We are happy to share with you our new editorial project: UntoldMag.
UntoldMag is a collective initiative, born out of a group of colleagues and friends from North Africa, West Asia, and Europe.
We want to open a window of understanding the world from the point of view of North Africa and West Asia (NAWA) and we want to bring these conversations and thoughts to a larger public, and invite more people to the discussion.
Our ambition is to decentralize the production of knowledge about the world and to challenge the hegemony of a unilateral knowledge production stemming from the Global North. We also aim to encounter the Western gaze and other hegemonic views on NAWA geographies. At the same time, we want to facilitate and promote knowledge about the West produced and disseminated from NAWA and elsewhere in the Global South.
In order to do so, UntoldMag aims at creating a transnational editorial room hosting critical debates about local, regional, and global issues that characterize our world. We want to make available knowledge developed by scholars and experts, as well as by those whose voices are often excluded and opinions dismissed for lack of credentials.
To launch this adventure, we distributed an initial call among our networks. Today we begin to publish their contributions and wish to see more responses now that the call is public. We named our call: “Where are we now?”, in order to open this space for anyone to set their agenda and to invite answers as different and diverse as the life experiences and expertise of those who wish to answer it.
We publish the call below, for anyone who wants to participate.
We look forward to starting this new adventure, to receiving your feedback, ideas and suggestions as we work towards growing this into a much needed space for thinking about the world, the present and the possible futures.
“Where are we now?”
An invitation to think together
“Where are we now?” is an invitation to reflect on our current condition in the world, following a global pandemic, an on-going tangible climate crisis and wars that are producing global oil and food crises, and shifting economies, all of which have left many of us with radical emotional, social, political, and personal transformations and adaptations.
We ask this question first and foremost from the point of view of North Africa and West Asia (NAWA), a region that has been a site of major popular uprisings in the past decade as well as intersecting levels of political, environmental and economic violence that have left many feeling disillusioned, stagnated, isolated, depressed, resentful, exiled and injured.
We believe that it is for these reasons that NAWA can offer a window into understanding the present and future of a world in crisis. These large questions push us to create a space for thinking, analyzing and discussing together, each from their position and preoccupations.
We want to engage different communities, writing and thinking about the region not as an exception or an isolated entity, but in relation to other parts of the world.
At the same time, we want to invite people from the region to talk about other regions as well, and offer a “Southern” approach on mainstream issues.
We want to identify “trans-subaltern” perspectives, as subaltern conditions and struggles are connected.
We create this space hosted online by SyriaUntold for reflections, projections, prognostics, fears and hopes. These collective open-ended discussions are a starting point to delineate possible roadmaps and tools for both our present and our future.
We are equally interested in journalistic, research-informed, and experimental writing. We welcome poems, short stories and other formats as well.
Please get in touch if you have any questions, an idea to discuss, or a text to propose as we would really value a contribution from you.
We welcome contributions about topics that range from politics, society, climate change, culture, arts, environmental issues.."?
Contributions can be submitted (for now) in Arabic, English, French, Italian, and Farsi.
Write us at: [email protected]
Thank you and looking forward to hearing from you,
UntoldMag Editorial Board: (in alphabetical order) Diana Abbani, Yazan Badran, Rasha Chatta, Enrico De Angelis, Walid el Houri, Firoozeh Farvadin, Gennaro Gervasio, Lamia Moghnieh, Nader Talebi, Andrea Teti, Fayrouz Yousfi, Himmat Zoubi.
