Call for participation in the monograph: “Visual culture of feminist memories: imaginaries, practices, epistemologies”

Coordinators: Lidia Mateo Leivas (UNED) and Verónica Perera (UNDAV, Argentina)

In different parts of the world, the feminist and transfeminist movements of the last wave have created their own memories: sensitive, horizontal, undisciplined, capable of de-hierarchizing biological ties and official History as privileged sources of memorial legitimacy. We invite scholars to think about these movements as laboratories of aesthetic and political experimentation, which create codes and symbols that circulate globally to denounce entangled state and cultural violence, and narrate past and present experiences of women´s pain, strength and rebellion; many times from non-linear temporalities, non-hegemonic epistemologies and creative uses of the archive.

We invite the presentation of articles that analyze any of the following issues:

Creative uses of the archive. Feminist strategies for evocation, recovery and resignification of materials in institutional, intimate or family archives. New temporalities and forms of generation of history(ies).

Emancipatory imaginaries and aesthetics. Aesthetics of trans/feminisms to create worlds and show the presence of the past. New questions and readings against the grain that generate radical trans/eco/feminist, anti-racist or intersectional imaginaries.

Transnational modes of circulation. Echoes and resonances among feminisms that emerged in different geographical contexts and materialized in performances, objects, symbols or figures that circulate shaping a transnational community that generates its own references and genealogies of struggle.

Body, temporality and emotions. The body, a key political space of feminisms and a place through which memory circulates in the first instance, as a privileged lens to explore trans/feminist memories. Trauma, fear, pain, anger, love, joy or nostalgia in trans/feminist memories. Non-linear temporalities and alternative chronopolitics. Crossroads between feminist theories, Memory Studies and artistic and creative expressions.

Epistemologies, visualities and non-hegemonic knowledge. Trans/feminist memorial expressions that go beyond the specter and find in magic, curses, the paranormal agency of nature, trances and mediums, pagan uses of religious symbols and images, legitimate resources and mobilizers of time and memories. Recovery of discredited knowledge about health from trans/feminist perspectives, critical of ableism.

Problematizations of the category of victim. Recovery of figures of women and feminized bodies that overcome narratives of suffering and victimization as the opposite of (political) agency; and that highlight women´s biographies, vitality and power.

Anti-punitivist memories. Recovery of the past from trans/feminisms that claim truth and restorative justice, avoiding the use of memory as a mobilizer of other violences, oppression and punishment.

Deadline: July 30, 2024