"Thinking Through, Talking Back: Creative Theorisation as Sites of Praxis-Theory" - A creative Dialogue between Sharlene Khan, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Yvette Abrahams, Neelika Jayawardane and Betty Govinden

Abstract

The panel "Thinking Through, Talking Back: Creative Theorisation as Site of Praxis-Theory", held at the African Feminisms Colloquium at Rhodes University in July 2017, converses on the role of the imagination and creativities in black-African feminisms. Imagination is seen as underlying the important work of identifying everyday lived experiences as sites of knowledge production that has been central to black-African feminisms' creative theorisation, whether in popular platforms or academic spheres. The panel discussion moves between abstract and personal conversations on the following black feminist epistemological strategies: black women as agents of knowledge; lived experience as "useful embodied interrogation" and "situated critiques"; creativities as sites from which black-African feminist critiques and theorisations emerge; and the role of imagination in our lives as a critical, political force.