1In 1983, the Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, philosopher, and political activist, Edward Said, wrote an essay entitled Travelling Theory which soon transcended the boundaries of the discipline in which it had first appeared –literary theory– and precisely “travelled” through the humanities and the social sciences where it had a major influence on conceptions about the genealogy of knowledge and the history of ideas. In his essay, Said starts from a simple principle, which is to consider theories, and more broadly, ideas, as moving formations. Ideas travel and are transmitted from one person to another, from one era to another, from one geographical space to another, and from one institution to another. Their meaning, far from being unique, static and immutable, necessarily changes as they circulate. Far from being abstract intellectual formations floating above human activities, theories are thus which, firmly rooted in historically, geographically and socially located social and material realities. In short, as the author writes, “ideas are worldly,” and whether or not this is a conscious, thoughtful and deliberate process, intellectual activity, and more specifically the production and dissemination of knowledge, is rooted in these circulations:

Cultural and intellectual life are usually nourished and often sustained by this circulation of ideas and whether it takes the form of acknowledged or unconscious influence, creative borrowing, or wholesale appropriation, the movement of ideas and theories from one place to another is both a fact of life and a usefully enabling condition of intellectual activity. (Said 1983: 226)

I came to theory because I was hurting –the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend –to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing. (bell hooks 1994: 59)

3Further on, she writes:

I am grateful to the many women and men who dare to create theory from the location of pain and struggle, who courageously expose wounds to give us their experience to teach and guide, as a means to chart new theoretical journeys. Their work is liberatory […]. Our search leads us back to where it all began, to that moment when an individual woman or child, who may have thought she was all alone, began a feminist uprising, began to name her practice, indeed began to formulate theory from lived experience. Let us imagine that this woman or child was suffering the pain of sexism and sexist oppression, that she wanted to make the hurt go away. I am grateful that I can be a witness, testifying that we can create a feminist theory, a feminist practice, a revolutionary feminist movement that can speak directly to the pain that is within folks, and offer them healing words, healing strategies, healing theory. (ibid.: 75)

4This initial moment is followed by a series of stages in which the theory goes through different social universes, which inevitably mark a progressive distancing from the original social and political context in which it emerged, and which in fine, lead to the loss of the idea’s transformative power (Said 1983). The emblematic trajectory of this circulation leads to the institutionalization of a theory via its entry into the academic field. To return to one of Said’s examples, when Lucien Goldmann (1955) adapts Georg Lukàcs’ theory of reification to his study of 17th-century French literature in Le Dieu caché, he is writing from an entirely different site of knowledge production –the prestigious Sorbonne University in post-war Paris– which strips the theory of its “insurrectionary” character.

7This critique regarding the institutionalization of the concept of intersectionality in the academic world leveled by a large number of anti-racist feminist authors writing from a decolonial perspective echoes Edward Said’s assessment in his 1983 essay. However, these authors are careful not to consider their analysis of this trajectory linear and all-encompassing. bell hooks notably describes the internal tensions within the academic field, and among feminist academics more particularly. She distinguishes the “margins” representing counter-hegemonic voices and defending the perspectives and knowledge of historically minoritized groups from the “centers” that reflect a dominant point of view. Bilge (2013) also nuances her analysis of the trajectory of theory of intersectionality and its entry into academia, as she exposes the multiple approaches that coexist within different academic feminist currents. She contrasts the ideas of counter-hegemonic feminisms on the margins, with feminist ideas that she defines as canonical and “disciplinary”:

By disciplinary feminism, I refer to a hegemonic intellectual position with regards to knowledge production, a way of doing ‘science’ which is more concerned with fitting into the parameters of what constitute legitimate scientific knowledge than challenging those parameters. It strives to install disciplinarity over the object of study, to be recognized within traditional disciplines, or to establish itself as a new discipline or interdiscipline. This is unlike the initial political impetus of academic feminism, which conceived itself as a ‘means to institutionalize feminist resistance to the normalizing agencies of the traditional disciplines’ (Wiegman 2012, p. 71), and many academic feminists still engage in a critique of the disciplines, attempt to challenge hegemonic practices in scholarship and public life. Disciplinary feminism, in contrast, participates in institutional (mis)appropriation and attendant depoliticization of both interdisciplinarity and intersectionality. (Bilge 2013: 409)

