Abstract: This essay looks at the 2019–2020 women-led protests at Shaheen Bagh against discriminatory citizenship laws in India, the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) and National Register of Citizens (2019). I argue that the women of Shaheen Bagh recite Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984)’s Urdu poem “ Ham dekheñge” [“We Will See” 1979] as a bodily act of citizenship and thereby create a collective consciousness as agentive subjects and a political identity as secular Indians. I do not purport to “know” the protestors’ intentions, but rather, proffer a feminist reading of how the women created an idea of secular citizenship through their habitation of poetry. First, I look at a recitation of Faiz’s poem by a group of young girls and argue that in reciting the poem, the girls become its speaking subjects who overthrow the tyrants who have tried to marginalize Muslim women in the nation’s legislative history. Second, I look at a recitation of Faiz’s poem by a group of feminist activists at Shaheen Bagh, and argue that they use the poem’s Sufistic and Marxist rejection of religious and political authority figures to reject the right’s demonization of Islam, and performatively gesture to Shaheen Bagh as a space in which Islam is enacted as a religion of equality and tolerance. In conclusion, I analyze Urdu poet Hussain Haidry’s “ Tum dekhoge” [“You’ll Surely See” 2020] to show how the women have remade the “we” of the poem as a rights-demanding Muslim woman in the public imagination.
Abstract: As daughters of survivors of the US-backed civil war in El Salvador, the authors of this article use trauma-informed approaches to explore the possibilities of transcending intergenerational and historical trauma and soul loss through testimonios, daughtering, and healing-centered artistic practices. Daughtering is used as the methodology and analytical framework to describe the sacred intergenerational exchange that occurs when parents share their testimonios with their daughters about their experiences during the war, rupturing the culture of silence and isolation produced by emotional-psychological-political wounding and opening a pathway to assist their parents in collectively transmuting the sequela of the war. When parents pass down their testimonios and the emotions attached to those stories, their daughters bear witness to, hold, and carry their experiences that have otherwise been historically undermined, and at worst denied, by the state. The authors use historical-theoretical-poetic writing and provide personal reflections on their participation in the Healing Circles for Justice , a community-based project by The Mauricio Aquino Foundation/Our Parents’ Bones that they suggest was critical in supporting their collective grieving and healing, 40+ years delayed. In the context of a continued denial of justice, accountability, or repair, the authors argue that these intergenerational stories become embodied archives of justice and reconciliation through the practice of personal-collective healing.
Abstract: This paper critically explores the development of Afghanistan’s legal system, centering on the establishment of Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) units between 2008 and early 2021. It argues that these units, embedded within prosecution departments, were shaped by a saviour-victim narrative rooted in colonial legal frameworks imposed by the international community, particularly Western Europe. These efforts marginalized Afghan women and disregarded indigenous governance structures. By employing a decolonial methodology informed by Kimberly Tucker, this paper applies a decolonial feminist framework to challenge the perception of Afghan women as passive beneficiaries of legal reform. Instead, it highlights their agency in shaping legal practices that aligned with cultural norms, resisting externally dictated solutions. By foregrounding women’s everyday experiences as sites of resistance, the research calls for a fundamental rethinking of global governance and development initiatives. It proposes a decolonized framework that acknowledges the lived realities and epistemic contributions of marginalized communities, particularly Afghan women. Rather than reinforcing the saviour-victim binary, the paper advocates for plural, polycentric systems of knowledge and governance that emphasize solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual respect. In doing so, it contributes to broader discussions on decolonial feminism, global restructuring, and the politics of legal reform in postcolonial states.
Abstract: When salt and freshwater meet, they create brackish environments marked by turbulence, adaptation, and complex ecological conditions. These waters often cannot sustain species that can survive only in purely fresh or purely saltwater spaces. The term brackish traces back to the Dutch word “brac/k” (noun), meaning opening, break, defect, or worthless. Drawing on Black and Caribbean feminist geographical and ecological theorizing, I use brackish as a framework to examine how Black women’s intimacies have been cast as devalued or deviant within Western societies. These same intimacies, however, have generated crucial openings and breaches through which Black women cultivate alternative possibilities for living, belonging, and finding worth. Thinking with brackish as metaphor reveals Black women’s intimate and interior lives as sites of creativity, care, and survival that unsettle normative models of intimacy, including cis-heteronormative and even dominant queer formations. Doing so centers the generative potential of mixing difference, showing how connection and relationality emerge within and through harshness. I ask: What might brackish offer as a way of theorizing Black feminist intimacies, and envisioning the kinds of life and love made possible not despite breaks, but because of them, even in their vulnerability?
