The rhetoric of decolonising feminism has been increasingly connected to reformism rather than a radical intervention. Problematising the idea of finality in the calls to decolonise, I suggest that decolonial feminism should be understood as an experiment, a risky, unfinished project rather than a fixed location, and I argue that it should be based on a more radicalised notion of what María Lugones calls ‘learning from other resisters’. I draw on my experience working with feminists across the vast and diverse (...) Indonesian nusantara and reflect on Lugones’s concept of ‘other resisters’ in her essay ‘Toward a decolonial feminism’. Learning from feminists from places such as Nusa Tenggara and West Papua who challenge the singular imagination of the Global South, I advocate shifting the debate away from Euro-American academia as the locus of knowledge production by centring other resisters on the path towards decolonial feminism. I propose three aspects in learning from other resisters: actively engaging in the process of creating feminist linkages, acknowledging borders and friction within the Global South and interrogating the notion of resistance. (shrink)

Hélène Cixous is perhaps best known for her paper, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) and her literary contributions outside academia. In this paper, we pick up a lesser known Cixous text, ‘Le Sexe ou la tête?’ that offers an interesting and provocative perspective on the traps associated with being feminine in a masculine environment. As we converse with Cixous, weaving our own words and experiences with hers, we link her work more closely with the feminine in modern-day academia. We (...) suggest that Cixous’s remarks on decapitation and voice offer a way forward for academic women to be; to speak; to recognise the double jeopardy of decapitation in the university; and to use laughter as a strategic, powerful, political act of resistance and subversion against oppressive masculine power structures. We draw on and seek to enact Cixous’s notion of écriture feminine—a disruptive style of writing that provides a mode of being, speaking, and writing that subverts the power of masculine norms in order to be heard and to bring possibilities for change. (shrink)