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Abstract

One of the important ways that feminists in South Africa have generated knowledge and theory is through an independent feminist journal, AGENDA, that was founded in 1987. In this article, I discuss the history of AGENDA and analyze the type of feminist knowledge that AGENDA produces as a feminist journal of the Global South and specifically Africa. I also show how African feminism and intersectionality have always been the two core dimensions of knowledge production in AGENDA through the analysis of two trilogies: one on African feminism and one on African sexuality to show how knowledge is used to create new theories. I also reflect on the South/North divide and hegemonic thinking from the North. What the analysis reflects is the resistance against hegemonic thinking, the invention of new concepts, as well as new theorization and hybrid theories that draw on the Northern theories at the same time as it disrupts them.

Author Biography

Amanda Gouws is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where she holds a SARChI Chair in Gender Politics. She has a PhD from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her specialization is South African Politics and Gender Politics, areas in which she has published widely. She is the editor of (Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa (UK: Ashgate and Cape Town: Juta, 2005). In 2012, she received the Wilma Rule Award for the best paper at the International Political Science Association Conference in Madrid, Spain, in the category Gender and Politics. Her edited book with Daiva Stasiulis, from Carleton University, Gender and Multiculturalism:North/South Perspectives appeared with Routledge Press in 2014. Her edited collections Nasty Women Talk Back (with Joy Watson) and COVID Diaries: Women’s Experience of the Pandemic (with Olivia Ezeobi) appeared with Imbali Press in 2017 and 2021. She was a Commissioner for the South African Commission for Gender Equality from 2012-2014.

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