Decolonizing feminist theories and mapping surging feminist knowledges

In this chapter I draw on a Leverhulme funded research project of listening to migrant and refugee women’s narratives of displacement and travelling, by looking back at the ways I have experimented with epistemologies, methodologies and theories that could advance a decolonizing feminist approach. In charting analytical lines that have emerged from my immersion in the soundscapes of uprooted women’s stories I discuss the following themes: a) decolonizing ways of knowing and understanding; b) decolonizing relations within heteropatriarchy; c) decolonizing freedom and d) decolonizing human rights discourses and practices. What I argue is that uprooted women’s narratives have created an archive of existential experiences that act as counter memories, of who they are, how they act and what they can become. I have also seen these stories as affirmative and generative of new knowledges to come— a field that I configure as feminist surging knowledges.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Research and Methodological Praxis on 14 March 2024, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781032301297