UkrEngMUL

“Racism” versus “Intersectionality”? Significations of Interwoven Oppressions in Greek LGBTQ+ Discourses

Issue Article
Anna Carastathis
https://doi.org/10.52323/fc4-4
November 2019

Abstract

This paper seeks to make “racism” strange, by exploring its invocation in the sociolinguistic context of LGBTQI+ activism in Greece, where it is used in ways that may be jarring to anglophone readers. In my ongoing research on the conceptualisation of interwoven oppressions in Greek social movement contexts, I have been interested in understanding how the widespread use of the term “racism” as a superordinate category to reference forms of oppression not only based on “race,” “ethnicity,” and “citizenship” (e.g., racism, nationalism, xenophobia) but also those based on gender, gender identity, and sexuality (e.g., sexism, transphobia, and homophobia) relates to the increased adoption of “intersectionality” in movement discourses. In ordinary parlance, this commonplace usage of “racism” as an “umbrella term” nevertheless retains its etymological link to “race,” while its scope is extended to other regimes of superiority/inferiority or privilege/oppression. If intersectionality presupposes that oppressions are ontologically multiple and analytically separable, the use of “racism” as an umbrella concept seems to point in the other direction, implying that all forms of oppression originate from a common source, have a similar ontological basis, or generate privilege for the same social agents who deploy similar tactics vis-à-vis oppressed groups. My research examines how intersectionality – widely understood as a multi-axial theory of oppression, which contends that power relations are multiple, distinct, and irreducible to one another, yet converge simultaneously in the experiences of multiply oppressed social groups – relates to the use of “racism” as a struggle concept in Greek, but also in other languages commonly used in Greece, such as Albanian (racizmi) and Arabic (eunsuria).In this paper, I examine how these two vocabularies – of racism and intersectionality – are operative in movement discourses, but also how they shape and are shaped by activists’ perceptions, analyses, and theories of oppression.
UkrEngMUL

Hegemony in Post-Soviet Georgia: Types of Nationalisms and Masculinities

Issue Article
Aia Beraia
https://doi.org/10.52323/fc4-5
January 2019

Abstract

The article concerns the political history of the post-Soviet Georgian state. The new post-Soviet nation state is being created and gradually transformed into a political economy of liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism. In this transformation, Georgia moves away from the Soviet Union and its successor Russia and acquires European identity via the discourse and practices of national political and economic elites. The discursive production of this hegemonic pro-Western nationalism is intertwined with the production of hegemonic masculinities. This article analyzes the discourses of these elites and reveals three types of hegemonic masculinity, which acquire their meaning alongside and through the processes of national independence, militarization, and/or neoliberal reforms and policies. These new masculinities aim to replace old, Soviet, hegemonic masculinities in Georgia and thus, a new kind of hegemonic culture and patriarchy is being created. Further, the historical domination of pro-Western nationalism can be interpreted variously: while Georgia is open, nearly from the outset, to the Western-style political system (liberal democracy), one can also look to certain historical moments as the turning points when an active neoliberal transformation and (discursive) attainment of European identity began in Georgia. Keywords: nationalism; masculinities; hegemony; post-Soviet Georgia.
UkrEngMUL

Whose Feminism? Feminist Movements in Russia and “Western” Cultural Hegemony

Issue Article
Vanya Solovey
December 2018

It is common knowledge that feminism is a “Western” invention and if Russia has any feminism to speak of, then it is nothing but a copy of the “Western” one. Those ideas appear at every turn in dominant discourses and sometimes even within Russian feminist communities. Are Russian feminisms really forever doomed to try “catching up” with “Western” ones? This essay discusses “Western” cultural hegemony with regards to feminism and the various ways to critically interact with it. It deals with the question why the feminist “manual” relies so much on “Western” theories and what alternative foundations it can have. (The full text is available in Russian).

UkrEng

Co-Optation of Feminism: Gender, Militarism and the UNSC Resolution 1325

Issue Article
Anna Nikoghosyan
https://doi.org/10.52323/fc1-1
December 2017

Abstract

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 is often referred to as a landmark resolution. Despite its revolutionary potential, I argue that the Resolution was developed through gendered discourses that allowed its use for militarist purposes. Informed by poststructuralist international relations feminist theory, I refer to the Resolution as a discursive practice and claim that the ways in which the UN conceptual apparatus understands and interprets gender and security open up possibilities for states to co-opt the very radical meaning of the Resolution by legitimising and normalising militarist practicing and silencing anti-militarist critique. In order to show this, I examine the gendered discourses behind the creation of the Resolution and address two major ways (including the ongoing militarisation processes in the Republic of Armenia) by which the Resolution is being militarised. (The full text is available in English and in translation into Ukrainian).

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