(Re)Imagining SWANA Futurities
18-19 November, 2021
About SWANA Futurities Virtual Conference
Our collective vision is rooted in our collective liberation as racialized women, our vision is grounded in principles of feminist decolonial/anticolonial praxes and struggles. In line with this understanding, we envision this conference to uplift the voices of the people of the global majority, particularly those with a feminist agenda and are working towards a liberatory future in the SWANA region.
“Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people”
Call for Abstracts
“The people demand the fall of the regime”. The chant heard across the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria during the 2011 uprisings echoes and haunts the SWANA region (South West Asia North Africa popularly termed MENA) that dared to stand up against oppressive authoritarian regimes. A decade later, the Arab Spring uprisings have paradoxically overwhelmed and underwhelmed many of these societies wherein memories of justice and freedom have become entangled with nationalist and global challenges.
We recognize that the Arab Spring did not start or end in 2011 and it is essential to acknowledge the ongoing everyday resistances that have marked 2011 as an important year, but have continued to shift paradigms and structures in the SWANA region. Our aim is to highlight the paradoxes and tensions that have (re)surfaced since 2011 and envision alternative SWANA futurities that represent the diverse communities that led these revolutions.
The aim of this conference is to provide the space for epistemological and methodological interventions in the study of the SWANA region that is informed by a feminist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial/anti-colonial framework. This conference aims to centre SWANA peoples’ lived experiences, especially marginalized communities including women and other minorities indigenous to the region. This can include but is not limited to Yazidis, Armenians, Berber/Amazigh, Druze, Alawites, Assyrians, Nubians, Bedouin communities.
Paper submissions can include but are not limited to, topics on: SWANA Futurities; Time/Temporality and Modernities; Histories and Geographies; Resistance and Refusal; SWANA Feminisms.
SWANA Futurities
What do SWANA futurities look like? What is being challenged and what kinds of worlds are being unraveled?
How do we re-envision belonging and collective liberation?
Time/Temporality and Modernities
How does our past continue to inform our present and how do we redefine our futures?
How can we critically theorize and understand the notion of universal colonial time in relation to knowledge production and persistence of violence within the SWANA region?
Histories and Geographies
How do we (re)imagine pluralist histories of the region and (re)define notions of collective memory(ies)?
How do we reclaim spaces from within the nation-state and across imperial borders?
Resistance and Refusal
How can we reconceptualize and analyze resistance, refusal and revolution? What kind of resistance(s) are we centring?
What mechanisms can be used to assess the impact of co-optation of resistance by international actors and dominant neoliberal forces?
SWANA Feminisms
How have local feminist pieces of knowledge contributed to alternative modes of thinking?
How do we understand everyday strategies of survival and regenerative and creative resistances?
The conference will be held over two days - Thursday, November 18th, and Friday, November 19th, 2021. Due to the COVID restrictions and uncertainties, the conference will be conducted virtually.
Please submit an abstract* of 250 words (maximum) alongside a short bio (100 words) to swanayorku@gmail.com
The deadline to submit applications is Monday, September 27th, 2021.
*We are currently accepting submissions in English.