Liberal Project Research Articles

Республиканские нации и нациестроительство: причинное объяснение и политический проект

The heterogeneous discourses of the nation produced in modern disciplinarily organized science are considered, they built in the horizon of the representation of the nation, normatively set by the New European “managerial paradigmˮ. In this perspective of which resolves the ambiguities, always accompanying stories about national identity: the discrepancy in the definition of the beginning and description of the history of European nations; the definition of it as a political community and social community; the ways in which the social category. That is, the analytical tool of objective scientific sociological cognition, is attributed to reality; the distinction between republican and ethnic nations and the validity of evaluation in value-neutral scientific cognition. The story, that is, the narrative, has its own logic and its own way of connecting with reality. The narrative of the nation is built on behalf of the state and in different historical periods emphasizes various elements of content and the principles of its organization in the representation of the nation. The article identifies two configurations of the narrative of the nation, mediated by changes in the nature of the social, the essence of the political (politics as the management of interests) and the state interest (from revolution to mobilization). The conclusion is made that the “unique constellation of historical circumstances” that led to the emergence of the New European nations and the exclusivity of the national political form in the New European nation-state is losing its validity in modern times. The alternative is indicated: the world re-publican nation of a universal and global political order (the liberal project of the republican nation) and the non-national existence of the population, which has an open character.

Speaking Silences

Miranda Fricker’s account of what is involved in cases of hermeneutical injustice has been criticised for neglecting the existence of alternative hermeneutical resources developed by non-dominant groups and consequently overlooking its members’ cognitive agency. I argue that this critical strand might be extended to consider what I call “uncontroversial cases of hermeneutical injustice”, i.e. cases in which no alternative resources are available, but marginalized subjects can still be said to resist dominant interpretations of their experiences. Following Alice Crary, I trace the limitations of Fricker’s original account of hermeneutical injustice back to her reliance on a neutral conception of reason and argue that widening the realm of rationality to accommodate affective responses authorizes a revaluation of marginalized subjects’ agency under ideological systems. To illustrate this point, I indicate that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on hinges present a notion of objectivity that serves liberatory projects and might guide a more adequate response to cases of hermeneutical injustice.

FEMINISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

From a theoretical point of view, for many decades the discipline of International Relations was dominated by the triad of realism, which remained the overwhelmingly dominant theoretical approach. It was not until 1980 that other political approaches began to gain some momentum. International relations is one of the last areas to accept feminism. This has contributed greatly to its use in almost all areas of research. Compared to other disciplines, the feminist aspect in international relations appeared much later. Feminism is a series of movements aimed at defending equal opportunities for women in the different areas of politics, social rights and other aspects of society. Feminist approaches to international relations became widespread in the late 20th century, and these approaches called for women’s experiences to be ignored from studies of international relations theory. Feminists who study international relations have argued that gender issues apply to international relations. Women succeed through their ambition, diplomacy and oratory to excel in the leadership area, which is the main premise for women to lead fully, dynamically but also in an original way. Throughout history, women have gone through several stages that have finally brought her to the position where the male elite give respect, love and attention to women throughout society. This paper fully demonstrates the vitality and continued viability of feminist projects in a variety of forms and contexts, assesses the challenges facing feminism and strongly advocates its continued relevance to contemporary global politics. The main objective of this paper is to present the importance of feminism today and its role as a paradigm in international relations.

‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’

Just as R.E.M.’s lead singer Michael Stipe repeats, ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’, this article adopts a cautiously hopeful attitude towards ends as paradigmatic shifts away from colonial, ordered and fixed ways of understanding the world. Some ends are not destructions, conclusions or stagnations; but are alternatives from ‘the world as we know it’, which is both desirable and ‘fine’. On the other hand, some ends, such as species extinction, are devastatingly final. Historical, cultural, biological and technological ends are encapsulated in two works of art created more than 500 years apart: German printmaker woodcut print Rhinoceros and British artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s 2018 video installation The Substitute. These two renderings traverse a range of moments from the rhinoceros first entering western European visual culture to the extinction event of one rhinoceros subspecies. Philosophical themes emerging from these works are explored through Franz Fanon’s articulation of the colonial subject, Jacques Derrida’s ideas on invention and Georges Didi-Huberman’s firefly image. Fanon, Derrida and Didi-Huberman call for radical change in which ends are necessary to projects of liberation and interconnectedness.

