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Queering Paradigms VIII brings together critical discourses on queer-feminist solidarity between Western, post-Soviet and post-socialist contexts. It highlights transnational solidarity efforts against homophobia, transphobia and misogyny. It engages grass-roots activists and community organizers in a conversation with scholars, and shows that the lines between these categories are blurry and that queer theorists and analysts are to be found in all spheres of queer-feminist culture. It highlights that queer paradigms and theories are born in street protests, in community spaces, in private spheres, through art and culture as well as in academia, and that the different contexts speak to each other.
This anthology presents some of the radical approaches that emerge at the intersection of activism, community organizing, art and academia, through transnational exchange, migration and collaborations. It is a celebration of alliances and solidarities between activism, community building, art, culture and academic knowledge production. Yet, the collected work also brings forward the necessary critique of Western hegemonies involved in contemporary queer-feminist solidarity activism and theory between the 'East' and 'West.' It is an important thinking about, thinking through and thinking in solidarity and the East/West divide, setting new impulses to fight oppression in all its forms.
List of contents
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Katharina Wiedlack, Saltanat Shoshanova
and Masha Godovannaya
Introduction 1
Part I Queering Paradigms, Challenging the Western Gaze
Katharina Wiedlack
1 Fucking Solidarity: 'Working Together' Through
(Un)pleasant Feelings 21
Veda Popovici
2 Solidarity in Illegality: How the Corrupt East Is Already
a Queer East 51
Nick Mayhew
3 Queering Sodomy: A Challenge to 'Traditional' Sexual
Relations in Russia 77
nadiya chushak, Yulia Serdyukova and Irina Tantsiura
4 'We'll Be Fine, and You Just Hang in There': A Queer
Critique of the Imperial Gaze in Gaycation Episode 'Ukraine' 97
vi
Part II Local Queer Practices: Between Nationalistic
and Global Discourses
Lesia Pagulich
5 New Lovers...? As Patriots and Citizens:
Thinking beyond Homonationalism and Promises
of Freedom (the Ukrainian case) 125
Vanya Mark Solovey
6 'Global Standards' and 'Internalized Coloniality':
How Feminists in Russia See the 'West' 153
Raili Uibo
7 Prides in Estonia: Struggling in the Centrifugal Pulls
of Nationalism and Transnational Leveraged Pedagogy 175
Joanna Chojnicka
8 Transition Narratives on Polish Trans Blogs:
A Discursive Colonization Approach 201
Part III The Solidarity 'Stress Test' -Solidarity in Action -Empirical Studies of Queer Migration and
Western Solidarity Projects
Elena Smirnova
9 Could You Show Me Chechnya on the Map? The Struggle
for Solidarity within the Support Campaign for Homosexual
Refugees from the North Caucasus in France 231
Pauliina Lukinmaa and Aleksandr Berezkin
10 Migrating Russian-speaking LGBTIQ+ Activists:
On Displacement, Sense of Belonging
and Transnational Activism 263
vii
Masha Beketova
11 Working with Russian-speaking LGBTIQ Refugees in Berlin 291
Part IV Art-based Research, Artivism, and Other Forms of Resistance
Alexandra Yaseneva and Ekaterina Davydova
12 Boston Marriages in Contemporary Russia and Beyond 319
the queer-feminist affinity art group
'unwanted organisation'
13 Queer Kinship or Queering Kinship: Starting Points,
Methodological Speculations, Overcoming, Searching
for Art Practices and Language - a Lecture-performance 333
14 The Fucking Solidarity Manifesto 351
Notes on Contributors 355
Index 361
About the author
Katharina Wiedlack is a post-doctoral researcher in the fields of queer and feminist theory, Popular Culture, American, Postsocialist, Decolonial and Disability Studies.
Saltanat Shoshanova is currently pursuing her Master's degree in History of Arts at the Free University Berlin. Her research interests include art in connection to queer and feminist theory, queer migration, decoloniality and post-Soviet space.
Masha Godovannaya is a visual artist, queer-feminist researcher, curator, educator, and she co-founded a queer-feminist affinity art group "Unwanted Organisation".
