Editorials | The February Journal

This image shows a number of name tags showing the editors' names.

Jesse van Amelsvoort, Gwyneira Isaac, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz

Introduction: To Be—Named: Across Borders

In this introduction to the special issue, 'To Be—Named: Across Borders,' we situate the special issue and the broader project of which it is part. Names are a key dimension to identity and a daily marker of how we personify our relationships with the world. They are what we call ourselves and determine how we live, move through our lives, and navigate the geographical, physical, and ideological borders that shape us. They are also how we are inscribed, documented, classified, and recorded by others. They carry ancestral lineages and traces of a mother tongue or heritage language no longer spoken, a language imposed by institutions or one being reclaimed, as well as cultural knowledge and traditions. As a result, our names embody how we trace ourselves through our known family lines, how we are traced within our communities, and how we are marked, tracked, and followed by the state or government. In this frame, names are also data: they must fit registries, passports, forms, databases, and technical standards that decide which scripts, diacritics, and forms are legible to institutions. Ultimately, they are highly personal, and, at the same time, they bridge our intimate social worlds with the complex and political ones. How is it, then, that we do not fully contend with what it means to be named, and also re-named as we cross these various borders?

Anisha Anantpurkar, Pasha Tretyakova

Introduction. Method as Play / Play as Method

This special issue of The February Journal explores the process of playful knowledge-making. In this Introduction, the issue editors Pasha and Anisha share how that process came together in this volume, across and within contributions. The thematic spotlight is on margins, authority, and the entanglements of fiction and reality.

A constructivist artwork called 'Földek' by László Moholy-Nagy (c. 1920), it looks like colorful lines intersecting at different angles

Isabel Bredenbröker, Katerina Suverina, Andrei Zavadski

Introduction. The Author Is Dead, Long Live Co-Authors! Collaborative Work in the Humanities

This issue of The February Journal probes into the potential of the collective rather than the individual. How do we share authority, responsibility, and authorship in academic knowledge creation? Why do aggrandizing ideas and expectations relating to the author as a lonely hero (even if it is increasingly a ‘heroine’) remain part of academic expectations and evaluation criteria? What differences exist between artistic collaboration and co-creation in academia? Can collaboration and co-authorship be seen as a tool of resistance against the neoliberalization of academic systems? Indeed, could collaborative work be seen as a/the future of the humanities?

Isabel Bredenbröker

Introduction. This Is Fine. Not

This special issue investigates the potential of ‘hope,’ which is understood here as a future-oriented political practice. It combines critical perspectives on ‘hope’ with thinking about ‘problems.’ Contributions, which range from articles over conversations in written and spoken form to artistic text and imagery, add to sharpening the analytical usefulness of these ambiguous categories.

Shura Dogadaeva, Andrei Zavadski

Editorial. Two Dialogues on Self-Decolonization

This issue is dedicated to self-decolonizing practices exercised through the prism of autotheory. Employing different genres and stemming from different geographical, epistemological, and other contexts, the volume’s contributions variously analyze ways in which personal experience and positioning, indigenous knowledges, and doing away with formal rigidity as well as utilizing media other than writing (dance, sound, and others) are important for self-decolonization.