Quoted at the Pulpit: Male Rhetoric and Female Authority in Fifty Years of General Conference

Quoted at the Pulpit: Male Rhetoric and Female Authority in Fifty Years of General Conference

Palestinian and Kurdish nationalism: Understanding the ‘politics of the possible’

ABSTRACTThis article compares the efforts of the Palestinians and the Kurds – the two largest stateless nations in the Middle East – to obtain recognition. While Kurdish movements are spread across four countries in the region – Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, with specificities dependent on the historical context and relations with the particular host state – in this article we focus on the Syrian Kurds as a contrast to the Palestinians. This is because these two communities arrive at different end‐points in their national liberation projects despite sharing similar self‐determination aims. These differences provide an opportunity to analyse and comment on the factors which impact on self‐determination trajectories. The article examines the emancipatory potential of nationalism while simultaneously reflecting on the limitations imposed by regional dynamics and intra‐group tensions. We compare the constraints faced by these two groups as non‐state actors in a region shaped by the realpolitik of powerful states, recognizing that both of them – as transnational actors – in turn impact on these states as well.

The book and the pen: reading biography and writing autobiography as feminist project in Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls and I Am A Rebel Girl

ABSTRACT Global publishing phenomenon Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls launched a wave of biography aimed at children. Styled as feminist bedtime stories and as a reinvention of the fairy tale, the trademark celebratory biographical arcs which focus on women’s lives and stories as heroic have also attracted critique. This paper argues that Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls draws deliberate attention to both the limits and possibility of biography as a genre that has distinctive, ideological, and cultural power in conferring visibility and status to the subjects of representation. In interactive journal pages appended to each Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls volume, and in publications like I Am A Rebel Girl, the reader becomes a participant in the biographical project, invited to practise auto/biography and to create their own ‘rebel’ story. Rebel Girls work within the limits of but also models a potential for auto/biography as a feminist, activist tool, available to be taken up self-consciously by a generation of ‘rebel’ readers who may themselves become the rebel writers of their own or others’ lives, inventing and evolving the possibility for biography as a feminist mode.

Review of Secret Feminist Agenda, Season 4

Review of Secret Feminist Agenda, Season 4

Neo-Hobbesian democracy

In political theory, the criticism of Rawlsian constructivist liberalism has been articulated intheories of political realism. John Gray, one of the promoters of realist liberalism, recommendsa neo-Hobbesian way of social coexistence which is based on the conflictual and antagonisticidea of political life. It takes social values and forms of life as incommensurable in modernmulticultural societies. Taking value-pluralism and its conflicts seriously, a theory of modusvivendi has been articulated among realist political thinkers. Being a post-liberal (or post-Enlightenment) theory, modus vivendi is more a practice oriented and open-ended theory thanphilosophical constructions based on high morality. Modus vivendi theorists make an emphasison the peaceful co-existence of social groups and a moral minimum of the political society. One ofthe deficiency of the theory is that it says not much about democracy, though it would be highlyuseful according to two contextual considerations.On the one hand, a modern political systemwould be impossible or outrageous without any form of democratic legitimacy. On the otherhand, there is an exhaustion of the liberal project(s) and the societies featured by multiculturalprosperity. Besides constitutional protection, defending democracy in this new context meansbalancing between cultural and other value-oriented groups in modern societies. In my paper,I make an attempt to examine the concept of democracy in the light of modus vivendi theory.

Gary Barker: advocate for men's health and gender equality

Researcher and advocate Gary Barker has been influential in the feminist project for healthy masculinities. His work has shown the importance of collaborating with men and boys to address the harmful gender norms and unequal power dynamics that create inequities in society and in health. Gender equality efforts have traditionally focused on women and girls. “But for transformative, sustainable change”, says Barker, “men and boys must be seen as part of the solution and they must see themselves as partners in the process.

Women's inclusion and neoliberal governmentality in the Swedish digital game industry: An analysis of discursive positions and recruitment strategies

AbstractMany companies within the creative industries present themselves as open and egalitarian while they are, at the same time, marked by vertical and horizontal sex‐segregation. The paper illustrates how this is particularly salient in the digital games industry and further examines how the presence of a neoliberal postfeminist discourse contributes to the neglectance of structured inequality. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with actors in the Swedish games industry. Drawing on the theoretical perception that neoliberal logic reframes contemporary notions of gender and equality through a postfeminist discursive framework, this paper identifies and critically discusses different approaches to understand and tackle the gender divide in the Swedish games industry. While postfeminism has been characterized as apolitical or even anti‐feminist, this paper discusses how such postfeminist expressions could also be understood as connecting to the feminist project of de‐gendering. By way of conclusion, this study shows how a postfeminist discourse obscures the reality of gendered inequalities and poses limits to organizational change.

