Queering Paradigms VIII

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.

Auteur

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".

Contenu

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