The politics of history and remembrance are fields in which the legitimation of current policiesand political positions is at stake with reference to the past – this applies to state political strategies as well as social negotiation processes.
The relevance of this field for feminist politics and scholarship is obvious. Thus, the reference to historical, traditional role models and supposedly natural binary gender relations are central components of right-wing authoritarian, ethnic discourses. However, the reference to history and remembrance is also the constitutive basis of the struggle for different contextualisations of current political conflicts – for example, the role of commemoration of the Shoah and the historical continuities of racist policies of exclusion, which are always entangled with gendered attributions of responsibility, gender-specific persecution and (de-)thematisation of sexualized violence. Beyond the legitimizing power in relation to current political positions and the analysis of current conflicts in their historical genesis, however, the enormous mobilising potential of history and remembrance is also obvious.
This focus of Femina Politica investigates gender-specific manifestations of history and remembrance policies as well as feminist perspectives on addressing the topic of history in (socio-)political debates. How historical events and prominent actors have been used by feminist movements to create meaning and legitimation, which conflicts or gaps can be identified, and which narratives become effective, are of interest here. Other important aspects are which individuals, events or stories are concealed or marginalized in official historical-political narratives, on which traditions resistance can be based, and which archives can be drawn on at all. This also applies to the question of gender-differentiated strategies and exclusions in debates about historical guilt and compensation, e.g. when it comes to the question of restitution and the legal reappraisal and compensation of gender-based persecution or sexualized violence.
The remembrance of feminist movements and feminist struggles is relevant for different political actors in today's debates, e.g. in the disputes about physical and sexual self determination. Conflicts over the right to abortion, self-determined motherhood, or transition, for example, take place against the backdrop of historical struggles and framework conditions, That are each shaped by inequality in different ways. Historical struggles, in which feminist solidarity have taken place across relations of difference, are re-thematized and partly rediscovered for today's struggles for solidarity, for example in labor disputes. The historical-political entanglements of sexism, classism, racism, and antisemitism can have a discursively polarizing or integrating effect on the level of political conflicts of interest and, not least as part of the postcolonial theoretical tradition, can also have a normative function. In particular, the interweaving and interaction of these different forms of exclusion in often selective, supposedly "uncomplicated" historical references is of interest. How can intersectional exclusions be identified, how can the danger of playing them off against each other be avoided, and how can their complicated effects be grasped in terms of the creation of meaning and legitimacy of feminist movements?
In this focus of Femina Politica, the complicated, gendered processes of interpreting history and remembrance in their function for current political strategies, inclusions and exclusions, positions and/or actors will be examined. Likewise, feminist research on the topic itself can become a critical and self-reflexive subject – where do findings of new questions rub up against well-rehearsed explanatory patterns? How could feminist politics of history and remembrance be conceptualized?
We welcome theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions, historically comparative as well as transnational studies or case studies that can relate geographically to Germany, Europe or global contexts and relate to the following sets of questions:
Actors
- What role do women, feminists and feminist movements play in addressing history in political debates? Is it possible to identify developments and cycles?
- In what ways are women and other gendered marginalized groups represented in political historical narratives? Which actors of feminist politics of history can be identified and what
significance do gender perspectives have in the politics of history and remembrance?
- What were the consequences of the debates of the 1980s and 1990s about feminist historical politics in relation to National Socialism, anti-Semitism and female perpetrators?
Strategies
- Which gendered strategies can be identified in historical-political debates? Which discursive and narrative constructions are designed and reinforced, especially by right wing authoritarian, populist actors? Is it possible to identify strategies of concealment or counter-strategies?
- What is the role of heteronormativity and stereotypical gender images in the field of history
and remembrance politics?
- What role do historical and remembrance strategies, discourses and images play in the
political debates on gender of authoritarian regimes and post-dictatorial societies? What
qualitative differences can be found between Western and Eastern Europe or the Global
South? What are the implications, e.g. inequality, family, or anti-discrimination policies?
Conflicts
- Which feminist debates about the meaning of the colonial, patriarchal legacy, and
gendered postcolonial power relations shape contemporary historical policies (e.g.
regarding the legitimacy of feminist foreign policy)?
- How can the thematization and de-thematization of gender-politically relevant pasts,
gendered public representations, collective identity offers and constructions, as well as
political-historical legitimacy be grasped? What archival material can be used?
- What can critical (self-)reflections of feminist-postcolonial theoretical approaches look like
regarding the strengthening of antisemitic stereotypes, reflexes, and violence?
Proposals for contributions on aspects that are addressed in the Call for Papers but may not be dealt with exhaustively in these questions are also welcome!
Abstracts and Contact
Andrea Genest and Silke Schneider are the Special Issue editors for this issue. Abstracts of one to two pages should be sent to genest@ravensbrueck.de and silke.schneider@hsbi.de or to redaktion@femina-politica.de by May 31, 2024. As an intersectional feminist journal Femina Politica supports scientific work by women and other gender-marginalized persons (such as trans, inter, non-binary or gender-nonconforming people) in and outside academia and invites the submission of content-qualified abstracts.
Submission Deadline for Contributions
The Special Issue editors select contributions based on abstract submissions and invite authors to submit full papers until June 15, 2024. The deadline for manuscripts of 35,000 to a
maximum of 40,000 characters (including spaces, footnotes, and bibliography), prepared for anonymous double-blind review, is September 15, 2024. Information concerning the author(s) should only be provided on the title page. All manuscripts are reviewed by external reviewers (double-blind) and by one journal editor. The reviews will be returned by November 15, 2024.
The final publication decision will be based on the full-length paper. The deadline for the final version is January 1, 2025.