Black bodies at risk: Exploring the corporeal iconography of the anti-police brutality movement

Black bodies at risk are in constant conversation with each other. The Black witness who films a fatal police encounter on her phone is talking to the Black victim, promising not to leave him in his final moments. The distant Black witness who sees that video then talks back to the witness and the victim, creating powerful imagery that amplifies the tragic footage. In this manner, those working under the broad banner of the Black Lives Matter movement have reimagined a dynamic Black visual public sphere, where moral arguments about police brutality are sustained through an assemblage of strategic visual appeals. In this essay, I argue that this call-and-response of Black corporeal iconography forms the vanguard of embodied protest journalism in the 21st century. I explain how the concepts of “strong objectivity,” which is rooted in feminist standpoint theory, help validate and liberate the flesh witnessing of the marginalized. Moreover, I offer two broad categories of imagery that Black activists create most often in response to fatal police shootings: historic juxtapositions and symbolic deaths.

Subordinasi dan Sudut Pandang Perempuan Suku Malind Marga Mahuze dalam Film the Mahuzes (2015): a Feminist Standpoint Theory

Documentary films are one of the most suitable media to be used as a reference in seeing reality. Like the reality of subordination and women's point of view in The Mahuzes. In general, this film tells the story of the conflict that occurred between the Malind clan Mahuze in Merauke and corporations that entered their territory through the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) program, besides that there were horizontal conflicts between tribal members. This study aims to analyze the form of subordination and women's point of view seeing the problems of indigenous peoples dealing with corporations which are shown by the documentary film The Mahuzes in the perspective of Feminist Standpoint Theory. This study uses a qualitative approach and a critical paradigm by collecting data from various relevant sources. Events involving or relating to women were analyzed using three basic concepts of Feminist Standpoint Theory, namely standpoint, situated knowledge, and sexual division of labour. The results of the study indicate that women in The Mahuzes are a marginalized group, forced to take responsibility for the domestic space, and are limited to take part in the public sphere. Even so, they have a broad and comprehensive perspective in viewing horizontal conflicts between clan members and vertically between clans and corporations. Keywords: Subordinate; Feminist Standpoint; MIFEE; The Mahuze Abstrak: Film dokumenter menjadi salah satu media yang paling sesuai untuk dijadikan sebagai rujukan dalam melihat realitas. Seperti realitas subordinasi dan sudut pandang perempuan dalam The Mahuzes. Film ini, secara garis besar berkisah tentang konflik yang terjadi antara suku Malind marga Mahuze di Merauke dengan korporasi yang masuk ke wilayah mereka melalui program Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), selain itu terdapat konflik horizontal antar anggota suku. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis bentuk subordinasi dan sudut pandang perempuan melihat permasalahan masyarakat adat berhadapan dengan korporasi yang ditampilkan oleh film dokumenter The Mahuzes dalam perspektif Feminist Standpoint Theory. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dan paradigma kritis dengan mengumpulkan data dari berbagai sumber yang relevan. Agedan-agedan yang melibatkan atau berkaitan dengan perempuan dianalisis dengan menggunakan tiga konsep dasar Feminist Standpoint Theory, yaitu standpoint, situated knowledge, dan sexual division of labour. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa, perempuan dalam The Mahuzes merupakan kelompok yang terpinggirkan, dipaksa untuk bertanggung jawab pada ruang domestik, dan terbatas untuk berkiprah di ruang publik. Meskipun begitu, mereka memiliki sudut pandang yang luas dan menyeluruh dalam melihat konflik horizontal antar anggota marga maupun vertikal antara marga dan korporasi. Kata kunci: Subordinasi; Feminist Standpoint; MIFEE; The Mahuze

Caught In-Between: Diversifying Tamil Women’s Voices From the Sri Lankan Civil War

This is an autoethnographic invitation to make space for different standpoints of women caught in war. This multi-genre project reflects on the standpoint of the author’s family as a female-led, female-only household in the capital of Sri Lanka amid the civil war. Grounded on the concept of ethnicity without groups and feminist standpoint theory, this piece adds to the often-homogenized voices of Tamil women. Using integrated crystallization to challenge the dichotomy of art and science, this layered piece weaves together storytelling and theory-based critique to open conversations about wholesome representation. The stories reveal the multichrome nature of ethnicities that often get painted as monochromes. The analyses highlight the intersectionality of women’s position and sound the alarm for possible marginalization within the marginalized through a unidimensional expression. The author invites more voices to diversify the standpoints of women caught in the Sri Lankan civil war and contribute to a more comprehensive reality of their experiences.

Researching violent contexts: A call for political reflexivity

Violent contexts are not “normal” research settings; they involve abuses, power disparities, and collective histories of violence that researchers should be alert to. Being unreflexive to these risks can cause harm in the form of objectifying people and context, normalizing violence, or silencing voices. Political reflexivity can equip researchers to better identify, understand and mitigate these harms, and where possible, challenge structures that do the marginalizing. We articulate political reflexivity through feminist standpoint theory, which asks researchers to critically examine their positionality and privilege in relation to the geopolitics of the research setting, epistemic privilege of marginalized participants, and political implications of their work. Practicing political reflexivity can help researchers situate their work along a “decoloniality continuum,” which includes research complicit with the maintenance of violence, a hybridity approach that aims to understand and challenge the (colonial) underpinnings of violence by centering marginalized knowledge, and research that seeks reparation or liberation, meaning redress and radical equality for marginalized peoples, ideas and histories. We conclude with a call for researchers to identify methods and paths to strengthen our understanding of political reflexivity, and to support efforts to decolonize knowledge.

