__________________________________________________
Call for Papers Theme: 'Unknowing' Institutions Subtitle: Decolonisation and Critical Intersectional Practice Type: AWGSA Biannual Conference 2020 Institution: Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA) Flinders University Location: Adelaide, SA (Australia) Date: 30.11.–3.12.2020 Deadline: 15.6.2020 __________________________________________________ This conference asks: what does it mean to undertake feminist, queer and related critical work within and in relation to institutions that privilege certain ways of ‘knowing’. Indigenous scholars, queer and feminist scholars, and those using intersectional theories, have long critiqued the politics and practices of knowledge production, along with the related inequalities which emerge across race, disability, class, gender, sexuality and age. In an era of neo-liberal instrumentalism, western epistemologies continue to sit at the heart of institutions which structure our work and/or form its point of reference – these highly particular ‘ways of knowing’ continue to determine what counts as legitimate knowledge, how knowledge is ‘built’, processed and obtained, and what counts as valuable knowledge ‘outputs’. They also contribute to material inequalities in a labour market which is increasingly casualised, precarious, inaccessible, and focused on narrow definitions of worth. These practices of ‘knowing’ emerge from and reinforce the colonising project that structures dominant institutions. They also continue to centre the normative Australian citizen, and knowledge producer, as non-Indigenous, white, able-bodied, middle class, cis-male and heterosexual. Significantly, despite the assumed ‘neutrality’ of the neo-liberal individual, institutions continue to rest on patriarchal, colonising, abelist logics – and recently, corporate logics which seek to maximise ‘productivity’ have had very real effects on identities and forms of knowledge that are marginalised. Through this conference, we emphasise two frames to think about what it might mean to ‘unknow’ the institutions that shape our work, or through which we are positioned as subjects, or from which we seek employment. Theories of decolonisation present a challenge to feminist, queer and related critical practice to reflect on what counts as legitimate knowledge, and by extension, how identities and subjectivities can be held accountable. They also present a challenge to take the radical goals of decolonisation seriously. While intersectionality has been critiqued as an approach that is at risk of ‘tick-boxing’ categories (with the power to determine those categories in the hands of the researcher) it remains a vital frame for thinking through privilege and marginality across race, class, disability, gender, sexuality and age. The 2020 AWGSA conference will bring together activists, academics, students, community leaders, artists, researchers, and policymakers to think through the idea of ‘unknowing’ in a multitude of ways, drawing on one or both of the two key frames outlined below. Conference topics - Positionality and place: How we are positioned as subjects in the various institutions in which our work sits? Which identities are privileged and marginalised? What might it mean to decolonise and ‘unknow’ the privileged knowledges and subjectivities that inform the institutions in which our work is situated or from which it is excluded? What does it mean to unknow what we have come to know, and to know in different ways? - Working with and about institutions: How do institutions open up or close down the work we can undertake – what we can say, how we can we express it, how we are privileged or exploited? What are the different practices of knowledge production, in different kinds of institutions? And who is the ‘we’ of institutions? - Resistance and transformation: How, and can, we decolonise the spaces in which we work? How, and can, we decolonise our own work? How can we undertake critical intersectional work in ways that avoid ‘tick-boxing’? What is possible? What might this look like in different institutions and institutional settings? Is it possible, and if so, what would a decolonising ethics of practice look like across diverse institutional contexts? - Knowledge ‘outputs’ and ‘products’: What presently or currently constitutes legitimate knowledge products and outcomes in the spaces in which we work? How can we strategise to make room for a broad range of knowledge outputs – from ‘traditional’ academic publications, to art, theatre, spoken work, fiction and community and political activism? Key Dates Abstracts due 15th June 2020 - Individual papers: Abstract 300 word maximum - Roundtable discussion, panel, workshop, creative intervention-performance: 400 words maximum. Acceptance announced 30th July 2020 Please send abstracts to: awgsaconference2...@flinders.edu.au Conference website: https://www.flinders.edu.au/engage/culture/whats-on/awgsa-conference-2020 __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: https://interphil.polylog.org InterPhil List Archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/interphil@list.polylog.org/ __________________________________________________
