Germination

We begin from different geopolitical positionings that crisscross through borders and bodies, making pathways of solidarity forged not through scholarly papers only, but even more through shared struggles, desires, refusals, and imaginations. From these varied locations, we ask: how can our movements, intellectually and concretely—facilitated by some passports and restricted by economic inequalities, colonial borders, surveillance, and exclusionary citizenship regimes—bring us closer together? Why do we pose this question when transnational feminism is rooted in a strong narrative of solidarity?

Our entangled positionings

As scholars, activists, and cultural workers rooted in many forms of feminist commitments across geographies, our vision sprouts from entanglements that are messy, complicated, generative, and deeply political. We write, speak, and create across place|time zones, forging solidarities that are situational—responsive to the urgencies and crises of our world.

We take no uniform position of feminism nor feministing. The diversity in our voices, locations and politics is the point. This diversity rests on enduring inequalities that do not always have a place at the table and are sometimes quietly endured, other times blow up in our face, or fall flat on ignorance. We are not equal and we must not confuse equality with equity. Our diversity is necessary friction, a fuel that does not demand agreement. It is hopeful in its reach, building a network of solidarities, spored through the air we breathe together.

Spores don’t need visas, but the majority of the world’s population do,

in a world where some of us are actively discouraged by bureaucracy,

and in a world where some us are not aware of the painstaking process

of visa applications of their colleagues.

Let us tell you a story of why we, our situational collective of four (two past invited scholars and two residential ones at ARC-GS), have decided to struggle and dream and laugh and sigh together for a little while.

Some fifteen years ago, a group of (young) academics decided to build a center for research on gender and sexuality where a variety of academic approaches would meet: anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, sociologists working on matters of gender and/or sexuality. They laboured together at a university in a modestly-sized capital city in a former colonial-center, a country that continues to disproportionately reap the capitalist benefits of that past and is situated in what we today call the ‘global north’. They did not have a lot of power or influence, nor institutional backing, but they creatively built something simply by insisting on the right to exist. They were relentless, as were those who came after them. The center exists to this day, facilitating research on gender and sexuality. That deserves to be commemorated. So, we came together to make a plan. We also recognised that the center exists imperfectly, and that warrants critical adjustments.

We started off rather predictably by imagining a conference - a conference to discuss, debate and think about the (im)possibilities of feminist solidarities in a world that is not yet equitable. We were immediately confronted by the inequalities of that world. Could the feminists we hoped would come to celebrate and critique the center through their interventions get visas? How much time, effort and money would they have to expend just to try? The centre would benefit greatly from their work, but would they gain something from it too? Would we really say anything new?

Necessity is the mother of invention! So we tried to think of something new. We thought: “Why not offer a prize to celebrate our shared roots, enduring entanglements and germinating hopes instead?”

Our vision

We came together to commemorate, to adjust the center (ARC-GS) and, simultaneously, to do solidarity. We four exist as a ‘we’ because a dense, uneven, flawed but vibrant filigree of exchange preceded and facilitated our connection. We formed ties and pursued attachments in Africa, Central Asia, and the North Atlantic and these mycelia pathways enabled us to imagine a collaboration that might bloom into a critical commemoration of this center, if we were lucky! We hoped we might do a little bit of critical solidarity that would, at once, build nurturing, mutually beneficial entanglements and reveal the inequalities that doggedly plague these very sorts of attempts. How could we do this when the words we use resemble those that articulate practices and notions we seek to challenge?

We call on others, entangled similarly, to join us through contributions that reflect, interrogate, provoke, intervene and build on critical solidarity in transnational feminist entangled futures beyond popularised notions of resistance, epistemic justice, care, and defiance. These notions feed us globally but on a closer look, they take a particular form. They thrive on an archive of white feminist liberalism and travel globally without dipping into [or building on] other registers of feminist praxis. Liberal notions of gender, sexuality, and personhood are rooted in a very particular cultural history that is not universal, yet it presents itself as such. To what extent do notions such as solidarity suffer from the same question?

We need feminist solidarities as travelling spores to live liveable feminist lives by recognizing the complicated entanglements that support and sustain us. We desire them. Yet, we are also weary of existing narratives that may be detached from the reality of others’ experiences. We struggle to sustain these networks and to bring new ones into being. Our desire to do solidarity within conditions of inequality is not a novel struggle. But that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile.