Texts

Sodomy and Contemporary Ideas about Russia’s Tradition of Homophobia

Feminist Collective

Nick Mayhew

June 2020

According to Russian politician Vitalii Milonov, homosexuality has never been tolerated in Russia, hence it stands at odds with Russian cultural and religious “tradition”. As evidence, sometimes he cites early modern anti-sodomy laws. Focussing on these laws, in this short article I question the idea that homophobia is a quality intrinsic to early modern Russian history. I argue that “sodomy” (muzhelozhstvo) did not refer unambiguously to same-sex intercourse in the early modern period. Moreover, anti-sodomy laws were imported to Russia from Northern Europe and their legitimacy was questioned. Read the full text in Russian.

Our Wild Ones: Aesthetics and Politics in the Music of Independent Ukraine

Ganna Gnedkova

June 2020

As Maria Sonevytsky asserts in Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine, music is not only of aesthetic value for the culture, it also carries a political message, either stated or hidden, conscious or imposed. What’s so different about Ukrainian music is the Wildness that it mediates while strategically applying its exoticism to make a political statement. Within this Wild Music, those listening come to see an imaginary of the Ukrainian sovereignty and thus come to be connected through “acoustic citizenship” which goes far beyond the country’s borders. Read the full text in Ukrainian.

Living a Feminist Life

Oksana Husieva

April 2020

Living a Feminist Life, the ninth book of the feminist writer and independent scholar Sara Ahmed is a hybrid text that includes the episodes from the author’s personal and professional life, engagements with prominent feminist critics, examples from folklore, literature, and film, as well as reflections on the development and prospects of the feminist movement. Ahmed employs reflexive and analytical frameworks to demonstrate that a feminist life – like feminism itself – means to constantly approach reality from a critical perspective and to raise thorny and often challenging questions. Full text is available in Ukrainian.

Principles of Good Work for an Activist Collective

Feminist Collective

Yosh

March 2020

The text contains reflections on work in the public sector, in particular in the team of “Feminist Workshop”. The activity under analysis is based on flat and self-organizing methods, as well as the principle of "practice what you promote." The following principles flow from them and should help the activist collective to exist harmoniously and sustainable. I wrote them for a discussion in activism, which I am terribly lacking, to comprehend our activities and to form guidelines for the future. Also, this set of principles is aimed at reducing the pressure of productivity on people, which is carried out by external factors (such as competitive culture, conditions of economic instability, donor requirements, expectations of relatives), at least within the team. Read the full text in Russian.

The Unwomanly Face of Chechnya

Feminist Collective

Lenny Smirno

February 2020

This documentary essay conveys the author’s thoughts and feelings regarding the homophobic campaign that developed in Chechnya since the beginning of the 2017. It tells about that place, or that empty signifier, that was assigned to women in the coverage of this tragedy, and about the personal experience of the author as a volunteer of an association in France supporting LGBT+ refugees from the North Caucasus. Read the full text in Russian.

We Speak From the Side of the Road

Feminist Collective

Vishnya Vishnya

geo

Syaivo

February 2020

According to my view of the world, there is heterogeneity present in it - not diversity we are told of, but heterogeneity. A conflict is inherent to it because these different layers are not compatible due to historic inequality. There are people and institutions that hide and erase this heterogeneity - re-write the history because they benefit from creating and supporting hierarchies. Because of this, marginalized people and social groups emerge. For me, 'marginal' as a word designates something that has been pushed to the side of the road. This concept is very important to Zboku because we speak from the side of the road and try to work with contexts laying "on the side”. Read the interview in Ukrainian.

Stigmatization of the Analytical Concept of Gender as Ideology

Erzsébet Barát

https://doi.org/10.52323/365072

February 2020

I identify three junctures … since the system change in 1989, which have emerged and crystalized into the discourses of ‘gender ideology’ and ‘gender-craze’. This appropriation of ’gender’, the key category in feminist analysis is a serious attack to stigmatize and ostracize its critical potential and existence. I shall reflect on the specificities of these changes and argue for a model of meaning in terms of polyvocality that is always already open to critique. We need such a socially situated model to reclaim gender as the critical category of analysis that has been developed to expose the very ideological interest of patriarchal institutions to re/produce unequal relations of power as given. (This is original text in English; the translation is available in Ukrainian).

The Wretched on the Walls: A Fanonian Reading of a Revolutionary Albanian Orphanage

Genta Nishku

https://doi.org/10.52323/309702

February 2020

Abstract

Using Franz Fanon’s “On Violence,” this paper analyzes dynamics of power and violence in Lulëkuqet mbi Mure / Red Poppies on Walls, a 1976 Albanian film about WWII anti-fascist resistance, told through the story of a group of orphans in Italian-occupied Albania. Fanon’s explication that the colonizer’s power is founded on force and maintained through violence, capitalist exploitation, dehumanization and compartmentalization, elucidates the film. His argument that decolonization is possible only through greater counter-violence is critical in understanding why the orphans use violent means to liberate themselves. The children’s struggle against the fascist orphanage directors is noticed and harnessed Communist Party members. I argue that though the Party’s guidance helps the children fight their subjugation, it also curbs their revolutionary potential. Thus, the didactic and propagandistic goals of Lulëkuqet mbi Mure allow only for a strict cold war dichotomy: one is either a fascist, capitalist and colonizer, or a communist, revolted colonized subject ready to take up arms. My engagement with the film, however, demonstrates that the children’s solidarity with one another and their subtle resistance prior to the communists’ intervention, gestured toward an alternative way of building community – one closer to Fanon’s ideas of a new humanism, even if it ultimately remains unrealized in the film.

Decolonial Encounters and the Geopolitics of Racial Capitalism

Marina Gržinić

Tjaša Kancler

Piro Rexhepi

https://doi.org/10.52323/365802

January 2020

In the summer of 2018 at the first Balkan Society for Theory and Practice workshop that took place in Prizren, Kosova, scholars, activists, and artists came together to engage in a very much needed debate about the past, present, and future of anti-capitalist politics, feminism, queer and trans* studies, critical race theory, postcolonial and decolonial critique in the context of the post-socialist Balkan countries and former Eastern Europe. The idea for this tri-logue came out of a late night and early morning conversations based on common concerns and collaborations that have taken various forms through years of exchange and engagement with one another. It is a discussion based on the questions posed in the open call for this special issue Breaking with Transition: Decolonial and Postcolonial Perspectives in Eastern Europe. To articulate some crucial critical points through this text, we speak about the conflicts and tensions, as well as the need to envisage important analytical turns and political tactics within our ongoing struggles against turbo-racializing capitalism.

Stigmatization of the Analytical Concept of Gender as Ideology

Erzsébet Barát

December 2019

Translated by:

Nadiya Chushak

I identify three junctures … since the system change in 1989, which have emerged and crystalized into the discourses of ‘gender ideology’ and ‘gender-craze’. This appropriation of ’gender’, the key category in feminist analysis is a serious attack to stigmatize and ostracize its critical potential and existence. I shall reflect on the specificities of these changes and argue for a model of meaning in terms of polyvocality that is always already open to critique. We need such a socially situated model to reclaim gender as the critical category of analysis that has been developed to expose the very ideological interest of patriarchal institutions to re/produce unequal relations of power as given. Read the full text in Ukrainian.

Pages6