Highlighted Session: Examining the power of protest against sexual, racial and political violence

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Globally, university campuses and educational institutions have been a site for protest and resistance for equality and social justice. Ranging from localized formation of student’s unions to the participation in the larger social movements such as the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, educational spaces have engaged with mass movements within and outside the classroom. For example, the #MeToo movement captured global attention, changing how we teach about, research, and address sexual harassment in education institutions. Similarly, the Black Lives and Indigenous movements have mobilized to address persistent racism in educational institutions (Strong et al., 2022). One of the reasons for social activism in educational institutions is that social inequalities are a product of inter-related power relations and resource distribution within educational institutions. In addition, there are clear affinities and collaborations among these movements/protest/resistance in different societies. It is important to consider, therefore, what different movements/activism look like and mean in different contexts, and particularly in regions of political oppression and harassment, to advance how we can learn from them. The papers in this panel examine sexual and racial harassment and political violence through intersectional and transnational perspectives. The papers in this panel aim to offer insight into the question in the CIES call for proposals: How can we understand contestation, resistance, struggle, defiance, and compliance in education work in different social and political contexts?

We use intersectionality as an analytical tool to situate protest/resistance as a response to the institutionally generated power relations and “multi-layered and routinized forms of discrimination”, organized, operationalized, and sustained on multiple axes, and diffused through categorization as well as in the process of creating subjectivities (Cho et al., 2013; Collins & Bilge, 2020; Crenshaw, 1994, p. 1245). Examining activism, protests and resistance helps us examine the interlocking power relations in multiple discourses, power domains, and spaces that reject social inequalities as a natural part of our social reality and highlights the mechanics of power relations that perpetuate violence and create inequalities for privilege and dominance (Collins, 2019).

The papers in this panel consider not only the individual relations of discrimination and harassment, but the institutionalized nature of violence that is perpetuated by the state in oppressing minoritized ‘others’, thereby connecting it to the larger demand of social justice (Crenshaw, 1994). By using this analytical tool, we highlight the forms of violence embedded and maintained by the power structures. Our analysis is informed by the Galtung’s conceptualization of violence such as : 1) Direct violence- physical or psychological acts that destabilizes the physical or mental capabilities of a person such as killings, 2) Structural violence- are forms of social injustices/ exploitations that are embedded in the structures, often latent but works systematically, and 3) Cultural violence-use of symbols and ideologies such as religion, art, and media to perpetuate direct or structural violence (Galtung, 1969; 1971; 1990). From this perspective, we use an intersectional analysis to examine gendered/racial and political violence as intertwined oppressions that undermines the capabilities of an individual. In each context, we consider the historical (including colonial) entanglements that elucidate these oppressions and that continue to be used today to perpetuate different, though entangled, forms of violence.
We also aim to unpack protests/resistance as a transnational and transformative space of learning for individuals and communities that engage with it. More specifically, our transnational perspective is informed by critical transnational feminist praxis. In line with Swarr and Nagar (2010), we perceive transnational feminism as a commitment to confronting the socio-political inequalities that have been amplified in the process of globalization and the Western dominance in knowledge production and its exercise of power. In this way, protest/resistance is an active and conscious choice that highlights the agencies of the people/group that contribute to such movements.

By examining these entanglements in different contexts, we ask: 1) What can we learn from these different social movements, and how they form and have effects in different contexts? 2) How do these movements use transnational and intersectional perspectives that can disrupt state violence and power? 3) What are the implications from these cases for resisting and disrupting sexual, racial and political violence?

Each of these papers will address these questions and draw on the theoretical frameworks in the following ways:

Paper: Queer youth futures now! Education as a transformative praxis for queer youth globally.

This expansive literature review foregrounds the lens of Queer Futurity-a space for agency and imagination of queer youths. This paper is an opportunity to understand Queer Futurity as a space of activism against the state-sponsored intersectional forms of violence on the lives of queer youths, yet a space that nurtures the aspirations, wellbeing, and joy.

Paper: Cruising higher educational spaces in India: Northeastern students' stories of racialization, sexualization, and resistance
An ethnographically informed narrative inquiry, this paper highlights the intersectional forms of violence experienced by LGBTQIA students in the higher educational institutions of India. Additionally, this paper extends the idea that acknowledging the intersectionality of violence and its relationship with the power structure is a form of resistance embodied by students in their everyday life to disrupt the power and violence.

Paper: Internalized Misogyny in Protest: How I Talk to My Misogynist Self and Find Transnational Solidarities

This auto-ethnographic account engages with the intertwined complexities of internalized misogyny, reflection on self as a Chinese feminist, and navigating transnational contexts of protest and solidarity. Additionally, this presentation is an invitation to explore the pedagogical potential of social movements in fostering transnational solidarities and challenging the global power dynamics related to gender, class, and race.
Paper: I speak Kurdish, therefore I am:The Power of Teaching Mother Tongue as Resistance in Kurdistan

An ethnographic account of Kurdish women activist, this paper presents the ethno-national resistance movement of Kurds against the state-imposed assimilation by the Iranian regime. Through the experiences of Kurdish women, this ethnography also delves into the patriarchal structures within the social movements and how it shapes the resistance of Kurdish women to the external forces of state and the internal patriarchal force of the movement.

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Chair

• Joan Dejaeghere, University of Minnesota

Individual Presentations

• Queer youth futures now! Education as a transformative praxis for queer youth globally - Cody Freeman, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Cruising higher educational spaces in India: Northeastern students' stories of racialization, sexualization, and resistance - Sheetal Digari, University of Minnesota

• Internalized Misogyny in Protest: How I Talk to My Misogynist Self and Find Transnational Solidarities - Xun Yu, Univ. of Minnesota

Discussant

• Supriya Baily, George Mason University