grounding

recent conversations illustrating the gap between the notion of “living life” and the realities of our day-to-day functioning (often framed as “being in survival mode” or “the difference between surviving and thriving”) have served to underscore the importance of our rituals of pleasure and joymaking. the essentiality of these rituals, as reclamations of agency, methods of healing, and ways of maintaining community, is especially relevant for those throughout the African Diaspora and the broader Third World* global community who identify as femme-of-center. 

generations of artists, philosophers, healers, and practitioners alike have directly (and indirectly) challenged what “has grown [out of imperialism] [as the] two destructive forces which we, as third world women, must contend with - racism and male chauvinism.”1 despite both being issues requiring the attention of more than just those who identify as femme-of-center, analyses such as those by Frances Beal, Mae Jackson, Gwendolyn Patton, and other members of the Third World Women’s Alliance in the 1970s who “talked about it in terms of the struggles against racism, against sexism, and against imperialism, and the intersection of those struggles” contributed to early understandings of the need for “a lens for understanding structural oppression on a national and international scale [and] a tool to connect Black, Latina, [East] Asian, [Southwest Asian and North African], and Native American women’s domestic issues to a larger movement against colonialism and global capitalism.”2

the Third World Women’s Alliance embodied “the ongoing practice of asking big and seemingly impossible questions based in everyday struggle can animate deeper thinking, loving, and resistance,” and it is this “practice of critical inquiry in community [to] discover new possibilities for living outside of state-sanctioned violence and exploitation” that inspires this inaugural issue of visions of marronnage: journal of liberation studies.3 in considering adrienne maree brown’s “politics of feeling” and what scholar-activist Clarissa E. Francis describes as “a paradigm of transformative justice that advocates for pleasure as a healing praxis [that] aim[s] to restore conditions to a state of flourishing prior to the occurrence of harm,” what does it mean for such core pleasure practices and other forms of joymaking, practiced for millennia and by countless generations, to be considered “restorative”?4

recognizing the immense emotional, spiritual, and physical significance of these practices that the persistent march of capitalism has forced many of us to abandon, we yearn to be able to keep these practices at our centers, rather than at the margins of our lives. thus, the notion of “pleasure activism” arises as a distinct response to “entrenched systems of oppression that disproportionately impact marginalized communities” grounded in “[a] movement toward the ‘orgasmic yes’.”5

*we understand that the context of the creation of the term “Third World” is rooted in hegemonic comparisons of political alignment during the Cold War period of international geopolitics. however, we maintain use of the term here, rather than “Global South”, in solidarity with the mission of the Third World Women’s Alliance. individual submissions are free to choose their preferred terminology, as long as definitions remain consistent.

issue scope

this inaugural issue of visions of marronnage: journal of liberation studies aims to carry forth and expand upon discussions of femme-of-center oriented liberation work and other endeavors that center the “energy work, somatic practices, and Indigenous spiritual work […] [of] pleasure activists in diverse fields and industries, such as somatic bodyworkers, nonclinical practitioners, clinicians, researchers, writers, music artists, [and] community leaders.”6 this issue is fueled by Anna Julia Cooper’s passionate imploring that “sentiment cannot remain callous and […] effort nerveless in view of the imminent peril of the mothers [and daughters and aunts and sisters and friends and lovers] of the next generation.”7 the scope of this issue seeks to imagine the futures of present and past conversations around rituals of pleasure, agency amplification, and joymaking practices for Third World women and queer/quare/kweer femmes. while such discussions have long since represented a wide range of intellectual approaches and come from a variety of backgrounds & lived experiences, below is a list of scholars whose existing work is considered to be particularly relevant to this issue’s scope:

Esther Armah; Moya Bailey; Yaba Blay; adrienne maree brown; Anna Julia Cooper; Brittney Cooper; Kimberlé Crenshaw; Clarissa E. Francis; Evelynn Hammonds; Candice Hargons; Patricia Hill-Collins; bell hooks; Treva B. Lindsay; Audre Lorde; Mireille Miller-Young; Joan Morgan; Jennifer Nash; Dorothy Roberts; Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah; Kaila Story; Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor; Awa Thiam; Shemeka Thorpe; Gail Elizabeth Wyatt

(please note that the above list is not intended to be a complete representation of existing related scholarship)

complete submissions are due in their entirety by August 10, 2026. submissions must be made through the “Make a Submission” link button at the bottom of the journal’s homepage (journal.morsarc.org). prior to submission, please take care to thoroughly review the Information for Authors as well as the Author Guidelines to ensure submissions are properly formatted and have any necessary permissions for publication.

for questions regarding guidelines or permissions, please contact the journal’s editor-in-chief, a. oladipo isiaq, at journal@morrisonsankara.org

endnotes

1. “Editorial Statement”, Triple Jeopardy, vol. 1, no. 1 (Sept-Oct 1971).
2. Tiana U. Wilson, “The Making of Triple Jeopardy,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 51, nos. 1–2 (2023): 201–7, https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.0014.
3. Lenora R. Knowles, “How Do We Grow Grassroots Critiques of the State? A Close Reading of Triple Jeopardy from East Baltimore,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 51, nos. 1–2 (2023): 191–99, https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.0013.
4. Clarissa E. Francis, Black Women’s Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025). 
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South (Aldine Printing House, 1892).