Feminism without “gender identity”

Talk of gender identity is at the core of heated current philosophical and political debates. Yet, it is unclear what it means to have one. I examine several ways of understanding this concept in light of core aims of trans writers and activists. Most importantly, the concept should make good trans people's understanding of their own gender identities and help understand why misgendering is a serious harm and why it is permissible to require information about people's gender identities in public life. I conclude that none of the available accounts meets these essential criteria, on the assumption that the gender norms of femininity and masculinity are unjustified. But we can, and should, pursue the feminist project without “gender identity”. Such feminism can include trans people because it is possible to account for the specific harm of misgendering without assuming a claim to the recognition of our gender identities. I conclude that we should eliminate the concept of “gender identity.” To understand the phenomena that are putatively captured by “gender identity,” we are better off employing other concepts, such as “sexual dysphoria,” (assigned or aspirational) “gender roles,” and (internalised or endorsed) “gender norms”. These concepts can usefully replace “gender identity” in an individual evaluation of each of the trans people's claims to inclusion into particular spaces.

Editorial: South Asian Dance Intersections

Welcome to the inaugural issue of SADI—South Asian Dance Intersections—a progressive, scholarly, blind peer-reviewed, open-access online journal. SADI was conceived during the pandemic as a transnational feminist project. It proposes a field-defining modality of looking at scholarship around South Asian dance studies emerging within the field across values, theories, and practices. It seeks to carry to newer and larger audiences, a unique blend of high-quality research in scholarly, theoretical, textual, choreographic, contemporary, social justice, and community-oriented, interdisciplinary, and intersectional writing. SADI explores the ecosphere of South Asian dance activities, celebrating plural practices, diversity, and richness, while challenging incongruencies.

"Put Your Money Where Your Movement Is": The Feminist Credit Unions of the 1970s

Between 1973 and 1977, at least twenty-seven feminist credit unions (FCUs) opened their doors in the United States. These financial institutions sought to address discrimination against women in lending and to provide a place to "recycle" money within the movement to fund feminist projects. During this same period, in 1974, Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which made discrimination in lending based on sex or marital status illegal. This article weaves together the history of the ECOA and FCUs to highlight the limits and possibilities of feminist institutions and reform. While historians have written about FCUs as examples of cultural feminism, this article uses internal documents, newsletters, and membership data to argue that FCUs were valuable and contested sites of intergroup organizing and feminist theorizing about capitalism, community, race, and class that defied simple categorizations.

Oceanic bellies and liquid feminism in Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique

ABSTRACT Winner of the 2003 Prix des Hémisphères Chantal Lapicque, and translated into German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and English, Fatou Diome’s 2003 novel, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique [ The Belly of the Atlantic, 2006] plays on the image of the Atlantic as an oceanic belly. This article explores the usefulness of the black Atlantic epistemology (Glissant 1990, Gilroy 1993) as a site for imagining the production of diasporic space, alongside the critique that ‘by excluding Africa, Gilroy has in effect narrowed the Africanness or Africanity of the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Masilela 1996, p. 88). Through Diome’s novel, I explore how this intersects with a feminist project of rendering visible the spatialization of difference, through an engagement with the geographies of domination. Borrowing from Zymunt Bauman’s (2006) notion of liquid modernity, I therefore propose ‘liquid feminism’ as a framework that relates the globalised oceanic mobilities of African migrants to the structures of patriarchal domination which render black women’s lives ‘ungeographic’ (McKittrick 2006). I start by exploring the geographic sensibility of Diome’s poetics, including her use of the language of geography and her personification of the Atlantic Ocean. I then analyse how her portrayal of a geulwaar matriclan subverts the notion of Western feminism as rescuing African women who are trapped by ‘tradition’. Finally, I explore Diome’s notion of ‘geographic suicide’ as associated with the reflexivity of African women as modern subjects a site for the ‘affective mapping’ (Flatley 2009) of diasporic identity. Ultimately, the article illustrates how Diome’s feminist re-imagining of the black Atlantic centres Africa and Africanness, combating the temporal dislocation that fixes the continent as a space that is lost in the originary moment of rupture of the Middle Passage.

