Vol. 2 (2024): Witness

Plurality celebrated its first year anniversary this December, and it truly has been an incredible year for the publication. From conception to materialization to now having two issues published. I am grateful for the journey it has taken to come this far and the ways this publication has facilitated my personal growth in many ways. I hope that Plurality has succeeded in its goal of providing a space for undergraduate researchers to share in the study of intersectionality. Additionally, that this publication has been a learning ground for both editors and authors, as we work together to create something which will build the feminist literature. 

The issue starts with Mia Taylor’s exploration of whether abolitionist spaces can provide a refuge from the infamous male gaze. Rounding out our Philosophy and Divinity section, we have A Hijazi who writes about how the defiance of Palestinian witness testimony creates historical continuity from sites of dispossession. For Art and Literature, we have Rose Devine who analyses the role of women as symbolic witnesses and repositories of desire in Marie de France’s Lanval. Jack Lyall discusses how Emmanuel Levanis’ conception of responsibility appears in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight. Sommer Lugert, for our Social Sciences section, looks at how current frameworks of human trafficking lack intersectionality leading to the marginalisation of certain trafficking survivors. Analysing the Jinv resistance, Tongyu Hu provides an account of how to understand this radical feminist movement happening in China. Anna Braun, starts our History and Classics section, with a critical analysis of current narratives around northern Nigerian women in the context of Boko Haram and its related conflict, arguing that the framing of victimization overshadows women as witnesses and their diversity of experiences. Next, Melissa Kocacinar looks at how the memories of the Algerian diaspora put into question monolithic narratives of national identity in France. Yuna Watanabe uses the lens of orientalism to bear witness to the lost history of Japan’s premodern homosexual culture, nanshoku. For our musings section, we have Ruby Scott looking at online hate-speech using Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” framework to argue how online commenters fail to witness the personhood of marginalised people. My sincerest thank you to our authors for submitting their work and being open to developing it into the drafts you see in this issue. I encourage you to spend time in acknowledging your momentus achievements as well as the way this process has hopefully helped you grow as a researcher.

Read our full issue here or scroll below to access individual articles.