Towards a Politics of Accountability: Caribbean Feminism, Indigenous Geographies, Common Struggles
Call for participants for a workshop, and chapters for a book – “Indigenous Geographies and Caribbean Feminisms: Common Struggles Against Global Capitalism”

Workshop Date: 30 March – 1 April 2017
CFP Deadline: 1 January 2017

In shedding light upon the convergence of global capitalism, ongoing colonialisms, and hetero-patriarchal social relations in the Caribbean, feminist analyses have been at the forefront of conceptualizing both the region’s politics of identity and alterity. Caribbean feminists, in particular, have also been on the leading edge of historicizing and enunciating the complex cultural dynamics and societal reverberations that continue to resonate due to the region’s historical trajectories of slavery, indentureship, plantation extractivism, and hetero-masculinist governance. Feminist scholarship in the Anglophone Caribbean, however, has been less attentive to Indigenous communities regarding land repatriation, economic inequality, social exclusion, gender oppression, heteronormativity, structural violence, and political (non)representation. Given these dynamics, two exigent questions emerge:

• How can Caribbean feminist social movements advance Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and autonomy?
• What critiques of, and collective challenges to, the neoliberalizing postcolonial Caribbean nation-state are necessary to contest, disrupt, and dismantle global capitalism?

Accordingly, the goal of this workshop is to foster feminist-informed, praxis-oriented forms of solidarity and (non-metaphorized) decolonization with Indigenous people. It will also seek to further provoke mobilizations aimed at halting and abolishing the repressive products and ontological erasures being perpetuated across the region by imperialist-laid contemporary apparatuses of hierarchy and domination.

We are therefore warmly inviting sympathizers, dissidents, and compañer@s to the Caribbean to participate in these efforts. Submissions for the workshop/edited collection should thus seek to grapple with the dynamics of how Indigenous geographies, worldviews, and communities in the Caribbean are situated within ever-neoliberalizing postcolonial nation-states, as well as how they are positioned amidst settler-Creole practices of belonging, processes of deterritorialization, and (false) assertions of Indigenous extinction – without adopting a politics of blame. More explicitly, in addition to the queries posited above, we are requesting that authors specifically address (one or more) the following questions in their chapter proposals:

• What feminist-informed work by/with Indigenous communities is currently happening the Caribbean?
• How have Indigenous communities in the Caribbean been challenging capitalist exploitation, extractivism, and ecological destruction while also promoting social justice with respect to gender and sexuality?
• What forms of both domination and/or solidarity are produced by (gendered) settler Creole practices of belonging, and what possibilities and opportunities do these provide for decolonizing the region?
• How have Caribbean feminists been challenging neoliberal logic and policies, as well as environmental devastation, while promoting inclusion surrounding gender and sexuality with/in Indigenous communities?
• What do Indigenous movements across the world offer in terms of advancing Caribbean feminisms’ inclusion of Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and autonomy?

We reiterate here that the thrust of this project is to further advance a recognition of – as well as an accountability to – Indigenous people and geographies in the Anglophone Caribbean. In doing so, we will create a discursive and material place where Indigenous worldviews can be shared, respectfully listened to, and amplified in culturally safe manners. Moreover, the edited collection will underscore how university workers, community organizers, and grassroots activists from/in/of the Global South can continue to produce novel and cutting-edge scholarship on the topics of transnational feminist praxis, decolonization, Indigenous Studies, anti-neoliberalism, political ecology/economy, Caribbean Studies, critical race theories, and radical geographies.

Anyone interested should feel free to submit a proposal (as a single word document file) by January 1, 2017 to the editors Gabrielle Hosein and Levi Gahman at igcfworkshop@gmail.com.

The chapter proposal should include:

• 250-word abstract (Final chapters should be 5000-6000 words, inclusive of references)
• List of 4-6 keywords
• 100 word bio (Please include affiliation, it need neither be professional, nor academic)

Those authors whose chapters are selected will be informed by January 15, 2017 and subsequently invited to the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago) for the workshop (March 30-April 1). At the workshop, participants will collectively, constructively, and convivially peer review each other’s submissions and attend public fora featuring speakers addressing the questions outlined above. Accepted chapters will be included in the publication of the peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, co-edited scholarly book.

Above adapted from AntipodeFoundation.
Image adapted from Wikipedia.