11These topics are undoubtedly important, but we have chosen a different approach to examine the circulation of concepts and paradigms. We decided that it would be equally productive to show, through a series of contributions based on inquiries in different locations of the contemporary world, how these approaches and their vocabulary now represent theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in everyday society and by activists. Academic debate is obviously not the only place where the coloniality of power and gender is challenged, intersectionality is politicized and Western feminism is contested. These issues resonate in groups and among individuals who are far removed from university circles, who might even reject these places of knowledge production outright as being too out of touch with their reality and aspirations. In the same way as the language of Marxism has spread far beyond its theorists and has had real political effects, ideas belonging to the intersectional approach and to decolonial feminism are now gaining ground in a wide variety of circles. This is what we find important to examine, while refraining from normatively assessing the use made of theories that sometimes originated in academia and are now present in the social and political world. We will also be careful not to speak about vulgarized intersectional or decolonial ideas, just as, in other times, we could denounce the simplified Marxism heard in activist circles. Our intention is quite different. It is to gain an empirical understanding of these new ways of expressing oneself and finding one’s position in the world, both individually and collectively.

12Based on Edward Said’s seminal text, Travelling Theory, this issue examines the circulation of knowledge and ideas between different fields of social life, and notably between the academic world, activist circles, and the political sphere, in different geopolitical contexts. The primary aim of this issue is to present a rich empirical investigation of the structural and institutional modalities that organize these circulations. Through case studies carried out in specific historical and geographical contexts, we examine the mechanisms that regulate these trajectories, both between these different fields and within the academic world itself, and between its periphery and center, and the processes that influence the mutation of these ideas.

13These empirical investigations raise a series of questions about the class, race, and gender inequality regimes that permeate academia and establish, maintain, and reproduce epistemic, social, and material hierarchies. To investigate the mechanisms that regulate the circulation of ideas within universities, we need to understand the practices and discourses that establish certain voices and certain bodies as the legitimate bearers of knowledge. We need to examine who signs scientific publications (Pontille 2004), but also whose research is cited and, conversely, forgotten in the production of university knowledge (Bailey and Trudy 2018, Smith and Garrett-Scott 2021, Smith 2022). We need to understand the techniques used to oversee research, and the material, financial, and social barriers that prevent certain voices from expressing themselves, and ultimately, certain ideas from circulating. Finally, using a relational approach grounded in history and geography, we need to understand how universities, as the producers and disseminators of knowledge, their academic disciplines, and the canonical perspectives they institutionalize, can, and often do, contribute to legitimize and reproduce an unequal world order born of the colonial project.

16In a 2022 essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, entitled “The US Academy and the Provincialization of Fanon,” political scientist Muriam Haleh Davis shows how, by domesticating the work of Frantz Fanon, and notably his analysis of race, the American academic field has erased all traces of the colonial context of Algeria in which the psychiatrist and philosopher’s theses were born. While one of Fanon’s major contributions is to decentralize the global North and anchor the production of knowledge in the experience of colonized peoples, the appropriation of his work by American academia has paradoxically led to erasing in the process the revolutionary anti-colonial praxis at the heart of Fanonian theorizing.

17More widely, a growing body of literature has examined the historical role of academic disciplines in the colonial enterprise, the practices and alliances that invisibilize or prevent the circulation of Indigenous knowledge, and the current processes that allow this “intellectual imperialism” to be reproduced (Spivak 1988, hooks 1994, Hountondji 1997, Go 2016, 2020, 2023, Quashie 2018, Meghji 2021, Direnberger and Onibon Doubogan 2022). In his analysis of the political economy of these circulations, philosopher Paulin J. Hountondji identifies the structural barriers that limit on an ongoing basis the circulation of ideas from authors in the global South to the North. According to him, “intellectual work is to a large extent dependent on journals, libraries, archives, publishing houses and other support facilities in the North” (Hountondji 1997: 7).

