Theses on Feminist Protest

A Manifesto

Bibliographic Data

ID2230239
AuthorsSonia E Alvarez (0009-0002-3240-8628, Centro Latino-Americano e do Caribe de Informação em Ciências da Saúde), M Balaguera (0000-0001-9542-3871, Universidad de Ibagué), Angélica María Bernal (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Layla Carvalho, L A de Carvalho (Hospital Amaral Carvalho), Margaret Cerullo (Feminist Center for Studies and Advisory Services), Taylor Marie Doherty (0000-0002-9378-1576, Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educación), Débora De Fina Gonzalez (0000-0003-3059-8819, Gender Studies), Kevin Henderson (0000-0001-9635-0096, Mount Holyoke College), Elva F Orozco Mendoza (0000-0002-2188-2482, Gender Studies), Millie Thayer (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Year2024
Volume50
Issue1
Pages11-42
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/731601
OpenAlexW4403671424
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited45

Antiracist, anticapitalist feminist protests are at the forefront of contemporary mass protest in the Americas and beyond. As an interdisciplinary, intergenerational, international collective of feminist activist-intellectuals, we have been engaging with and analyzing contemporary protest since the global uprisings of the 2010s. Few things are bigger in feminism today than mass protest, yet there has been scant theorizing about it. Our manifesto accounts for the ubiquity of feminist epistemologies and practices marking an epochal shift in activism around the world. It proceeds in three parts. First, we analyze the current moment as a feminist conjuncture. Second, we conceptualize contemporary feminist protest, which we maintain must be theorized in itself rather than subsumed within the study of feminist movements. Finally, we advance an agenda for a feminist theory of protest, concluding that as activist assemblages, protest processes rearrange the ever-more diverse components of feminist fields, creating informal, fluid, if sometimes ephemeral, rhizomatic, and recombinant collectivities, articulations, and agglomerations. Feminist and other popular protests produce new organizational forms and generate realignments in activist fields. We propose that today’s generative forms of protest presage the future shape of what we have conventionally called “social movements.” We thereby address what we believe are big and largely unexplored feminist questions about protest and movements that should inspire new directions in feminist and critical social theory for years to come

Manifesto · Political science · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Law

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