Internationalism and Commitment at the Kitchen Table

Abstract

The contributors to this issue focus on legal internationalism (Peroni 2016;Turan 2016), including hybrid mixes with nationalist forms (Sankey 2016). They have provoked us as editors to think more about these sites and forms of engagement. Sankey shows how civic participation in the ECCC has played a key role in surfacing the gendered harms of separation and starvation. Turan highlights the problems with ICC exclusion of the experience of men and boys from sexual violence. Peroni expresses her hesitations over the Istanbul Convention given an association between assumed vulnerability and migrant women, while admiring its uncoupling of violence and culture. Cruz's interview with Wendy Brown (2016) contextualizes and expands on these themes as they consider, with other participants, the future of feminist theory in the context of neo-liberal capturing of rights and legal space. Thinking more about internationalism and commitment in this context also helps us hold a mirror up to ourselves as we reflect more critically on our own naming of FLS as an 'international' journal. Together these contributions, and the reviews of new work, play a role in fleshing out an editorial commitment to enacting the journal as a living thing that 'hangs together somehow' (Mol 2002) even as it is known differently in different places.You just have to write and put your effort into building the movement and the alliances that you want, rather than trying to imagine that somehow a theoretical precept will have political purity (Brown in Cruz and Brown 2016).

On Being Uncomfortable

“…1 As we developed the programme for FLaK we thought about it as a kind of pulling ourselves out of our comfort zone (Fletcher et al 2016), if academic events and journals ever have a comfort zone. Drawing on a mix of feminist live performance methods and a science and technology studies (STS)-type curiosity for objects of experimentation, we tried out a kitchen table method of hosting a live research conversation with activists, artists and academics over two days (Fletcher 2015).…”

Back at the kitchen table: Reflections on decolonising and internationalising with the Global South socio-legal writing workshops

“…Part of our job is to make more space at the table and even get up from it if the occasion calls to stop ourselves from taking seats that belong to colleagues in the Global South. It is through this that we become more international (Fletcher et al 2016).…”

Editorial: With thanks to Ruth Fletcher

“…In 2016, and coinciding with its 25th anniversary, FLS hosted the inaugural Feminism, Legality and Knowledge conference (FLaK) at Queen Mary, University of London (Fletcher 2015b;Fletcher et al 2016aFletcher et al , 2017. This event was very much developed and led by Ruth, who saw the need for a collaborative discussion between feminist activists and scholars around how to manage the paradoxes of the academy in which many of us exist and the role of the journal, if any, in resolving these.…”

“…Another key concern of Ruth's during her tenure as Academic Editor was to think about how the journal might be more effectively 'internationalised' (Fletcher et al 2016a), or how it can better encourage and foreground the work of Global South feminist scholars. She initiated the current collaboration the journal enjoys with the Socio-Legal Journals Global South Writing Workshops led by Ambreena Manji at Cardiff University and funded by the British Academy.…”