TY - JOUR
T1 - Storytelling and co-authorship in feminist alliance work
T2 - Reflections from a journey
AU - Nagar, Richa
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - If all writing is fundamentally tied to the production of meanings and texts, then feminist research that blurs the borders of academia and activism is necessarily about the labor and politics of mobilizing experience for particular ends. Co-authoring stories is a chief tool by which feminists working in alliances across borders mobilize experience to write against relations of power that produce social violence, and to imagine and enact their own visions and ethics of social change. Such work demands a serious engagement with the complexities of identity, representation, and political imagination as well as a rethinking of the assumptions and possibilities associated with engagement and expertise. This article draws upon 16 years of partnership with activists in India and with academic co-authors in the USA to reflect on how storytelling across social, geographical, and institutional borders can enhance critical engagement with questions of violence and struggles for social change, while also troubling dominant discourses and methodologies inside and outside of the academy. In offering five 'truths' about co-authoring stories through alliance work, it reflects on the labor process, assumptions, possibilities, and risks associated with co-authorship as a tool for mobilizing intellectual spaces in which stories from multiple locations in an alliance can speak with one another and evolve into more nuanced critical interventions.
AB - If all writing is fundamentally tied to the production of meanings and texts, then feminist research that blurs the borders of academia and activism is necessarily about the labor and politics of mobilizing experience for particular ends. Co-authoring stories is a chief tool by which feminists working in alliances across borders mobilize experience to write against relations of power that produce social violence, and to imagine and enact their own visions and ethics of social change. Such work demands a serious engagement with the complexities of identity, representation, and political imagination as well as a rethinking of the assumptions and possibilities associated with engagement and expertise. This article draws upon 16 years of partnership with activists in India and with academic co-authors in the USA to reflect on how storytelling across social, geographical, and institutional borders can enhance critical engagement with questions of violence and struggles for social change, while also troubling dominant discourses and methodologies inside and outside of the academy. In offering five 'truths' about co-authoring stories through alliance work, it reflects on the labor process, assumptions, possibilities, and risks associated with co-authorship as a tool for mobilizing intellectual spaces in which stories from multiple locations in an alliance can speak with one another and evolve into more nuanced critical interventions.
KW - accountability
KW - alliance work
KW - co-authorship
KW - storytelling
KW - trust
KW - truth
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84874322889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84874322889&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0966369X.2012.731383
DO - 10.1080/0966369X.2012.731383
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84874322889
SN - 0966-369X
VL - 20
SP - 1
EP - 18
JO - Gender, Place and Culture
JF - Gender, Place and Culture
IS - 1
ER -