A Roundtable Conversation: Feminist Collaborative Ethos in International Law

ABSTRACT

This roundtable discussion focuses on the collective commitment and the praxis of a feminist collaborative ethos in international law to imagine and centre alternative futures in the field. This discussion took place as part of the virtual workshop ‘International Law Dis/Oriented: Queer Legacies, and Queer Futures Workshop’ from which this special issue emerged. In this transcript of the roundtable, Shaimaa Abdelkarim, Farnush Ghadery, and Rohini Sen discuss with Lena Holzer how turning to feminist collectivity – focused on care, collaboration, and solidarity – can help to disrupt and push against gendered, racialised, and colonial power structures embedded in academic spaces. They examine their intertwined positionalities along with various pedagogical and methodological approaches to determine the functions of critical feminist and queer thoughts in international law. Inculcating a praxis of feminist collaborative ethos in the scholarship and teaching of international law, they hope to present a challenge to the artificial individualisation of the profession and its increasing neoliberalisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist collaborative ethos
• queer and feminist collective
• TWAIL feminisms
• critical pedagogy and praxis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Since the roundtable, Rohini, Shaimaa, and Farnush have founded the Feminist TWAIL Collective; a collective for academics working on critical feminist approaches to TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) specifically and international law broadly. The aim of the Collective is not only to connect these scholars in order to encourage research collaborations but also to create a space of comradery and support to navigate life in academia. The Collective particularly seeks to support graduates and early career researchers who have just embarked on their journeys in academia by highlighting their research, connecting them to more established colleagues, and creating a space for exchange and collaboration. If you wish to get involved with the Feminist TWAIL Collective, please get in touch by emailing: [email protected].

Notes

1 This abridged version of the roundtable discussion has been edited for publication purposes. Due to lack of space, the audience Q&A session has been supplanted with a summary on the trajectory of the Feminist TWAIL Collective that answers to the audience’s questions.

2 Farnush Ghadery, Shaimaa Abdelkarim and Rohini Sen, ‘Collaborative Praxis: Unbinding Neoliberal Tethers of Academia’ (2021) Feminista Journal <https://feministajournal.com/collaborative-praxis-unbinding-neoliberal-tethers-of-academia/> accessed 1 March 2023.

3 ibid.

4 ibid.

5 Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge University Press 2005); Dianne Otto, ‘International Human Rights Law: Towards Rethinking Sex/Gender Dualism’ in Vanessa Munro and Margaret Davies (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Feminist Legal Theory (Routledge 2013).

6 Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) can be understood as: (1) a network of scholars and researchers who ground their work in the context of the Third World; (2) a methodology that highlights historical approaches to the understanding of the role of law; and (3) a political commitment to anticolonial struggles in their multiple forms. Luis Eslava, ‘TWAIL Coordinates’ (Critical Legal Thinking Blog, 2 April 2019) https://criticallegalthinking.com/2019/04/02/twail-coordinates/ accessed 3 May 2023; Makau Mutua and Antony Anghie, ‘“What Is TWAIL?” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting’ (2000) 94 American Society of International Law 31; James Gathii, ‘The Agenda of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)’, in J. Dunoff & M. Pollack sds, International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers (Cambridge University Press 2022) 153; B.S. Chimni ‘Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto’ (2006) International Community Law Review 3.

7 For shifting narratives through storytelling and centring black women’s experiences see: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (Routledge 2000) 34. For an intersectional and interconnect mode of analysis see: Kimberlee Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics?’, (1989) The University of Chicago Legal Forum 139; Suryia Nayak, Race, Gender and The Activism of Black Feminist Theory: Working with Audre Lorde (Routledge 2015). For a method on colonial archives as ‘confronting futures’, see Anne L Stoler, Along the Archival Grain Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton University Press 2008). For use of literary sources to unearth the space that black women occupy, see Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Macmillan 2008). For queer self-reflexive methodologies, see Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash, eds. Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research (Routledge 2010) 1-23.

8 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (The Crossing Press 1984) 40-44.

9 Jewel Amoah, ‘Narrative: The Road to Black Feminist Theory’ (1997) 12 Berkeley Women's Law Journal 84; Ann Genovese, Feminist Jurisography: Law, History, Writing (Routledge 2022).

