Call for chapter proposals
Advocating Democratization, Authenticating Identities:
Activisms of Resistance to Rising Religio-Ethnonationalisms
Proposal Deadline: March 1, 2023
Editors:
Lara Martin Lengel, Ph.D. & Victoria A. Newsom, Ph.D.
Background:
Rising forms of religio-ethnonationalist populism pose a literal threat by legitimizing violence as a means of reinforcing narrow, systemic, hegemonic nostalgias. This process is driven by an intentional use of dis- and misinformation to reframe historical and ethical authenticities within populist ideals. In this collection, we incorporate critical-cultural analyses of the patterns of religio-ethnonationalism that serve as connecting threads between extreme acts of violence, and the means and mechanisms by which activisms and resistance to these oppressive ideological regimes function. Our collection investigates how religio-ethnonationalisms require the use of discursive amnesia, collective forgetting, and collective memory to construct strategic narratives as tools for the destruction of authenticity, history, and identity. It highlights modes of resistance to such collective amnesia, including advocacy strategies to reinforce the historical and identity realities impacting marginalized, non-hegemonic communities. And it illustrates how simultaneous mechanisms of discursive and militaristic violence must be countered with active, inclusive, participatory forms of resistance.
Book Description:
Advocating Democratization, Authenticating Identities: Activism's of Resistance to Rising Religio-Ethnonationalisms is a collection of current, interdisciplinary scholarship that examines activisms and advocacies designed to resist rising forms of religious-ethnonationalisms. The volume presents a variety of transnational studies that highlight activisms framed to resist efforts of identity and cultural erasure utilized by religious-ethninationalists and supremacists in order to justify their violent activity and oppressive ideals. In particular, we investigate how modes of resistance to such oppression require embodied, identity-based activisms in order to destabilize patriarchal and hegemonic drivers of narrative construction.
We seek contributions that will investigate the role of activism as a means of resistance to and critique of religion-ethnonationalist regimes, efforts, and messaging. Given the urgency of the rise of the religio-ethnonationalisms and global fascisms, growing efforts to limit sexuality and gender rights, voting rights, and human rights, and environmental rights, this scholarly collection is, without doubt, timely. We encourage interdisciplinary scholarship that engages theories of systemic oppressions, abolition, embodiment, cultural memory and maintenance, survivance, and activism. We welcome multiple and mixed methodologies including political analysis, cultural criticism, rhetorical criticism, performance ethnography, performative pedagogies, performative writing, autoethnography, critical race theory, feminisms, visual rhetoric, queer theory or other methods and theories.
Some key questions to be explored include:
- What are some of the conflict-laden histories and narratives which highlight how religio-ethnonationalisms seek to erase or dehumanize the Other (e.g. pro-Russian arguments that Ukraine is not a “true” culture or nation)?
- How are embodied activisms used to undermine and resist authoritarian and autocratic efforts?
- What is the relationship between extremist activists and discursive amnesia?
- What types of artistic and narrative elements are emerging in contemporary movements as a means of countering religious-ethnonationalist strategies?
Proposal Submission Process:
Please send a 250-word abstract describing the focus and content of the proposed contribution, with “Embodied Activisms submission” in the subject header, to Dr. Lara Lengel at series.editors.newsom.lengel@gmail.com by March 1, 2023.
Proposals will undergo a review process, and a selection will be shortlisted for development into full-length manuscripts. Shortlisted authors must commit to a timeline for revision, resubmission, and publication, with full manuscripts to be submitted by September 10, 2023.
Prospective authors are encouraged to contact Dr. Lengel, with “Advocating Democratization” in the subject header, with any enquiries.