Transnational Feminist Research Articles

Queer space making across greater Los Angeles: reimagining urban autonomy through collective care

This paper analyzes the lives of whom I call poli-creatives and how they reimagine space making and urban autonomy across greater Los Angeles through a queer and feminist praxis of collective care. Using women of color feminisms, queer of color critique, and transnational feminisms, this paper introduces the concept of mycorrhizal assemblages. As a theoretical and analytical tool, it draws from subterranean webs of mycelial fungal strands to conceptualize how poli-creatives use their work to navigate their everyday socio-political economic conditions by building interconnected spaces and nurturing local queer, feminist, working class, immigrant communities. Drawing on ethnographic observations and life-history interviews with five key poli-creatives, this paper discusses one kind of mycorrhizal assemblage rooted in informal spaces and practices; intimacy, trust, and vulnerability; and anti-surveillance and -policing. I show how these spaces do not depend on visibility and representation in public space, gayborhoods, nor the neoliberal state and formal institutions. Instead, I argue that although they are decentralized and ephemeral, they stay connected by a transnational and queer politics of local community building through DIY practice, holding spaces for embodied trauma, and divesting from institutional and settler-colonial state power. This study responds to the limitations within urban studies and discourses about queer communities by centering how poli-creatives use their transnational experiences, intimate communities, and embodied traumas and knowledges to lay down new soil for collective survival across greater Los Angeles and a future otherwise.

What Transnational Feminism Has Not Disrupted Yet

Abstract Examining the critical genealogy of transnational feminism, this essay proposes a feminist theoretical model called quilted epistemology derived from the Black feminist art of quilting. Aiming to strengthen transnational feminism, quilted epistemology intends to resolve some of the existing limitations of transnational feminism and embrace multiple and incompatible feminist knowledge positions from the Global South to the Global North.

Guest Editors' Introduction: The Politics of Translation: Transnational Feminist Perspectives

Guest Editors' Introduction: The Politics of Translation: Transnational Feminist Perspectives

(Mis)Translations of the Critiques of Anti-Muslim Racism and the Repercussions for Transnational Feminist Solidarities

Abstract As critiques of anti-Muslim racism travel transnationally, they get translated in relation to complex histories of imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, and nationalism. These (mis)translations produce unexpected uses and abuses of anti-Muslim racism as an academic and political concept, with significant consequences for transnational feminist solidarity. This article explores, as a case in point, the emergence of a “Black Turk” identity in millennial Turkey where pious Muslim identity, once marginalized under a secularist state, has reasserted itself by deploying an analogy of Black to pious Muslim. Obscuring the nuances of local power relations, the pious Muslim/secular fault line was oversimplified and mistranslated into the resonant American idiom of the Black/white binary. This analogy and the progressive critiques of anti-Black and especially anti-Muslim racisms were then instrumentalized by an increasingly authoritarian and gender-conservative Islamist Turkish government to legitimize its repressive agendas, even succeeding to garner unexpected sympathy from some feminist politicians and academics in the United States. Naive confidence that such dichotomous racial/religious categories and familiar political vocabularies can guide feminist analyses and politics risks employing a seemingly transnationalist and anti-imperialist but in truth U.S.-centric understanding of non-U.S. struggles for social justice and thwarting potential transnational feminist solidarities.

Ethics of ‘Translational’ Acts in Islamic Feminist Writings: An Analysis of Selected Academic Contributions

This article explores translation as a process and an act in the field of Islamic Feminism. It focuses on the interplay between translator's visibility and ethics in translational activities by Islamic Feminist writers, who mainly produce their work in English, when they cite the Qur’an and prophetic traditions and build their arguments upon this activity. Drawing on a select corpus of influential texts in the field, the article argues that translation in this faith-based approach to feminism is inevitable, and examines the ways in which this non-Arabic transnational feminist narrative contributes to changing, or at least opening spaces for, the discussion on Muslim women's issues and conditions.