10 Janice Doane and Devon Hodges, ‘Writing from the Trenches: Women’s Work and Collaborative Writing’ (1995) 14(1) Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 51; Mounia El Kotni, Lydia Z. Dixon, and Veronica Miranda, ‘Co-authorship as Feminist Writing and Practice,’ (2020) Member Voices, <https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/co-authorship-as-feminist-writing-and-practice-1> accessed 1 March 2023. For instance, the South Asian Womxn’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) showcases cutting-edge work by South Asian women that deals with issues of gender and cultural representation. Created in 1997, they present the creative work of South Asian womxn in multiple disciplines through salons, talks, workshops, readings, screenings, performances, and exhibitions; The statement of the Combahee River Collective (1977) <https://americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_Readings.pdf> accessed 1 March 2023; Matrix, Making Space Women and the Man Made Environment (Pluto Press Limited 1984); Sara Ruddick and Pamela Daniels (eds), Working It out : 23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists, and Scholars Talk about Their Lives and Work (Pantheon Books 1977); Richa Nagar, Muddying the Waters (University of Illinois Press 2014).

11 Oishik Sircar, Violent Modernities: Cultural Lives of Law in New India (Oxford University Press 2021) 210-253.

12 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, ‘Neoliberalizing Space’ (2002) Antipode 380, 380.

13 Wendy Brown, ‘Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy’ in Wendy Brown (ed, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (Princeton University Press 2003) 38.

14 See for example Chandra Talpade Mohanty who notes ‘[i]f all experience is merely individual, and the social is always collapsed into the personal, feminist critique and radical theory appear irrelevant—unless they confront these discursive shifts.’, in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique’ (2013) 38(4) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 967, 971. Davies and Bansel similarly observe, ‘[t]he single most important feature of neoliberal is that it systematically dismantles the will to critique, this potentially shifting the very nature of what a university is and the ways in which academics understand their work.’ See Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel, ‘Governmentality and Academic Work’ (2010) 26 Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 5, 5.

15 Rosalind Gill, ‘Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of Neo-Liberal Academia’ in Róisín Flood and Rosalind Gill (eds), Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections (Routledge 2009) 243; Zeena Feldman and Marisol Sandoval, ‘Metric Power and the Academic Self: Neoliberalism, Knowledge and Resistance in the British University’ (2018) 16 tripleC 214.

16 See for example Maïa Pal, ‘Employability as Exploitability: A Marxist Critical Pedagogy’ in Harris and Acaroğlu (eds) Thinking Beyond Neoliberalism. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).

17 Sumi Madhok, On Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice (Cambridge University Press 2022); Miriam Bak McKenna, ‘Feminism in translation: Reframing human rights law through transnational Islamic feminist networks’ in Rebecca Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism (Routledge 2020) 317-332. Dianne Otto (ed), Gender Issues and Human Rights (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013).

18 Dianne Otto, ‘Rethinking ‘peace’ in international law and politics from a queer feminist perspective’ (2020) Feminist Review 19; Jessica Fields, ‘The Racialized Erotics of Participatory Research: A Queer Feminist Understanding’ (2016) 44 Women’s Studies Quarterly 31.

19 Fields (n 18).

20 ibid 32.

21 Costas Douzinas, The Radical Philosophy of Rights (Routledge 2016); Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (House of Anansi Press 2009); Kathryn McNeilly, Human Rights and Radical Social Transformation: Futurity, Alterity, Power (Routledge 2018); Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge University Press 2003).

22 Shaimaa Abdelkarim, ‘Subaltern subjectivity and embodiment in human rights practices’ (2022) 10(2) London Review of International Law 243.

23 Howard Caygill, On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance (Bloomsbury 2013).

24 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask (first published 1952, Pluto Press, 2008).

25 See the case of Mayotte Capécia in Fanon, Ibid. Michelle V. Rowley, ‘Whose Time Is It? Gender and Humanism in Contemporary Caribbean Feminist Advocacy’ (2010) 14(1) Small Axe 1.

26 Course Manual available on request.

27 I use the term strategies here as was used by Oishik Sircar at the ‘Virtual Queer Workshop: International Law Dis/Oriented: Queer Legacies, and Queer Futures’, Graduate Institute Geneva (September 2021).

28 Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton University Press 2006).

29 Raewyn Connell, Teachers Work, (Routledge 1985); Sharmila Rege, ‘Education as ‘Trutiya Ratna’: Towards Phule-Ambedkarite Feminist Pedagogical Practice’ (2010) 44/45 Economic and Political Weekly 88; Amia Srinivasan, ‘Talking to my Students About Porn’ in The Right to Sex (Bloomsbury 2021).

30 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading Or, You Are So Paranoid You Think This Essay Is About You’ in Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg and Michael Moon (eds), Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press 2003) 123-152; Maria do Mar Pereira, ‘Uncomfortable Classrooms: Rethinking the Role of Student Discomfort in Feminist Teaching’ (2012) 19(1) European Journal of Women’s Studies 128.