La localización contextualizada del conocimiento en los relatos sexográficos feministas

Introducción. Este artículo presenta los relatos sexográficos feministas, unidades analíticas generadas en mi tesis doctoral y que se refieren a narrativas que tienen la especificidad de pertenecer al discurso de militantes y activistas feministas, LGTB y de hombres profeministas que trabajan las nuevas masculinidades y que versan sobre la sexualidad. Metodología. Se ha empleado una metodología cualitativa basada en entrevistas en profundidad y en el análisis sistematizado de las mismas. Resultados. Los mencionados relatos surgen de la convergencia de las narrativas feministas de Hemmings, de los relatos sexuales de Plummer, y de paradigmas más amplios como la modernidad, la postmodernidad y el neomaterialismo. Estas uniones proporcionan un corpus coherente para, de acuerdo con las nociones de la feminist standpoint theory, analizar y situar social, política e históricamente el conocimiento generado a través de narrativas personales. Conclusiones y discusión. Hemos distinguido tres relatos de pérdida modernistas, de progreso postmodernistas y de retorno neomaterialistas, que sirven para contextualizar los discursos de las participantes dentro de la historiografía del feminismo occidental, mostrando las tensiones éticas y políticas, y la inmensa riqueza que reviste la teoría crítica feminista. Sin embargo, una cuestión que no ha sido atajada correctamente es la propia parcialidad de la persona que investiga, lo cual se presenta como un reto de futuro que podría ser abordado desde la fenomenología feminista, así como desde la narrativa autobiográfica.

Professionalism from the standpoint of early childhood educators

In this research project, findings from qualitative interviews with four early childhood educators (ECEs) in Toronto, Ontario are presented. Using Feminist standpoint theory and methodology as a guiding theoretical framework and research paradigm, the purpose of this research was to examine professionalism from the particular standpoint of ECEs. The findings presented in this paper indicate that feminist standpoint theory and methodology offer the means for revealing what ECEs think and want as professionals, and can be used as a theoretical tool to analyze the relationship between the experienced, material realm and the conceptual, discursive realm of ECE professionalism. A thematic analysis of the collected data identified two themes. The first theme illuminates the lived realities of ECE work, and highlights how ECEs' experiences of professionalism are shaped by their material conditions. These lived realities however, are to a certain extent at odds with the meanings that the ECEs in this project ascribe to professionalism in the second theme, which appear to be shaped by dominant discourses about professionalism. The discussion of the findings focuses on the process of building new knowledge that accounts for these contradictions and aims to address the divide between the conceptual realm of professionalism with the material, experienced realm of ECEs' everyday work.

Professionalism from the standpoint of early childhood educators

In this research project, findings from qualitative interviews with four early childhood educators (ECEs) in Toronto, Ontario are presented. Using Feminist standpoint theory and methodology as a guiding theoretical framework and research paradigm, the purpose of this research was to examine professionalism from the particular standpoint of ECEs. The findings presented in this paper indicate that feminist standpoint theory and methodology offer the means for revealing what ECEs think and want as professionals, and can be used as a theoretical tool to analyze the relationship between the experienced, material realm and the conceptual, discursive realm of ECE professionalism. A thematic analysis of the collected data identified two themes. The first theme illuminates the lived realities of ECE work, and highlights how ECEs' experiences of professionalism are shaped by their material conditions. These lived realities however, are to a certain extent at odds with the meanings that the ECEs in this project ascribe to professionalism in the second theme, which appear to be shaped by dominant discourses about professionalism. The discussion of the findings focuses on the process of building new knowledge that accounts for these contradictions and aims to address the divide between the conceptual realm of professionalism with the material, experienced realm of ECEs' everyday work.

Materiality and Discursivity of Cyber Violence Against Women in India

With the advent of the digital age and online networks, a new facet of human experience materialised called the cyberspace. In other words, it is an addition to an individual’s intrapsychic world. Millions of people are using the Internet as a day-to-day activity to enhance their lives while at the same time there are people who are using it for anti-social purposes such as stalking, harassing, bullying and so on. This, with the advent of the Internet, has become a new weapon of abuse. This research intends to bring the two realms of virtual and physical, which are considered as binaries into a productive dialogue on violence against women. In doing so, it takes forward the narratives of cyber violence survivors into rethinking the construction of disembodied and embodied violence. I pursue this aim by exploring how women survivors of India conceptualise and respond to cyber violence. This is a qualitative exploratory study located within the theoretical framework of feminist standpoint theory in order to engage each survivor’s story from their individual standpoint. An in-depth interview was conducted for 30 women survivors in India. This study will help to critically understand cyber violence as an embodied experience.