18To derive any benefit from their studies, researchers based in the Global South continue to be forced to engage in a form of “scientific tourism” in countries of the North where they must visit research centers, participate in conferences, teach and hold workshops to advertise their work. Furthermore, as sociologist Ali Meghji (2021) has pointed out, even though many disciplinary associations have now created transnational research alliances, these associations, such as the International Sociological Association, have executive committees whose members are mainly based in the Global North, and their annual conferences are still mostly held in countries of the North. As a result, members in countries of the South who wish to participate are faced with very high travel costs, and often expensive visa applications, whose outcomes are in most cases uncertain. The communication methods used to disseminate knowledge also continue to be based on imperialistic practices, such as the use of historically dominant languages, notably English (for the most part), French and Spanish in leading peer-reviewed social science journals. Proficiency in these languages, and particularly in English, is therefore a prerequisite for all researchers who wish to publish in disciplinary journals with an international reputation. Finally, Paulin J. Hountondji (1997: 11, in Meghji 2021: 77) describes the essentially extractivist way in which the societies of the Global South continue to be studied by researchers working in the “center” represented by Western academic worlds. When researchers from the North travel to the South, they:

search not for knowledge but only for materials that lead to knowledge and, if need be, for a testing ground for their findings. They do not go searching for paradigms or methodological and theoretical models; rather they go hunting for information and new facts that are likely to enrich their paradigms.

19Hountondji’s statements call for empirical investigation into the modes of production of research carried out in the South by researchers from the North, notably with a view to address the internal accusations of Eurocentrism and epistemic domination; they further prompt an examination of North/South university partnerships (see for example Ouattara 2022, and Deridder and Eyebiyi 2022 on this question). A critical sociology of circulations also makes it possible to grasp the ways in which the (non-)production and (non-)dissemination of knowledge can produce imaginaries that normalize an imperialistic way of thinking, in which the Other is considered an object, and not a subject capable of producing knowledge (Said 1978, Spivak 1988).

20This edition therefore grew out of the need to question these mechanisms of domination and examine the resistance that is growing and calling for historically marginalized voices to be heard. It is further inspired by the work of the late Aziz Choudry who documented the possibilities of dialogue and interconnections between activism and academic research (2015). This raises many questions for which there are no simple answers. The more modest ambition of this issue is therefore to share contributions from a variety of contexts. The articles in this issue all focus on the concrete application of approaches and concepts that have emerged in the academic world but also have an impact on the social and political lives of ordinary individuals, activists, jurisdictions and organizations. The issues raised in each of these very different contexts bear witness in their own ways to profound transformations in contemporary societies, where references to gender, race, class, sexuality and their intersections, and the fight against racism and coloniality are playing an increasingly prominent role.

21The first two contributions show how discourses and practices that refer, explicitly or otherwise, to intersectionality, anti-racism, and feminist epistemologies have been used to give meaning to personal trajectories and commitments. In a study of two young women who define themselves as Black and queer in Marseille, Ary Gordien shows how they use the viewpoint and vocabulary of the intersectional approach to put words on an experience of the world marked in two distinct ways by racial stigmatization and heteronormativity. Through the Internet, and notably by engaging on social media, participating in WhatsApp loops, listening to podcasts and attending minority social events in Marseille, they have become familiar with the analytical tools of intersectionality and have learned to used them to talk about themselves and define themselves. In another article, David Amalric and Joana Sisternas analyze changes in the political practices of working-class youth based on their research in two favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These individuals have adopted the anti-racist discourses inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, whose rhetoric and frames of thought have spread throughout the city, and they place an emphasis on the position of the speaker, influenced by feminist standpoint epistemologies. These changes have had considerable consequences. On the one hand, these ideas have spurred high school students to become politically engaged and reformulate historical causes (opposition to population displacement, denunciation of police violence) and they have led to campaigns by favela residents who were historically highly dependent on political patronage. On the other hand, these forms of action demonstrate not only a clear desire to distance themselves from the political figures traditionally influential in the favelas, but also and above all they reflect new ways of defining their personal and collective identities.