Sisterhood in academia: building a flock culture to cope and thrive

PurposeThis paper examines the experiences of a team of female academics (teaching a large cohort of undergraduate students) and the coping mechanisms used to combat the challenges they confront in the Australian higher education sector.Design/methodology/approachUsing a reflective autoethnographic method and strengths perspective, the authors share experiences as female professionals whose intersectional identities presented challenges that extend beyond those typically found in the current higher education setting.FindingsThe individualized nature of academic work exacerbates the systemic marginalization of female academics. Adopting a flock culture serves as a support network for addressing the various intersectional challenges. The authors liken the “flock cultural approach” to a “sisterhood” where individuals impacted by intersectional challenges build a strong and cohesive unit to support each other by utilizing their combined strengths to create positive synergy to cope with ongoing workplace challenges.Research limitations/implicationsThe study highlights the benefit of the strengths perspective to understand how female academics with intersectional identities can overcome the challenges of their highly individualized profession.Practical implicationsThis paper highlights the importance of building team-based work, cultivating collective achievement and high trust in a highly individualistic profession.Social implicationsUsing the strength perspective, the authors disrupt the conventional and currently narrow usage of sisterhood to help develop strong, adaptive, flexible and responsive bonds among diverse female academics. The findings point to how using a “flock culture” – a membership-based philosophy – became the key support mechanism for the marginalized groups, empowering them to confront the systemic barriers within their profession.Originality/valueFirst, the findings of this study are shaped by the intersections of factors such as ethnicity, age, race, religion and mode of employment, which all influences the participants’ lived experiences. Second, this study contributes to the transnational feminist movement by unveiling the contextualized barriers that junior academic females from various migrant backgrounds face and identify how they synergized their collective strengths to survive the challenging academic environment. Third, using the strength perspective, the authors disrupt the conventional and currently narrow usage of sisterhood to help develop strong, adaptive, flexible and responsive bonds among diverse female academics.

Understanding the Nature of Family Violence Against Women With Insecure Migration Status in Australia.

Feminist researchers have diversified understandings of family violence by examining how women's experiences are influenced by gender and its intersections with other social inequalities. This article seeks to contribute to intersectional and transnational feminist scholarship on violence that examines the influence of structural factors such as insecure migration status on the nature of women's lived experiences in Western industrialized countries. It reports on findings from a study with migrant women who experienced family violence in Victoria, Australia when their migration status was "insecure," and examines similarities and differences in the forms and patterns of violence and abuse women described.

“The heat of a multitudinous assembly”: Striking short fiction and the rise of feminist potencia

AbstractThis article considers how a recent wave of Latin American short fiction captures with immediate topicality new forms of transversal political subjectivity engendered by the international feminist reinvention of the strike in the 21st century. Drawing on Verónica Gago's theorization of the political cartography of feminist potencia (power), alongside the work of Silvia Federici, Rita Segato and Sayak Valencia, it considers how the short story form facilitates a strategic recognition of interconnected violences perpetrated against women and feminized bodies, “mapping forms of violence based on their organic connection, without losing sight of the singularity of the production of the nexus between them” (Gago, 2020, p. 58). In particular, the article examines two exemplary short story collections, Cars on Fire (2020) by Mónica Ramón Ríos and Things We Lost in the Fire (2017) by Mariana Enríquez, considering how these writers repurpose the potential for socio‐criticism embedded in the fantastical short story by offering a multi‐focal critique of how patriarchy and gender violence interact with the structural inequalities unleashed by neoliberal capitalism. The article also considers how these riotous collections mediate the transversal fabric of communitarian struggle in feminist imaginaries, drawing narrative energy from the localised proliferation of neighbourhood assemblies and solidarity networks, while speaking to transnational feminist movements more broadly.

Toward Transnational Feminist Methodologies in Global Health: Critical Ethnographies of HIV and Abortion

Toward Transnational Feminist Methodologies in Global Health: Critical Ethnographies of HIV and Abortion

Beautytube: Enacting postfeminism on the YouTube multi-channel network ICON from 2015 to 2016

This production study utilizes postfeminist theory as a lens for seeing ‘beauty work’ on YouTube via the multi-channel network (MCN) ICON Network, a collaboration between the production company Endemol Shine and beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan. By bringing to focus the unique year of 2015–2016 when YouTube beauty production was largely produced within MCNs, the study sets the stage for the proceeding professionalization of YouTube content creation under legacy production and distribution companies in the 2020s. In-depth producer interviews with ICON management and YouTubers illuminated MCN business practices and producer perceptions of YouTube beauty production. Interview data was analyzed for its articulation within ICON as a postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007) through (a) work conditions of beauty video production and (b) best practices of beauty video production. Results indicate that ICON is a site where the markers of feminism, postfeminism, and transnational feminism intersect and collide. These intersections contextualize today’s beauty influencing landscape which pushes for independence from MCNs, transparency, and authenticity.