31 C. Rigg, 'Somatic learning: Bringing the body into critical reflection’ (2018) 49(2) Management Learning 150; Kamil Zeidler, Aesthetics of Law (Gdańsk University Press 2020).

32 Rohini Sen, ‘A queer reading of international law and its anxieties’ (2021) 3 GNLU Law and Society Review 33.

33 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (Straus & Giroux 1966).

34 Saba Mahmood makes a similar narrative-interpretative demand of her readers in her staggeringly profound book: Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press 2011).

35 This is a term Maria do Mar Pereira uses as part of her course - Producing Feminist Research - to indicate how we can apply different theoretical frameworks rather than parking our project in a singular notion of theory.

36 Asser Institute, Lecture and Workshop series: Method, methodology and critique in international law, https://www.asser.nl/education-events/lecture-series/lecture-and-workshop-series-method-methodology-and-critique-in-international-law/> accessed 1 March 2023.

37 Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, ‘Sultana's Dream’ (1905) The Indian Ladies' Magazine.

38 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘"Draupadi" by Mahasveta Devi’ (1981) 8(2) Critical Inquiry 381.

39 See for example Anghie (n 5); Ratna Kapur, Gender, Alterity and Human Rights - Freedom in a Fishbowl (Elgar Publishing 2018); Makau Mutua, ‘The Ideology of Human Rights’ (1996) 36 Virginia Journal of International Law 589.

40 See for example Cyra Akila Choudhury, ‘Governance Feminism’s Imperial Misadventure: Progress, International Law, and the Security of Afghan Women’ in Huma Ahmed-Ghosh (ed), Contesting Feminisms - Gender and Islam in Asia (SUNY Press 2015); Inderpal Grewal, ‘“Women’s Rights as Human Rights”: Feminist Practices, Global Feminism, and Human Rights Regimes in Transnationality’ (1999) 3 Citizenship Studies 337; Kapur (n 39); Vasuki Nesiah, ‘Toward a Feminist Internationality: A Critique of U.S. Feminist Legal Scholarship’ (1993) 16 Harvard Women’s Law Journal 189.

41 See for example Ziba Mir-Hosseini, ‘Muslim Women’s Quest for Equality: Between Islamic Law and Feminism’ (2006) 32 Critical Inquiry 629; Margot Badran, ‘Islamic Feminism: What’s in a Name?’ (2002) 569 Al-Ahram Weekly Online <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2002/569/cu1.htm> accessed 9 January 2018.

42 For an overview of this see: Farnush Ghadery, ‘Contextualization as a (Feminist) Method for Transnational Legal Practice’ in Peer Zumbansen (ed), Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (Oxford University Press 2021).

43 See for example Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’ (1984) 12(3)-13(1) boundary 2 333; Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Contextualizing Feminism: Gender, Ethnic and Class Divisions’ (1983) 15 Feminist Review 62.

44 Sumi Madhok, ‘A Critical Reflexive Politics of Location, “Feminist Debt” and Thinking from the Global South’ (2020) 27 European Journal of Women’s Studies 394.

45 ibid 396.

46 ibid.

47 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Duke University Press 2006) 563.

48 Mahmood (n 34); Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press 2013).

49 For an example of how Ghadery connects these different forms of discourses and practices in their work, see Farnush Ghadery, ‘Beyond International Human Rights Discourse – Music and Song in Contextualised Struggles for Gender Equality’ (2022) 13(1) Transnational Legal Theory Journal 31.

50 Joseli Maria Silva, Marcio Jose Ornat and Liz Mason-Deese, ‘Feminist Geographies in Latin America: Epistemological Challenges and the Decoloniality of Knowledge’ (2020) 19 Journal of Latin American Geography 269, 273–274. On coloniality in knowledge production, see further Shaimaa Abdelkarim, Kanad Baghchi, Farnush Ghadery, Jay Ramasubramanyam, and Rohini Sen, ‘A Self-Reflexive Rebellion: Of Universality and False Empowerment of the Global South’ (Opinio juris, 1 March 2022) <http://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/17/a-self-reflexive-rebellion-of-universality-and-false-empowerment-of-the-global-south/> accessed 1 March 2023.

51 Rohini has studied, worked and continues to study/work across the UK and India.

52 Hannah Arendt, ‘The Crisis in Education’ (first published in 1954), in Between Past and Future (Penguin 2006); Gayatri Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (Routledge 1993)

53 Dianne Otto, ‘Queering Gender [Identity] in International Law’ (2015) 33 Nordic Journal of Human Rights 299, 318.

54 Ghadery et all (n 2).