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Call for Papers "Invisible Battlegrounds: Feminist Resistance in the Global Age of War and Imperialism" Works and Days Special Issue __________________________________________________ In the contemporary global era of capitalism, as imperialism and war have emerged as dominant geopolitical forces, feminist analysis is, more than ever, urgently needed. Women's lives are affected disproportionately by violently imposed global restructuring, even as feminist attempts to create alternatives to exploitative and environmentally destructive forms of capitalist accumulation are largely neglected by dominant institutions and representations. Feminist critique of contemporary capitalism has, in fact, developed diverse approaches and strategies, among which notably include feminist theorizing within the areas of postcolonial, transnational, Marxist, and environmental thought. Feminist writers and thinkers working in these areas provide an invaluable analysis of the inherent connections among capitalism, war, and imperialism, and of the repressions of race, class, and gender that are required by capitalism to maintain unjust divisions of labor and resources. Also, their work provides vital oppositional images, identities, and narratives, ones attuned to mutual interdependency and the principles of social justice, sustainability, and radical democracy. This issue of Works & Days seeks to bring together theoretical work and cultural critique of anti-war feminist scholars and activists from across social locations and disciplines. This Special Issue invites papers that will: - Explore how contemporary feminist theory and literature construct critique and opposition to prevailing patriarchal formations of race, gender, and class, particularly in connection with escalating violence against women and exploitation of labor and land. - Investigate the ways civil wars and conflicts can be traced to earlier eras of capitalist and imperialist restructuring that reinforced, if not created, reifying divisions and hierarchies of race, ethnicity, and religion. - Reflect on the ways that capitalism and imperialism reinforced, and often reinvented, patriarchal formations of the family and state. Now often referred to as client or peripheral states of imperialist centers, state power also sometimes relies on paternalistic forms of nationalism that imply polarized patriarchal gender identities, class power, and often elite claims of ethnicity and religion. This state power has taken the form of extreme militarism as well. - Examine the profound changes in patriarchal orders as a result of war and occupation that organize the meanings of gender, especially of heavily gendered spaces, objects, or processes, such as the boundaries between home and street, private and public, friend and stranger, nature and culture. - Consider how many contemporary social contradictions coalesce around heavily loaded metaphors, images, narratives, or signs of gender in transnational contextssuch as the veil, female genital mutilation, and so on. - Theorize intensified commodification and privatization which aggravate contradictions between classes and locations and, especially, between women in different classes. - Critique theories of imperialism, especially the powerfully influential Leninist notion that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism but also Hardt & Negri's theory of Empire and David Harvey's of New Imperialism. It is hoped that this Special Issue will generate insight into the mine-field of overlapping, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradictory, patriarchal formations of the family, state, and imperialism under contemporary capitalism. Please send abstracts or proposals of 250-500 words for articles by August 1, 2008 to Susan Comfort. Notification of acceptance will be forthcoming no later than October 1, 2008. The deadline for completion of articles is June 30, 2009. Contact: Susan Comfort Department of English Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705 USA Email: [email protected] __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
