This special issue of Hypatia (35:1, Winter 2020), guest edited by Celia Bardwell-Jones and Margaret A. McLaren, brings feminism and Indigenous thought together in constructive dialogue to contribute to a broadening of perspectives, and to decolonize standard philosophical thinking, which is grounded in colonial norms and standards.
Feminist philosophy has a legacy of expressing concern for diverse claims of minority groups, including Indigenous people, while at the same time frequently ignoring philosophy’s role in perpetuating colonial domination within philosophical scholarship. Thus, feminism can be perceived as either useless or damaging to Indigenous people. Decolonizing feminism philosophy involves challenging dominant modes of thinking and analysis; specifically, it involves the unsettling of Eurocentric assumptions and values. We encourage submissions that engage non-European philosophical perspectives and address issues of colonialism in a variety of contexts and geographical locations not limited to North America and Europe, but also including, South America, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the island regions of the Pacific and the Caribbean.
Essays in this issue might explore what terms such as “indigenizing” might mean in philosophy, and imagine strategies of decolonizing methodologies. Framing questions of indigeneity may offer some insight into what decolonizing methodologies might look like. Moreover, understanding decolonization requires a concrete analysis of what types of methodologies are deployed to challenge colonial legacies. It is critically important for feminists to accept tensions that emerge among differently situated women due to histories of colonization. Accepting these tensions is a source of productive knowledge and can advance our understanding of the complexities of women’s lives produced by colonialities of power. This issue seeks to examine the consequences of these contestations and tensions between native and non-native relationships within feminist thought as well as collective strategies of resistance to colonial oppression.
This special issue aims to address questions such as: How might feminist work be transformed through Indigenous thought and encounters with Indigenous concerns? How are concepts of identity, gender roles, reparations, nations/national sovereignty, property, marriage, community, nature/culture, environment, and sustainability challenged or enriched by Indigenous ideas and philosophies? How might Indigenous philosophy transform feminist philosophy? How might projects of decolonization shift through an Indigenous feminist philosophy? Decolonization (and colonization) scholarly and activist projects take place in a variety of contexts/areas: geographical, psychological, epistemological, ethical, social and political, educational and pedagogical. How can feminists working in the areas of ethics and social theory engage in efforts of decolonization in these areas? How can feminist philosophers contribute productively to both practical and theoretical projects of decolonization?
We invite submissions that take up feminist philosophy in relation to Indigenous thought and decolonizing methods, including the important issue of cultural appropriation in feminist scholarship. We welcome papers that take both theoretical and practical approaches to these issues and related issues in feminist ethics, epistemology, political and social theory more broadly construed.
Topics to consider may include, but are not limited to:
- Challenges to sovereignty understood as a nation-building concept
- Reconceiving empowerment within Indigenous communities
- Gender and sexual differences within Indigenous communities, including the idea of gender complementarity versus gender equality
- Intersectionality within Indigenous communities: race, gender, sexuality, class, post-colonial
- Indigenous trans/queer identities: two-spirit, fa’afafine, mahoo, etc.
- Indigenous feminist critiques of feminist philosophy
- Cultural appropriation and the problems of feminists “going native”
- Cultural appropriation and cultural artifacts in museums
- Ecofeminism and Indigenous philosophy/ecofeminist Indigenous philosophy
- Comparative analysis of Indigenous conceptions of nature and Western thought
- Women and gender in Indigenous cosmological thought
- What is Indigenous, indigeneity, or native?
- Reparations
- Genocide
- Indigenous conceptions of education and feminist pedagogy
- Indigenous intellectual sovereignty and/or intellectual exploitation (such as bio-piracy)
- Human rights and Indigenous peoples and philosophies
Submission Deadline: August 1, 2018
Papers should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words. In addition to articles, we invite submissions for our Musings section. These should not exceed 3,000 words, including footnotes and references. All submissions will be subject to external review. For details please see Hypatia’s submission guidelines.
Please submit your paper to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure to select “Indigenizing and Decolonizing Feminist Philosophy” as your manuscript type, and also send an email to the guest editors indicating the title of the paper you have submitted: Celia Bardwell-Jones: celiab@hawaii.edu and Margaret A. McLaren: mmclaren@rollins.edu.
Please note that the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST) is sponsoring a conference on the theme “Decolonizing and Indigenizing Feminist Philosophy,” October 5–8, 2017. For more information on the conference, please visit: http://www.afeast.org/conferences/.
