The world is facing an enormous crisis where neoliberalism and neo-nationalism generate post-democratic conditions and have effects on knowledge production also and especially on the symbolic gender order. It has been questioned whether the current concept of nation state plus market economy can guarantee real democracy because of its economic, epistemic and gouvernemental exclusions (Claude Lefort, Achille Mbembe). Furthermore, the establishment of a solidary society needs to reach beyond the legal discourse. “Rights must not be confused with equality and legal recognition with emancipation.” (Wendy Brown, 1995, 97).
The presentation offers suggestions with Queerfeminist, post/decolonial strategies against economic, epistemic and other forms of violence (Sara Ahmed). Against a neoliberal appropriation of the term queer I understand with radical queer theory: “[Queer] as a point of departure for a broad critique that is calibrated to account for the social antagonism of nationality, race, gender, and class as well as sexuality.” (Ann McClintock et al., 1997, 3). The aim is to deconstruct, denaturalise, deessentialise and disidentify these categories nation, gender, race, class, ability and religion etc. This paper argues with Queer of Color and other critiques e.g. José Esteban Muñoz and Roderick Ferguson for new perspectives on the resistant performances, survival and activism of marginalised, minority subjects and queer futurity.
Furthermore, I install “Religion” as equivalent interdependent and intersectional category of knowledge in the discussion of “situated knowledge” (Donna Haraway). An investigation reveals that gender and religion as intersectional, interdependent categories of knowledge production are neither sufficiently analysed nor deessentialised. Queerfeminist, post/decolonial, and postsecular critique underline that subject formation, agency and human flourishing can also be obtained with religious practices (Saba Mahmood, Ulrike Auga). This paper also shows how individual and collective agency can be thought together.
A radically democratic understanding (Chantal Mouffe) requires a radical social imaginary that can be identified beyond the legal discourse. The paper applies Cornelius Castoriadis’ concept of the of “radical social instituting imaginary” to describe a collectivity beyond identity. He does not suggest what a society should look like, but focuses on the constant re-imagination with the radical imagination.

Ulrike E. Auga is Visiting Professor at the Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice (INCISE) at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. Born in East-Berlin, she participated in the peaceful revolution in 1989 and became involved with social movements and issues of solidarity, gender and religion. She further developed her postcolonial critique when she worked for several years in South Africa, Mali, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. She is a Gender, Cultural and Religious Studies scholar at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin (ZtG) and the acting President of the International Association for the Study of Religion and Gender (IARG). Her research interests include: Gender, Sexuality, Cultural Memory, Nationalisms, Fundamentalisms in Transition Contexts (South Africa, West Africa, East/West Germany); Gender, Performativity and Agency in the Visual Archive; Postcolonial, Postsecular, Gender / Queer theory development; Epistemology of Gender and Religion, new Materialism and posthuman Ontology.

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