Authoritarian Othering Back and Feminist Subversion: Rethinking Transnational Feminism in Russia and Serbia

Abstract This article examines the effect of rising authoritarianism on Russian and Serbian feminists. In both cases, regimes rely on what I term “Othering back.” Using “gender ideology” as a proxy for Western imperialism, they reappropriate postcolonial frames to reject democratization and human rights. In such a context, the critical argument that transnational feminism is an exercise of Western Othering to reify power relations no longer resonates with feminists on the ground. To them it dangerously resonates with their own regime’s discourse. The article first traces how the regimes conduct authoritarian Othering back. Based on interpretive discourse analysis, applied to sixty-nine interviews, it then shows how Russian and Serbian feminists make sense of this political environment and the new strategies they derive from their interpretation: the need for discursive subversion that articulates alternative imaginaries of transnational feminism that cannot be reappropriated by the regime.

‘We Thought We were the Only Lesbians in the World’: 1971 Vancouver and the Rise of Lesbian and Transnational Feminist Identities Between Canada and the USA

AbstractLesbian feminists in Vancouver cite the 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women's Conference (VIWC) as a critical moment in the formation of solidarity networks and community building. In the months leading up to, and during the 1971 VIWC, lesbians forged long‐lasting connections with one another across regional and international borders. As a result of these efforts, these early lesbian feminists developed meaningful lesbian support networks that would continue for over fifty years. The VIWC was a watershed event for lesbians across the North American West.

Scaling student feminisms

Abstract Ethnographically informed, this article examines the recent transnational feminist uprising by focusing on the Spanish student movement. Drawing on the contributions of the sociolinguistics of globalization and the pragmatics of scale, it gives an account of how feminist demands acquire intelligibility in the political agenda of the student movement based on a Madrilenian university, vis-a-vis the institutionalization of gender equality policies at university. Thus, by tracking the (un)making of political alliances over time between various coexisting centring institutions – spanning from university official authorities to forms of student grassroots institutionality – the article delves into the valuation processes of feminist scales and their competing logics of value-production, paying attention to how these processes get inscribed in the semiotic landscape.

Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements

This article reviews key theoretical and methodological contributions that anthropologists have made to the study of what we call security regimes. While anthropologists have been instrumental in denaturalizing discourses of security, much of the existing literature on who security actors are or where their work and force are to be found remains focused on the masculinist frontlines and visibly spectacular instances of security state power. We adopt a transnational feminist lens to rethink what we understand security regimes to be and where they are to be found by drawing attention to the multiscalar sites (e.g., home, family, kinship, intimacy) and technologies of rule (e.g., affect, aesthetics, discourse) through which security regimes are constituted, expanded, and challenged. The final section of the review examines methodological and ethical challenges, which are made more complex by the changing profile of the multiply racialized, gendered, nationalized, and classed researchers of security regimes.

Book review: Elora Halim Chowdhury, Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh

Elora Halim Chowdhury, Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022), 225 pp., $32.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 978-1-4399-2225-5

Spaces of Anti-Ableist, Feminist Resistance

This article describes how Las FemiDiskas, an anti-ableist, feminist social movement organization, develops virtual engagement strategies to resist ableist and sexist violence experienced in individual homes and public spaces. How do women with disabilities organize against patriarchal violence in private and public spaces during pandemic times in the global south? I explore this question through ethnographic participative audiovisual methods. As a transnational feminist and member of Las FemiDiskas, I use participatory observations to identify how members of this collective are raising awareness of violence inflicted against women with disabilities in Bolivia. The spaces of resistance created by Las FemiDiskas are made through transnational networks of feminist solidarities. The transformation of private spaces is affected as much as online spaces and public ones. The COVID-19 crisis pushed for the creation of a safe space to discuss and create a collective voice for women with disabilities. Online activism has opened a door to new inclusive spaces, where location is not an obstacle to collectively organizing, as long as there is internet accessibility. The creation of these new virtual spaces transforms existing material spaces and shapes the collective identity of women with disabilities and challenges and reconstructs notions of disability and gender. Exploring how digital and remote activism is deployed by women with disabilities and allies shines a light on future, kinder, non-discriminatory, and transnational practices within social movements.

