Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 30 September 2026
All submissions and enquiries should be emailed to: contact@feministafrica.net and copy info@feministafrica.net
Issue Editors: Hanan Sabea and Korka Sall
Introduction
In 2002, Achille Mbembe argued that only certain documents are archivable, most of which are related to the work of the state. This issue starts with the question: What about feminists’ documents that have different careers outside the “work of the state” and are therefore not deemed archivable? Do other narratives that are not formal written documents tell us different stories and histories about the experiences of feminists in making life possible after formal independence? What about the “non-secular” and the invisible, the ephemeral and the affective that have shaped the lives of these feminists yet remain outside the stories we tell and treat as common-sense about what happened after formal independence?
This issue hopes to explore the nexus between silences, archivability and postcolonial common-sense in feminists’ histories in different parts of the continent. Our focus is on the postcolonial period and what struggles were waged to realise the aspirations for liberation, equality and freedom. How did feminists contend with the postcolonial order and its suturing with colonial legacies, as well as proclamations of freedom and equality that often sidelined questions of gender equity and liberty in the name of building the nation and consolidating the state. Was this sidelining part of the postcolonial common-sense that traverses the past and the present? How was such a common-sense constituted? What passed as “everyone knew it,” and what was “not yet articulated” or “what could not be said”? How and in what registers did feminists challenge the postcolonial common-sense, and how did they practice what could not yet be articulated? What could they not say, but nevertheless enact through their ways of living and being? And what did they say that, despite being spoken, remained unheard?
We argue that feminist methodologies are particularly well suited to question the silences and absences that constitute the postcolonial order and its archives. We start with the assumption that neither archives nor knowledge are neutral and that the domains and forms of knowledge extend far beyond formal writing. Feminist archives are central to revealing what happened and continues to happen in the postcolonial order we inhabit. In particular, they enable us to engage with the everyday and the affective as sources for producing different narratives of what happened, opening space to question and reveal what went unsaid or remained unarticulated.
Read the full Concept Note and Call for Paper here