From “Solidarity” to the Maidan. The feminist perspective

  • From “Solidarity” to the Maidan. The feminist perspective

In her project entitled: “Invisible Women of Solidarity”, Sanja Iveković refers to the feminist conviction that in the Polish public sphere women are erased and marginalized, their significance is reduced and their participation in important political or cultural events and in the holding of power is ignored.

Undoubtedly, although this conviction makes it easier to indicate and document the symbolic violence against women and other marginalized groups, it also entails the risk of ossification of the political agency and the secondary expunging of the factual activeness of women. Therefore, Jacques Ranciere suggests searching for the political and cultural activity of the proletariat, whereas Judith Butler analyses the effective resistance of sexual minorities.

In her lecture on “Solidarity” and the Maidan, dr Ewa Majewska will raise the issue of participation and agency of women and queers, pointing to their resistance to the expunging, to how they transform from marginal figures into elements of the centre, how they question the patriarchal inequalities and how groups of the oppressed construct their own notions and practices of solidarity.

Ewa Majewska will be guided in her journey by bell hooks, author of the book entitled: “Feminist Theory. From Margin to Centre” and by socialist feminists, who are still carrying out research concerning the sexist grounds for capitalist, the strategies of resistance and the alternatives. In light of the recent occurrences in Ukraine, as well as in broader terms – in the context of semi-peripheral revolutions of the last 30 years – dr Ewa Majewska is going to ponder on the revolutions outside of the centre, as well as on sexual divisions and sex differences demonstrated thereby.

This perspective will be a good way to approach the problem of gender wars, which constitute an incidental yet unpleasant episode, and to wars concerning the chances and possibilities of a social change and renegotiations of the sex contract.

Ewa Majewska – feminist philosopher and activist. Gender Studies lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Senior Fellow at Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Formerly worked at the Institute of Philosophy of the Szczecin University and at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Author of a book entitled: “Feminizm jako filozofia społeczna. Szkice z teorii rodziny” as well as texts of numerous monographs, anthologies and periodicals, including “Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society”, “Nowa Krytyka”, “Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki”, “Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”, „Kultura Popularna” or “Le Monde Diplomatique”. Co-editor of the volumes of “The Captive Mind 2” (“Zniewolony umysł 2. Neoliberalizm i jego krytyki”) (with Jan Sowa) and “Futuryzm miast przemysłowych. 100 lat Wolfsburga i Nowej Huty” (with Kuba Szreder and Martin Kaltwasser). Translated the following texts into Polish: “Feminist Theory. From Margin to Centre” by bell hooks and “Can the Subaltern Speak?” - essay by Gayatri Spivak .

Other events from that cycle: