perspective of substantive rationality in Ramos (1989), from studies on conflicts in organizations in Guerardi (2009) and Putnam (2010), as well as the postcolonialistview that adheres to the context of women in higher education (Lugones, 2008; Mohanty, 2006). Data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with women from the SFEN and direct and indirect observation in the field between 2018 and 2021. The perspective adopted for data analysis is an oral history based on critical discourse analysis (Meihy, 2002; Wodak, 2004). The results point to the following findings: non-concealment of conflict in self-management processes, organically managed conflict based on intense communication, and conflict management as a learning process that prioritizes experiences and differences. For women, conflict is not a demerit. On the contrary, it is managed in such a way as to strengthen reciprocal ties between members of solidarity enterprises.

The organic management of conflicts developed in enterprises formed by women in the solidarity economy: a post-colonialist analysis of a feminist practice of self-management

Resumo Esta pesquisa surge dos estudos das práticas de gestão de mulheres, de Martin (1993), contudo se articula no lugar da autogestão da Rede de Economia Solidária e Feminista (RESF). Por isso, foi desenvolvido, ao longo do texto, um novo construto para identificar algumas práticas que se performatizam na economia solidária (ES), nomeadas de práticas feministas de autogestão (Bauhardt, 2014; Faria, 2017; Vieta, 2015). O objetivo é analisar uma das ações observadas em campo: a gestão orgânica de conflitos. Os principais aportes teóricos para mediar a discussão partem da abordagem de Martin (1993), da perspectiva da racionalidade substantiva em Ramos (1989), dos estudos sobre conflitos nas organizações em Guerardi (2009) e Putnam (2010), bem como da visão pós-colonialista que adere ao contexto das mulheres na ES (Lugones, 2008; Mohanty, 2006). A coleta de dados se vale de entrevistas semiestruturadas com mulheres da RESF e da observação direta e indireta em campo, entre 2018 e 2021. A perspectiva adotada para a análise dos dados é a da história oral com base em análise crítica do discurso (Meihy, 2002; Wodak, 2004). Os resultados apontam para os seguintes achados: não ocultação do conflito nos processos de autogestão, conflito gerido de forma orgânica sob uma comunicação intensa e gestão do conflito como processo de aprendizagem que prioriza experiências e diferenças. Para as mulheres, o conflito não é demérito; em vez disso, ele é gerido de forma a fortalecer laços de reciprocidade entre os membros dos empreendimentos solidários.

존재론적 비거니즘의 한계와 맥락적 비거니즘의 정치적 함의

This article explores a political framework within ecofeminism that aims to eradicate exploitation and violence against animals. Adams critiques carnivorous cultures in terms of the intersectionality between speciesism and patriarchy, arguing that veganism is a feminist practice. Adams' argument was criticized for failing to consider physiological, economic, and cultural differences by universalizing veganism as an ethical norm. In particular, Plumwood labelled Adams' position as ontological veganism, criticizing it for being incompatible with feminism and ecology because it presupposes a dualistic perspective. Instead, Plumwood proposed contextual veganism, grounded in embodiment and reciprocity. Plumwood's framework dismantled the dualistic master identity, focusing on practices centered on capitalism, which is most responsible for animal abuse and exploitation, and on the politics of solidarity among marginalized others. This model integrates veganism into ecofeminism as a politically radical and collective form of ecological action.

This Ass is Magic: The Black Feminist Power of Twerking

Using discourse analysis and autoethnographic research, I center twerking as a Black dance and a Black feminist practice. My research challenges omissions in communication studies, which has tended to overlook embodied practices as paths to liberation and contributes to scholarship in dance studies that amplifies the significance of Black women and ratchet feminism. Inquiries propelling this research are: (1) what does it mean for Black women to express physical joy through twerking?; (2) how do women resist politics of respectability and embody worthiness through twerking? By analyzing both the affordances of twerking and the ways the dancing has been dismissed, I reveal interlocking systems of white supremacist and patriarchal exclusions that attempt to destroy Black women’s pleasure and power.

A Pedagogy of Possibility

Using our work together on an upper-level undergraduate English course as an example, we illustrate that a just combination of librarian and faculty skills and labor, made visible to each other and to students, creates the conditions to enact a transformative student-centered pedagogical approach with special collections as a site of learning and activism. However, we first had to recognize, reflect on, and reject the power dynamics that pervade librarian-faculty collaboration. We will expound on our shared critique of power within the neoliberal corporatized academy that helped us get beyond the conventional librarian-faculty teaching partnership to experiment with critical pedagogies of possibility and enact a feminist praxis; modeling and cultivating interdependent confidence and vulnerability to empower students to be free and creative thinkers.