Feminism, Antifeminism, and the Mobilization of Regret

deadline for submissions: 
May 1, 2025
full name / name of organization: 
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
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Feminism, Antifeminism, and the Mobilization of Regret

 

Feminism, Antifeminism, and the Mobilization of Regret
Feminism is forward-looking and world-building. Feminists everywhere can call to mind the manifestos, mobilizations, solidarities, creative inspirations, legal propositions, and revolutionary paradigms that inspire us to action and move us toward more just futures. At the same time, we may also be haunted by obstacles encountered, losses experienced, and regrets felt along the way. With over fifty years of feminist history behind the journal—and, we hope, another fifty years of feminist troublemaking ahead—Signs seeks essays that delineate both how feminists may experience, theorize, and productively apply the concept of regret and how it may, alternatively,  thwart the development of feminist futures. As Andrea Long Chu asserts, “Where there is freedom, there will always be regret. . . . Regret is freedom projected into the past.” Janet Landman, similarly, has conceptualized regret as signifying the “persistence of the possible.” On the one hand, how can feminists engage these generative qualities of regret—freedom and possibility—in our thinking and action? If there are choices that we, individually or collectively, regret, how might our regrets motivate political or personal choices? On the other, how do false narratives deployed by the Right, such as threats of regret over abortion or gender transition, act to undermine individual transformation and broader social change? We seek essays that make theoretical, analytical, and/or activist interventions. We welcome papers that engage the complex dynamics and larger contexts of regret, from the personal, emotional, and creative realms to the social, political, and empirical; or that consider how regret converges with or departs from related affective terrains of shame, guilt, grief, or nostalgia. As always, Signs encourages transdisciplinary and transnational essays that address substantive feminist questions, debates, and forms of literary, artistic, and cultural representation and that minimize disciplinary or academic jargon. [...] The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2025. Laura Green (Northeastern University) and Chris Bobel (University of Massachusetts Boston) will serve as guest editors. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically through Signs’ Editorial Manager system at http://signs.edmgr.com and must conform to the guidelines for submission available at http://signsjournal.org/for-authors/author-guidelines/. Read the full call for papers at https://signsjournal.org/for-authors/calls-for-papers/#regret