Deadline:
November 22, 2019
Contributors are
invited to submit manuscripts on the topic of Cultural Dialogues For Feminist Creatives: Southern
Voices from the point of view
either of researchers or activists. Abstracts and contributions must be written
in English and in a style accessible to a wide audience. Please submit
abstracts to louhaysom@mweb.co.za or admin@agenda.org.za.
Submissions must be received no later than November 22, 2019
Agenda has been at the forefront of feminist publishing in South Africa
for the past 30 years and raises debate around women's rights and gender
issues. The journal is designed to promote critical thinking and debate and
aims to strengthen the capacity of both men and women to challenge gender
discrimination and injustice. The Agenda journal is an IBSS/SAPSE accredited
and peer reviewed journal.
Guest Editors: Professors Dr Lliane Loots
and Ms Ongezwa Mbele, Drama and Performance Studies Programme, School of the Arts,
College of Humanities, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Conceptual
Rationale:
In
one of her seminal works, Feminist
Theory: From Margin to Centre (1984), cultural theorist and feminist Bell
Hook began to initiate debates around what it means for women, for people of
colour, for feminists, to read and to think from the margins as a space of
power and as a claiming of identity. This issue of Agenda takes on Hooks’s notion of speaking from the margin, and is
calling for all cultural producers, contemporary cultural theorists, artists
and arts practitioners of the geographical South, to take this space to
articulate, write and speak about creative practices that advance debates
around increasingly complex notions of intersectional identity (Collins, 1998;
Crenshaw 1989). This is supported by Raewyn Connell’s ideas of “Southern
Theory” (2007) and what we identify as the necessity of pushing contemporary
feminists of the South writing themselves.
Working
with the ethnographic notion that theory comes from lived experiences and from
the body as both corporeal and as imagined (see, for example; Holman-Jones (2005) and Clandin and Connelly
(1990)), this issue of Agenda wishes
to engage cultural feminist dialogues that allow for an interrogation and
navigation of feminist creativity that opens comment on intersectional
identities which, as Budge on (2003:50) further offers, should be seen as
“events that are continually in the process of becoming – as multiplicities
that are never just found but are made and remade”.
Cultural
identity, as Stuart Hall (1990) has argued, is not something which is innate,
and which thus transcends time, history, location and context. It is, in fact,
subject to a continuous interplay between culture and history and these, for
Hall, are themselves always discourses that negotiate power relations. As he
states: “Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are
positioned by and position ourselves within the narratives of the past”
(1990:225). In light of this, this focused edition of Agenda unapologetically looks to interrogate, evaluate, celebrate
and reflect upon feminist contemporary cultural production of the geographical South.
With references to the axis of tradition and contemporality, this journal
offers feminists an opportunity to negotiate how our art and cultural
production is used (and can be used) to interrogate the growing
intersectionalities of our shifting identities; identity not being a thing to
be acquired, but understood as a living and experiential state of being that is
constantly in flux.
Within
the very large ambit of feminist cultural production, this issue aims to give
voice to cultural and creative activists and practitioners whose creative
voices are often marginalised.
“This
issue would like to invite dialogue and critical interrogations from artists,
scholars and various feminist practitioners/writers who live and work in the
geographical South, to add to the growing lexicon of how art and art making (in
all its myriad manifestations – fine art, digital art, film and filmmaking,
live performance, poetry, writing, dance, music, applied theatre practices,
museums and curation, contributes to increasingly complex notions of identity,
belonging and citizenship. We wish, among other avenues, to build on the
writings done, in the African literature arena, by cultural theorists like
Desiree Lewis, Grace Musila and Danai Mupotsa,” say the organisers.
“Opening
up the concept of citizenship to find emancipatory practices for feminist
creativity is also the articulated need for this issue of Agenda to re-think the concept of ‘space’ from being only physical
(land, housing etc.), to include political, ideological, social, and economic
space as well. While spaces for feminist dialogue and indeed creative, feminist
dialogue are limited, we seek to celebrate how art and cultural productions
have indeed found room for manoeuvre for liberatory practices and thinking.