(Re)Writing Anthropology and Raising Our Voices from the Academic Margins


 In reframing the ontological limits and possibilities of the academic margin, this Colloquy situates the Minority Serving Institution (MSI) classroom as a critical (field) site in which anthropological knowledge is innovated, produced, and contested. The essays, written by anthropologists who work in and represent “non-hegemonic” institutions, speak to decolonial, Black feminist, and liberatory projects and pedagogy that challenge what anthropology can look like, how anthropology can be practiced, how it can be taught, and what it can contribute to a more just world. This collection crafts a vision for an equitable anthropology of the now and the future and situates the academic margins as an important space from which the discipline must be reimagined in the current political moment.

Love and anger: Putafeminismos/whore feminisms in Brazil

ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss how love and anger have affected the political struggles of putafeministas/whore-feminists in Brazil. Love, considered to be at the centre of diverse social justice and, particularly, feminist projects, is a relevant assertion of decolonial feminism, a line of thought that has vastly disseminated during the last years in the country. In an ominous political context, marked by growing conservatism and the destablisation of rights that had been previously guaranteed, feminisms' expansion has led to the incorporation of an array of heterogeneous ideas. Putafeministas political struggles have taken place in a milieu in which the multiplicity of histories, needs and strategies of different categories of women seemed to be recognised and celebrated. Yet, far from being acknowledged by lines of decolonial thinking, putafeministas have faced a growing spiral of violence and anger from other Brazilian feminists. I explore this process, basing myself on ethnographic studies conducted since 2010 about relations between feminisms and prostitution in Brazil. My main point is that these confrontations are related to the incorporation of transnational flows of feminist ideas regarding ‘rape culture’ that associating sex work with paid rape encompass decolonial possibilities.

‘That’s enough!’ (But it wasn’t): The generative possibilities of attuning to what else a tantrum can do

Often used in the plural, tantrum denotes an uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child. In this paper we attempt to enact a feminist project of reclamation and reconfiguration of ‘the toddler tantrum’. Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions, this paper investigates the complex yet generative possibilities inherent within the tantrum to argue that it can be encountered as more-than-human, as a worldly-becoming, and as a form of resistance to Anthropocentrism and childism. We propose that the tantrum might be reappraised as a generative form of (child) activism. By mobilising the potential of arts-based approaches to the study of childhood we seek to reach other, opened out and speculative accounts of what tantrum-ing is, what it makes possible, and what it might offer to stretch ideas about, and practices with very young children. We undertake a tentacular engagement with children’s literature to arrive at possibilities to resist smoothing out, extinguishing or demonising the uncomfortable affective ecologies that are agitated by child rage. This paper brings together a concern with affect, materialities and bodies as they coalesce in more-than-human relationalities captured within ‘the tantrum’. In doing so, the unthinkable, the unbearable, the uncomfortable and the unknowable are set in motion, in the hope of arriving at a (more) critically affirmative account of childhood in all its messy complexity.

Teaching for Liberation: The Manifesto Assignment as an Example of bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy

ABSTRACT Diversity and inclusion, decolonising the curriculum, and intersectionality have become buzzwords in higher education, with questions raised about what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts in teaching contexts. Despite efforts being made to democratise the curriculum through reading lists and lecture content, pedagogy itself remains largely unchanged. In this article, I provide a theoretical reflection on my experiences of teaching an introductory gender studies unit at an Australian university at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The pandemic intensified existing inequities amongst students, not only outside but also inside the classroom. It is against this backdrop that I swapped the initially set research essay in the unit for a manifesto writing assignment. In this article, I explore the ways in which the manifesto assignment provided an opportunity to take seriously bell hooks’ vision of engaged pedagogy that views education as the practice of freedom and discuss the ways in which it came to represent an example of feminist praxis that assists in fostering a more inclusive classroom, grounded in feminism’s liberatory project.

Rocks and Streams and Love and Liberation – Dialogues with Ecology and Buddhist Practice in Gary Snyder’s Love Poems

After 1990, and increasingly in recent years, it became possible in South Africa to extend our focus in teaching and writing about literature to consider how the project of social liberation might relate to ecological awareness, or even spiritual experience. This essay is about some of the poetry by the North American writer Gary Snyder that I’ve found inspirational in this regard. His work embodies a lifetime’s lively conversation between ecological engagement and Buddhist practice and invokes the idea of liberation at many levels. At the heart of this is an image of the interconnected, nondual reality he calls in one poem ‘rocks and streams.’ This aspect of Snyder’s work is fairly well known, but how does it relate to the love poetry he has continued to write since the 1950s? What, if anything, do the poems about the love of a partner have to do with spiritual practice, and the core eco-Buddhist insights that have defined his writing? These are the questions that interest me here.