About this Research Topic
Gender and body are elements in constant negotiation in the public sphere, loaded with political implications. These components protagonize spaces of (dis)order by being situated outside the limits of the dominant region and can be observed both in the context of the artistic production of migrant women, and in works that use the body to confront orders originating from artistic and aesthetic standards, from medical, scientific and psychological discourses, from certain fashion rules, and from gender inequality. The migrant female art (Patteri, 2022) and the corporeal manifestations configured as spaces of subversion, aim to alert to the political potential of resistance against symbolic borders. Thus, we start from the premise that there is an art that emerges from social disorder and that, in turn, by questioning the borders and limitations imposed by hegemonic discourses, forges connections between what can be seen and what can be thought and created, as a function of everyday border life.
As an invitation to reflection, both themes present within this Research Topic, "migrant women artists" and "women of dissident bodies", aim to advance scientific understanding by welcoming articles that address and/or problematize emerging logics of artivism, resistance, claims of identity issues, and confrontations with social inequality. To this end, we consider analyzing performances in/on the most diverse frontiers: of bodies, identities, genders, nationalities, in order to think about the differences and possibilities of acting in the public sphere in dialogue with the personal/collective, the private/public, the beautiful/fair, the high/low, and many other in-between places (Bhabha, 1998). We propose observations of practices that portray actions within specific social, cultural, political, and personal contexts in order to transform them, in many cases, by using the body itself to re-signify the existences that resist, that is, producing subjectivity in counterpoint to socially constructed modes of subjection. In this sense, analyses are encouraged around (dis)orders in the context of migration, taken as one of the most oblique phenomena in contemporary societies, especially female migration and, above all, the migration of qualified women (Pio & Essers, 2014). Furthermore, analyses of works are encouraged that make use of bodies in plural territorialities categorized as abnormal (Courtine, 2011; Foucault, 1999), stigmatized by strangeness (Goffman, 1988), as a political tool to confront the various structures of hierarchization of corporeality, as in the case of practices that dialogue with corpulence, queer, and disability.
Based on a transdisciplinary dialogue between the social sciences, the arts and the humanities, this call aims to broaden the debate in a cross and intersectional approach, making visible the existing relations between the phenomenon of female migration, the insubordination of bodies, artivism and its materializations in physical territories (or not), as well as in socio-cultural spaces-time. In this way, the expectation is to explore different artistic interventions materialized in the most diverse and multiple territories, as challenging (and defying) productions of the borders – physical and symbolic – that demarcate the multiple experiential experiences, encompassing the artistic production of young migrant women, associated with a protest culture (Morgan & Nelligan, 2017), and projects that make use of the body to occupy, resist and transgress. In this sense, we thought about the creation of other and distinct spaces of social expression. These acts of resistance – embodied in contemporary forms of artivism – arise with the intention of (re)affirming identity (personal and collective), as well as serving to contest places of speech often denied in the most diverse social spheres. Instead of restricting the thematic axes of this proposal, we considered that they should be of a comprehensive nature. Accordingly, we invite social scientists working in the greatest variety of approaches – theoretical and empirical, basic and applied, quantitative and qualitative, micro and macro – to submit articles that consider these four major thematic axes: displaced bodies in female migrations, dissident bodies that demarcate political spaces, women artists and their bodies, and contemporary corporeal artivism (Guerra et al., 2022). This expanded scope, meets the statements of Mesías-Lema et al. (2022), when the authors refer that activism has many faces, artists, trends and contemporary actions.
As an invitation to reflection, both themes present within this Research Topic, "migrant women artists" and "women of dissident bodies", aim to advance scientific understanding by welcoming articles that address and/or problematize emerging logics of artivism, resistance, claims of identity issues, and confrontations with social inequality. To this end, we consider analyzing performances in/on the most diverse frontiers: of bodies, identities, genders, nationalities, in order to think about the differences and possibilities of acting in the public sphere in dialogue with the personal/collective, the private/public, the beautiful/fair, the high/low, and many other in-between places (Bhabha, 1998). We propose observations of practices that portray actions within specific social, cultural, political, and personal contexts in order to transform them, in many cases, by using the body itself to re-signify the existences that resist, that is, producing subjectivity in counterpoint to socially constructed modes of subjection. In this sense, analyses are encouraged around (dis)orders in the context of migration, taken as one of the most oblique phenomena in contemporary societies, especially female migration and, above all, the migration of qualified women (Pio & Essers, 2014). Furthermore, analyses of works are encouraged that make use of bodies in plural territorialities categorized as abnormal (Courtine, 2011; Foucault, 1999), stigmatized by strangeness (Goffman, 1988), as a political tool to confront the various structures of hierarchization of corporeality, as in the case of practices that dialogue with corpulence, queer, and disability.
Based on a transdisciplinary dialogue between the social sciences, the arts and the humanities, this call aims to broaden the debate in a cross and intersectional approach, making visible the existing relations between the phenomenon of female migration, the insubordination of bodies, artivism and its materializations in physical territories (or not), as well as in socio-cultural spaces-time. In this way, the expectation is to explore different artistic interventions materialized in the most diverse and multiple territories, as challenging (and defying) productions of the borders – physical and symbolic – that demarcate the multiple experiential experiences, encompassing the artistic production of young migrant women, associated with a protest culture (Morgan & Nelligan, 2017), and projects that make use of the body to occupy, resist and transgress. In this sense, we thought about the creation of other and distinct spaces of social expression. These acts of resistance – embodied in contemporary forms of artivism – arise with the intention of (re)affirming identity (personal and collective), as well as serving to contest places of speech often denied in the most diverse social spheres. Instead of restricting the thematic axes of this proposal, we considered that they should be of a comprehensive nature. Accordingly, we invite social scientists working in the greatest variety of approaches – theoretical and empirical, basic and applied, quantitative and qualitative, micro and macro – to submit articles that consider these four major thematic axes: displaced bodies in female migrations, dissident bodies that demarcate political spaces, women artists and their bodies, and contemporary corporeal artivism (Guerra et al., 2022). This expanded scope, meets the statements of Mesías-Lema et al. (2022), when the authors refer that activism has many faces, artists, trends and contemporary actions.
Keywords: Women, Dissident Bodies, Migration, Contemporary Displacements
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