“We
are interested in who speaks and who listens, who creates and who watches, who
curates, who is included and excluded, who are the gatekeepers … whose gaze is
privileged, the white gaze, the colonial gaze, the male gaze, the
heteronormative gaze. Ultimately, the question posed is, is it possible to find
an inclusive feminist cultural and artistic pedagogy and practice?”
Agenda
welcomes contribution that, among other things:
-Analyse
and interrogate specific geographically Southern feminist artists and cultural
practitioners who have a body of artistic/cultural work that has significantly
shifted intersectional feminist debates around identity, belonging and
citizenship.
-Celebrate
feminist cultural production in the form of poetry, photographic essays, etc.
-Interrogate
how art and cultural production offer a feminist voice – with reference to
understanding a contemporary feminist zeitgeist around art and cultural
productions in the geographical South. What dialogues are possible?
-Negotiate,
analyse and interrogate arts and cultural festival and curated spaces.
-Look
at spaces and practices of cultural and artistic resistance for feminist art
makers.
Submission
Guidelines:
The following guidelines are intended to
assist authors in preparing their contributions.
Agenda invites contributions from feminist
and gender scholars, activists, researchers, policy makers, professionals,
educators, community workers, students and members of womxn’s organizations and
organizations interested in and concerned with gender issues.
Submissions should contribute to developing
new thinking and fresh debate on women’s rights and gender equality in Africa
and other developing countries.
Writers need to:
-Write in an accessible and understandable
style;
-Inform, educate or raise debate;
-Try to pin down reasons for contradictions
and point out differences of opinion;
-Provide an analysis and an argument;
-Be logical;
-Be sensitive to but not uncritical of how
gender, class and race affect the reporting of an event;
-Ensure the introduction encapsulates the
contents of the piece and that it attracts the reader’s attention by either
making a controversial statement, providing a thought-provoking or new insight
into the subject;
-Utilize a gender or feminist lens.
We publish articles in various formats,
which range from 6,000 words for more theorized articles, which form the main
reference pieces in an issue, to shorter pieces with a minimum of 1,500 words.
Formats
of Contributions
-Article (6 000 words max) should be based
on new research and contain analysis and argument.
-Briefing is an adaptable format for
writers to write on a wide range of subjects (2,500 – 4,000 words)
-Focus examines an aspect of a chosen theme
in detail (4,500 words max)
-Profile looks in detail at an organisation,
project or legislation, or a person (2,500 – 3,500 words)
-Report-back covers reports on meetings,
conferences workshops etc (1,500 – 4,000 words)
-Review typically reviews books or films (1,500
– 3,000 words)
-Interview can record a conversation among
a group of people or a one-on-one interview in which the writer asks the
interviewee/s questions on a subject (1,500 – 3,000 words)
Open Forum is a vehicle for debate and
argument, or pieces which deal with argument and difference of opinion on a
subject/issue (2,500 – 4,000 words)
Perspective is an adaptable format in which
writers are able to use a more personal reflective, narrative style (1,500 – 3,000
words)
Contributions should be submitted in the
following format:
File type: Microsoft Word
Font: Arial
Size: 10 pt
Line spacing: single
Justification: left
Referencing: Harvard style
All submissions should have the following:
Abstract: 200 - 300 words
Keywords: approx 5 keywords
Bio: 100-word author biography, including
email address
Bio picture: head-and-shoulders photo in
300 dpi jpeg format
Contributors are encouraged to provide
photos and/or graphics to illustrate their submission
All submissions are peer reviewed.
Articles, briefing and focus pieces go through a double blind peer review
process, while all other contributions are reviewed by at least one member of Agenda’s Editorial Advisory Group.
Reviewers comment on the suitability of a
text for publication in the Agenda
journal, as well as provide comments to help develop the piece further for
publication if required. Contributors will be asked to rework the paper
accordingly.
On resubmission, the piece will be assessed
by the Agenda editor and a final
decision made regarding its publication in the journal.
Please note that Agenda reserves the right to edit contributions with regard to
length and accessibility or reject contributions that are not suitable or of
poor standard.
Agenda also invites the submission of poems on the topic of women’s rights
and gender.
Please note, as per Agenda’s policy, writers who have published in the journal within
the last two years WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to publish – to allow new writers to
publish in Agenda.
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