Call for contributions / Matters of solidarity 

MATTER: Journal of New Materialist Research is looking for contributions with a focus on the theories and practices of solidarity in global feminist and anti-oppressive struggles. 

Resistance to the violent crackdown on women and girls’ rights after the Taliban takeover of power in 2021 in Afghanistan, and the revolutionary protests against the patriarchal violence launched in the wake of the brutal killing of Mahsa ‘Jina’ Amini in Iran in 2022 seem to be the defining, history-making events for todays’ global struggles against oppression. Around the world, the gains of the feminist movement are under assault by the strident nationalist and ultra-conservative movements growing, militaristic and securitising narratives, and the rollback on the rights. Meanwhile, the demands of queer and trans rights activists, racial justice movements, refugee rights advocates, anticapitalist and environmental justice fighters, disability justice movements and many more remain unmet.

Despite these challenges and setbacks, the oppressed, the invisibilised, women and girls, LGBTQ+ people, racialised and Indigenous communities, the poor, ethnic minorities, activists, feminists, community leaders, and all those made undesirable and threatened by the anthropocentric, capitalist, cis-heteronormative, white, ableist patriarchy continue to fight back against such multi-axes system of oppression. They refuse to become invisible, to pass, or to be assimilated, to be labeled and dismissed as irrelevant, untimely, or the source of the problem. These individuals, communities, and allies practice the arts of resistance and re-articulation. They invent new and creative forms of protest, imagine paths forward, build strategies and networks of mutual aid, practice care and solidarity, and assemble and sustain vital coalitions. For example, in the last few years, women have spearheaded anti-authoritarian protests in multiple countries – from Belarus, Sudan, and Lebanon to Iran and India. 

We invite journal articles, essays, panel discussions, interviews, and experimental formats to conceptualise and reflect on the practices of resistance, resilience, care, common survival (as well as everyday unheroic and “ordinary” ways of surviving), and solidarity in feminist/women-led/anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and antiauthoritarian struggles. 

We especially welcome non-western perspectives and voices to challenge the often implicitly white and western parameters of what is considered a feminist struggle or what it should look like. We encourage contributors that approach matters of solidarity in an intersectional and critical manner. For example, by taking up the questions of how to stand in solidarity, how to be a good ally, how to avoid the traps of ill-advised solidarity, what power relations are at play in matters of solidarity, as well as how and what they (fail to) materialise. 

We further welcome critical considerations of the role of white privilege in denying the political agency of others, the limits of “solidarity” discourses, and the hegemony of western exploratory and analytical frameworks. We wish to open up and expand the scope of new materialism – a  feminist theoretical formation that strives to elevate feminist notions of relationality and meaningful matterings, but that, at times, fails to account for its own implicit white optics and euro-centrism. We encourage broad and varied discussions in which contemporaneous “matters of fact”, “matters of concern”, and “matters of care” are threaded with “matters of solidarity”. 

We invite papers engaging diverse methods, tools and theoretical frameworks to discuss:

• Concepts and practices of feminist and intersectional solidarity in the context of contemporary political struggles. 
• Problems with (un)conditional solidarity; conditions, subjects and limits of solidarity.
• Decolonising solidarity.
• Feminist resistance to violence against women, state repressions, and war: case analysis, practices, strategies, traveling concepts, exchanges, and dialogues.
• Transnational feminism, allyship, and solidarity.
• Defining and practicing defiance, resistance, revolt, and survival.
• Situated global struggles and the problem with white feminism. 
• “Power of the weak” and power from below.
• Solidarity with people on the move.
• Antipatriarchal models of revolution and insurgency.
• Power dynamics in solidarity discourses, politics, and organizing.
• Caring solidarities and matters of care in solidarity

We invite different types of formats:

• Journal articles. Peer reviewed research manuscripts between 7,000 and 8,000 words.
• Almanac entries. Short pieces focused around one concept to be re-worked and reviewed in the open forum of the journal. 
• Short essays.
• Intraviews. Multivocal dialogues, interviews, and panel discussions. To discuss your idea, email us at matterjournal@ub.eduand add “matters of solidarity: intraview section” as email subject line. 
• Artist/activist/academic/collective and collaborative pieces to form a constellation of voices discussing feminist solidarity.

We are open to discussing and supporting other formats of submissions. Email us at matterjournal@ub.eduto discuss your idea adding “matters of solidarity” as email subject line.

Deadline for full papers: 31 August 2023

For guidelines, please see: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/matter/about/submissions?fbclid=IwAR1e8skpKz--pHgoU3fXMoHssvM84ZKohCPppfU_trMHbzaKUoCGdVQYaFY#authorGuidelines