UkrEng

Necropolitics, Homonationalism and Precarious Queer Lives in Times of Global Neoliberalism

Review
Oksana Dudko
July 2020

For many activist groups in Ukraine, “Western” legislation and politics concerning LGBT rights often serve as positive exemplars and “success stories.” However, the collective volume Queer Necropolitics, edited by Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco, draws attention to the problematic aspects of the victories in the struggle for LGBT equality in the neoliberal West. Specifically, the book demonstrates that only a privileged subgroup of the LGBT community (usually white, middle-class gay men) can fully enjoy rights and freedoms. In contrast, economically and politically vulnerable groups – such as people of colour and transgender migrants – remain at the fringes in the struggle for equal rights. The authors claim that not only are these groups ignored by authorities, but even leading LGBT organizations do not “notice” the precarious lives of trans*people of colour – especially trans*feminine individuals – within their communities. Read the text of book review in Ukrainian.

UkrEng

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

Review
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.

UkrEng

Living a Feminist Life

Review
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.

UkrEngRus

Humanitarian Violence, or A Critique of American Imperialism

Review
Oksana Dudko
September 2019

Resonating with the staggering number of studies of the “American Empire”, Neda Atanasoski’s book “Humanitarian Violence” is, primarily, a critique of post-Cold War American imperialism. In particular, Atanasoski argues that American imperialism exploits humanitarian ethics for global expansion. Hence, in her view, the U.S. deploys the politics of world supremacy under the guise of a “war for democratic values and freedoms.” Read the full review in Ukrainian.

UkrEngRus

“The Tolerance Trap” or One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Review
Ganna Gnedkova
June 2019

The “tolerance trap” implies that those who are tolerated agree to be tolerated, and thus assimilated, adjusted to the model, neutralized Others. The LGBTQ movement, according to Walters, has forgotten not only the original meaning of “tolerance”, which it had to put up with, but also its original demands: the respect for differences, not in spite of differences, and the achievement of full – not partial and exclusive – rights in a civil society. (Read the full text in Ukrainian)

UkrEngRus

“European Others”: Сonstruction of Europeanness and Logics of Racialization

Review
Lesia Pagulich
January 2018
The book European Others, by pointing out race as inherent to current European thought, disrupts the dominant narrative of Europe as a raceless continent and reminds that the concept of race and race-based policies inherent to colonial empires originated in Europe and were exported all over the world, while Europe remains marginal in discussions of race and racism, especially in relation to the U.S., which is regarded as a center of racism. The book contributes to scholarly and activist discussions of European forms of racialization that obtain little attention because of their deviation from the dominant discourse around race, whereas racelessness maintains racial thinking and its effects invisible. In its discussion of race, the book situates Europe within the wider context of colorblind ideologies and characterizes it by the combination of race and religion, and the externalization of racialized populations, while producing a homogeneous European entity, however, portrayed as an “inclusive” and “postnational” community.
UkrEngRus

How to Embroider Feminism: Schemes and Technics

Review
Nataliia Martynenko
May 2017

"TEXTUS" is not a propaganda of gender inequality with an opposite meaning, notes Oksana Bryukhovetska, the curator of the exhibition. Instead, it is a field for feminist reflections of Ukrainian contemporary artists on a socially constructed patriarchal image of a woman. Embroidery and textiles are the artists' tools for expressing their critical views on what is perceived as a "norm" that, simultaneously, can be painful, defeating or unjust. (The full text is available in Ukrainian.)