Feminist Theory: Between Hope and Disappointment

In the current conjuncture, feminist resistance is both desperately needed and increasingly difficult to sustain. Across much of the world, feminist activists and movements confront escalating forms of gendered violence—ranging from femicide and sexual assault to attacks on LGBTQ+ rights—alongside structural impunity and the erosion of hard-won gains such as access to abortion. These developments represent more than a political crisis; they constitute an affective impasse in which the very possibility of resistance is brought into question. How do we revive feminist struggles under these circumstances? How might we confront and work through experiences of failure, disappointment, loss, helplessness, ambivalence, and despair as constitutive—rather than exceptional—features of feminist activism? How can we relearn the practices of hope? What forms of endurance are possible when the future has so often failed to fulfill its emancipatory promises? What mechanisms of (self-)care, support and resilience can we rely on to sustain action in impossible conditions? How can we build effective transversal solidarities and international coalitions? These questions press not only upon feminist theory and practice but also upon political theory more broadly, as they speak to the conditions of democratic resilience in times of deep uncertainty and exhaustion. This section invites papers that address these questions from a variety of epistemological orientations and ideological positions—including but not limited to socialist, radical, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, black, intersectional, poststructuralist, queer, and trans feminism—and with reference to a range of historical contexts and forms of feminist resistance, from prominent feminist movements of the past to recent forms of struggle, contestation and refusal. We are especially interested in papers that adopt interdisciplinary and intersectional lenses as pathways for developing new possibilities for feminist action, mobilization and solidarity. We welcome submissions from different fields, including political and social theory, political philosophy, anthropology, history, and sociology.