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A conversation with Clare Hemmings and Sumi Madhok
Editors of Pandemonium spoke with Clare Hemmings and Sumi Madhok on August 3, 2023.
Clare Hemmings: Sumi and I were recently supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant in Britain to build a network called Transnational "Anti-gender" Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions.
Sumi Madhok: This network is something that was perhaps one of the first projects of its kind; particularly in the U.K. academy to get funded; and frankly we were quite surprised given the political climate in the U.K. To see the research councils in the U.K. academy support this feminist transnational network of scholars who are researching these questions in different parts of the globe, has been very heartening.
Clare Hemmings: Our aim has been to bring scholars together to consider threats to gender and queer studies as fields as well as to feminism, LGBT communities-especially trans communities-migrants, refugees, and Black communities. These communities and the threats against them are all quite connected, of course. In the U.K. right now, the kinds of work that we do within these communities has become increasingly difficult- increasingly subjected to challenges and aggression. Even just being able to use the term "gender" as a critical intervention has been subject to attack, let alone when articulated as a racialized, classed, or sexual category related to social meanings. Hostility to universities from the U.K. government has been increasing generally-particularly towards the interdisciplinary humanities-and attacks on gender studies are underwritten by these "culture wars" that are anti-feminist and racist. And our department has been directly attacked for its work, precisely because we are visibly resisting these developments.
But this is not just about the U.K., of course. We very much wanted to put together a network that was transnational in scope to link that to other experiences of anti-feminist, anti-trans, anti-migrant politics in different locations, lets say in India or Pakistan, in South Africa or Uganda, in Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and so on, as well as within the U.K. and across Europe generally. We wanted to open up a space where we could have frank conversations that are increasingly difficult to have in hostile environments.
Sumi Madhok: Yes, and of course there has also been a sort...