Imagining collective futures in settlement education: Perspectives of Tamil-Canadian immigrant women

Literature on adult settlement and integration education in Canada documents the limits of public services supporting the settlement of female newcomers. This study provokes deeper understandings of these limitations by examining the gendered experiences of mature Tamil women who have resided in the province of Ontario, Canada for more than 10 years. Using personal interviews and archival immigration policy documents, this paper argues that despite interacting closely with settlement education programs, mature Tamil immigrant women continue to face gendered and classed barriers to social integration within and outside their communities. Settlement education policies produce temporariness in mature women by making them ineligible for services and supports, thus further scripting their lives on the fringes of their communities. However, mature Tamil immigrant women reject the essentialization of their narratives as continuous historical victims by engaging in relationships with their peers. Friendships between migrant and diaspora women emerge as a unique space to explore agentic resistance to homogenising settlement and integration structures. Theoretical frameworks of this study are anchored in literature discussing neoliberalism, multiculturalism, settlement education, and transnational feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir the Memorialist: The Running Threads Connecting Us

This article considers the recent publications of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, and offers an overview of contemporary scholarship in Beauvoir Studies. Beauvoir’s canonization in Gallimard’s La Pléiade collection in 2018 is discussed, specifically Gallimard’s choice of Beauvoir’s Mémoires for these first two volumes. Exploring the imbrication of Beauvoir’s philosophy with her own lived experience, the article traces what Annie Ernaux describes as the ‘running threads’ connecting us, namely the ways in which Beauvoir’s legacy is interwoven in our lives today. Surveying recent scholarship highlights the pertinence of Beauvoir’s work to contemporary contexts on issues ranging from sexual violence, subjective agency and female subjugation to emancipatory politics and transnational feminist solidarities. Thereafter, the importance Beauvoir placed on self–Other relations is explored in relation to scholarship on Beauvoir’s epistolary exchanges, the publication of her lost novella Les Inséparables, and on Beauvoir’s philosophy of alterity and old age in light of the pandemic.

Do Czech Women Need ‘Gender’?: A Conceptual History of ‘Gender’ in Czechia

In recent years, there has been a growing anti-feminist, conservative movement across many parts of the world known as the anti-gender movement. This movement has been especially strong in Central Eastern Europe, where anti-gender actors have framed ‘gender’ as a static, foreign concept imported from ‘the West’ and destructive to ‘traditional’ societies. Utilising a postcolonial feminist approach, I examine the concept of ‘gender’ in Czechia, drawing attention to the role played by Czech academics, activists and policymakers in negotiating the use of the term ‘gender’. This article traces the history of the term from the 1990s when ‘gender’ was first introduced to a Czech academic audience, through public seminars and lectures hosted by the Prague Gender Studies Centre, to the present-day inclusion of gender mainstreaming discourse in Czech policy documents. I reveal that ‘gender’ is not a timeless, clearly defined, fixed term wholly imported from ‘the West’ but rather a concept with a variable and complicated history. Thus, this crucial term, first developed in Anglo-academia, is not uncontested or uncritically accepted, contrary to the claims made by anti-gender actors. The findings presented in this article hold implications critical to transnational feminist dialogue and activism during the current period of growing global anti-feminist sentiment.

Gerakan #MeToo dalam Mempromosikan Kesetaraan Buruh: Komparasi Indonesia dan Korea Selatan

Gender equality is something that is still being fought for by feminist activists in various countries. This article discusses the gender gap experienced by female workers in Indonesia and South Korea. #MeToo as a transnational feminist movement can be a catalyst for creating gender equality in various countries. Many #MeToo activists say that this movement can symbolize women workers whose voices are never heard. This study uses qualitative methods to describe phenomena and analyze them in depth. The results of the study found that the #MeToo movement has promoted labor equality, both in Indonesia and in South Korea. However, in terms of legislation, it still has no impact on making laws that can protect women workers from discrimination from companies. This is due to the strong patriarchal culture in both countries so that discrimination in wages and treatment is only seen as a condition that must be accepted.