Sexuality and Decoloniality

Kateřina Kolářová (Czech Republic)

The class will explore how intersections of sexuality, disability, and ethnicity were deployed in the construction of the Orientalised image of Eastern Europe as well as in the rejection of the West as the source of moral pollution and danger to the white national body.

Readings:

• Kateřina Kolářová, 2023. “Crip Genealogies from the Postsocialist East,” Crip Genealogies, edited by Mel Y. Chen, Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, Julie Avril Minich, Therí Alyce Pickens. 217-238. Duke University Press.

Manuela Boatcă (Germany)

The class unravels the gendered frame of global entanglements from a historical, decolonial perspective. It aims to show how the gendering of global inequalities has developed from the outset as an essential facet of modernity/coloniality in interaction with racialization and ethnicization and how the modern/colonial world thus became gendered.

Readings:

• Boatca, Manuela (2022). Gendering Global Entanglements. Decolonizing Inequalities. In: Alexandra Scheele/ Julia Roth/ Heidemarie Winkel (Eds.), Global Contestations of Gender Rights (45-62). Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
• Boatcă, M., & Roth, J. (2016). Unequal and gendered: Notes on the coloniality of citizenship. Current Sociology, 64(2), 191–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392115614781

Maja Pan (Slovenia)

In my lecture, I intend to analyze the possible theoretical foundations for the inclusion of trans in the feminist agenda. My line of argumentation will follow two threads: the first historical and the second philosophical. The historical thread will look at the general lesbian historical efforts to be included in feminism, but it will also focus more on the (post)-Yugoslav space. In the theoretical thread, I make use of the radical feminist and queer feminist gender philosophies of Monique Wittig and Theresa de Lauretis. Finally, we will criticize the term inclusion and introduce the concept of feminist radical solidarity.

Readings:

• Pan, Maja. 2022. Towards Trans Feminist Coalitions in the Post-Yugoslav Space: Building Feminist Radical Solidarities, European Journal of Women’s Studies.

Bojan Bilić (Austria), Aleksa Milanović (Serbia)

The class introduces the largely unknown histories and politics of trans lives, activisms, and culture across the post-Yugoslav states. We will shed light on a diversity of gender embodiments and how they navigate the murky waters of war, capitalism, and transphobia while forging a niche for themselves within the regional and transnational LGBTQ movements.

Readings:

• Bojan Bilić, Iwo Nord, and Aleksa Milanović. 2022. In post-Yugoslav trans worlds: Introduction (Policy Press).

Anna Kurowicka (Poland)

This class will provide an introduction to the concept of asexuality with a focus on how asexuality intersects with gender, race, and disability. The students will also have a chance to discuss how asexuality is conceptualized in non-Western cultural contexts.

Readings:

• Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Beacon Press, 2021. Chapter 2: “Explanation Via Negativa“
• Anna Kurowicka, “Asexuality” in The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work and Sexualities. Routledge, 2021. 37-55.
• Justin, “Race, Misogynoir and the Asexual Community.” The Medium, 2022. https://jancheta25.medium.com/race-misogynoir-and-the-asexual-community-b4d9f9a6d667.

Olenka S. Dmytryk (UK)

The session will look at the role of ‘traditions’ and ‘values’ as processes of labeling and categorisation. These processes can lead to the flourishing or destruction of humans or ecosystems. We will look into what is considered ‘dirty’, ‘pathological’, ‘corrupted’, ‘useless’, ‘immoral’ in different contexts and frameworks affecting Ukraine (EUropeanisation, Russian neo-traditionalist imperialism, ‘purification’ and segregation within Ukraine). For example, we will discuss:

• why colonial and imperialist regimes invent new and change existing traditions;
• how values and traditions become a political tool (and a weapon against those labeled ‘ill’, ‘perverted’, ‘immoral’, ‘a burden’, ‘underdeveloped’);
• what is the price of ‘big promises’ and of ‘being saved’ by others, and how this price is paid;
• how the world that is broken down into ‘clean’ and ‘pure’ categories can be made and understood differently.

Readings:

• Østbø, Jardar. 2017. ‘Securitizing “Spiritual-Moral Values” in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs, 33.3 : 200–216 <https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2016.1251023>
• Victoria Shmidt, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky. ‘The Ukrainian Refugee “Crisis” and the (Re)production of Whiteness in Austrian and Czech Public Politics’, Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 16.2 : 104-130 <https://doi.org/10.2478/jnmlp-2022-0011>

Teri Szűcs (Hungary)

I am going to present two artistic projects in our class that examine the intersecting experiences of care, queerness, and diasporic identities. First, we will get acquainted with the works of Danica Knezevic, a Croatian-Australian performance artist working across endurance performance, video, installation, and photography. Knezevic’s practice explores the negotiations between self and others through acts of caregiving. Implicit in this work is Knezevic’s use of their body and the transference of communication that often comes into play between audience and performer. In the second part of the class, we will discuss the notions of co-authoring and co-creation in the context of dementia care. This allows us to describe the caring relationship as an interaction through which personhood and the narratives of the self can be rehabilitated and rebuilt. This applies to the position of the caregiver just as much as to that of the care receiver. The question we will put forward is how, in the case of dementia, the claim of the transactional and performative model of selfhood gains relevance. I will introduce the participants to my multilingual autobiographical writing project titled ‘My Memory Returned to Me,” which aims to represent how the caring relationship rearranges the fixed positionalities of all parties involved. The project deals with layers of Eastern European–Soviet–post-Soviet diasporic identities as well as with the queering aspect of theintimacy of care – with its potential to deconstruct normative relations and redefine affinities.

Rana M. Jaleel (USA)

The definitions of “rape” and “sexual violence” might seem obvious.  They are, however, contested terms and their social and legal meanings are not stable. This class will consider how anticolonial, anti-racist, and transnational feminists have understood the meaning and causes of sexual violence.

Readings:

• Davis, Angela Y. “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting.” The Black Scholar 9.7 (1978): 24-30
• Rana M. Jaleel, The Work of Rape (New Texts Out Now). Jadaliyya (2023)

Mariam Agamian (Ukraine) and Olenka S.Dmytryk (UK)

Galyna Yarmanova (Ukraine)

“The Wonderful Years” documentary (2018, Directors Svitlana Shymko and Galyna Yarmanova)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8819766/