22The next two articles address the question of the relationship between knowledge and praxis, highlighting how types of knowledge, whether derived from academic research or political engagement, play a significant role across different actors and encounter obstacles that reveal their limits. Referring to the case of the Awas Tingni in Nicaragua, Élisabeth Cunin examines the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and how it refers to the expertise of anthropologists to grant rights to Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. These legal proceedings reflect the dissemination of the notion of multiculturalism in Latin America, where, since the 1980s, the imaginary concept of being a mixed nation is challenged by demands for specific rights for descendants of Indigenous peoples and enslaved populations. While the anthropologists called in as expert witnesses by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights claim to have decolonial aims and to be committed to the populations involved, the fact remains that the judges’ decisions fail to grasp the complexity and nuance of anthropological knowledge. While the judges were pressing the anthropologists to define groups with precise boundaries, the anthropologists found it humanly, scientifically and ethically difficult to confirm identity-based and essentialist visions of peoples originating from several ethnic groups and characterized by plural identifications. While collaboration is still necessary between judges and anthropologists, the challenges it entails remain unresolved. In a further article, Somayeh Rostampour, investigates a form of knowledge born in a context that is conflictual for other reasons. She is studying Jineolojî, a decolonial science focusing on women developed within the ranks of the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Leaving aside debates about whether the PKK is a terrorist organization or not, Somayeh Rostampour (2023) examines the specific context in which Jineolojî was formed to fight against both Turkey considered a colonizing state and against forms of hegemonic feminism defended notably by Turkish and Western academics. Jineolojî does not claim to be feminist but seeks instead to be a feminine decolonial science that aims to engage all women concerned by the struggle of Kurdish women, rather than to establish a social hierarchy between those who know and those who are destined to receive knowledge. The scientific legitimacy of Jineolojî is usually questioned by those who do not belong to the movement, and its dissemination is strongly limited by the constraints of armed struggle. The result is that it has been extremely difficult to carry out the project and break down the barriers between the academic and political spheres.

23In the closing article, Yann Allard-Tremblay and Elaine Coburn address the persistent barriers that Indigenous scholars foregrounding Indigenous epistemologies and histories encounter in disseminating their academic work. Drawing from the case of political science in contemporary Canada, and particularly of political theory, they note that, despite growing recognition of their legitimacy, it is still very difficult for them to be accepted by the discipline’s major journals. Yann Allard-Tremblay and Elaine Coburn examine the requirements set by editorial boards, which, when they do not reject them outright, ask the authors to provide a great number of justifications. Based on the schematized portrait of a second reviewer who –consciously or not– represents an orthodox vision, they examine the different types of resistance encountered by researchers who propose contributions rooted in Indigenous knowledge. Some of the obstacles they meet include the way in which the canon of disciplines has historically been defined with reference to the case of Europe, elevated as the standard to be followed, the demands for essentialism or romanticism when describing Indigenous peoples, the inability to accept normativities other than the implicit dominant normativity or, quite simply, the small number of researchers from Indigenous peoples capable of reviewing the articles submitted.

24As we can see, new questions are being raised by the circulation of knowledge between the academic and the political worlds, that go far beyond the observation of their permeability, the commonplace accusation of axiological neutrality and reconsideration of the West’s claim to universality. The social sciences, and the world more generally, are undergoing profound transformations, and we are still far from having grasped their full extent. This issue certainly does not aim to do so. Its more modest ambition is to examine a number of cases in which resistance against forms of domination has produced tangible effects on how social relations are described, on the political use of knowledge and on the construction of identities through new references for expressing experiences of belonging and otherness.