Beyond Authoritarianism: Feminist Counter-Publics, Prefigurative Politics and Democratic Futures

Across the globe, authoritarian governments, populist movements, and anti-gender actors have intensified attacks on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, academic freedom, civil society, and democratic institutions. As political spaces narrow and organizations face repression, co-optation, or closure, feminist actors have developed innovative ways of organizing, mobilizing, and imagining alternative futures.

This panel examines not only feminist resistance to authoritarianism, but also the spaces, institutions, and social relations feminists create in response to it. How do feminist movements sustain political action when democratic participation is constrained? What alternative forms emerge when traditional channels of advocacy are blocked? How do feminists build counter-publics, solidarities, and infrastructures of care that challenge authoritarian projects while prefiguring more democratic and egalitarian futures?

We invite papers that explore feminist institution-building, alternative publics, and prefigurative politics in contexts of authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, conflict, occupation, and state repression.

We welcome interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives from diverse regions and encourage contributions attentive to the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, coloniality, and migration. Topics may include, but are not limited to

• Feminist counter-publics and alternative political spaces
• Universities, associations, unions, and international organizations as sites of organizing
• Feminist responses to shrinking civic space, democratic erosion, anti-gender movements, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism
• New organizational forms, networks, and coalitions under authoritarian rule
• Transnational and diasporic activism; art, memory, and storytelling as forms of contestation
• Mutual aid, formal and informal care networks, and communal infrastructures of resistance