Critical Edges

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”       – Audre Lorde

To speak of ‘issues’, as Lorde does, is to speak of structures – those that impede, oppress and threaten as well as those that support, grow and nurture, life chances and, indeed, life itself.

As women and non-binary people from variously marginalised communities thinking and writing in the academy, we not only experience the full weight of subjugating structures but also invest of ourselves in attempting to realise liberatory potentials. To be sure, the force of this experience lives in our writing, even as our intentions and energies move beyond, into the various worlds that we, and those who we come from, occupy. Despite this confluence, it is remarkably rare for academic, social and economic structures to allow space for community amongst us.

The purpose of this series, then, is to build intimacies between those thinking and writing at the critical edges of the academy