Introduction: Affective Histories of Queer and Trans Activism

publishedVersionNon peer reviewe

Red Square as a resistance technique in Russian dissident arts

Red Square is a symbolic place for the Moscow dissidence protests. Russian artists, writers and dissidents have frequently used the history of the square’s memory as a crucial and fundamental issue within the framework of their strategy. Haunting images associated with Red Square’s past, permanently returning in the history of the Russian activism, always refer both to universal narratives of the politics of protest and to the specific contexts producing entirely new meanings. Each time, through their public actions artists create new meanings for the Red Square’s space – they expose the existing limits of the power apparatus and call for the right to legitimize it, therefore contesting the links between the theatre of legitimacy and the public space. From this perspective, the space of protest becomes a fundamental instrument of political action, and the square - ordinarily used in the established order to manifest the government’s symbolic authority - this time becomes a kind of technique as well as a material body support in the politics of resistance

Odzyskać Noc: Revisiting the 1990-2000s Anarcho-feminist Protests in Poland as a Strike against Gender-based Violence

The article analyzes the Polish anarcho-feminist idea of protest against gender-based violence during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Examining the oral history interviews with activists and grassroots cultural productions dating from the period of political transformation, such as zines, leaflets, and graphic images, the article focuses on various strategies and concepts of a feminist strike. These different historical sources emphasize multiple inspirations for the protest strategies employed by the analyzed collectives, including the tradition of women’s strikes during the socialist era, youth demonstrations of the 1960s, and Anglo-American feminism. They also enable revisiting the emotional dynamics and meanings of violence that emerged from the anarcho-feminist archival materials and memories of individual activists.L’article analyse le concept anarcha-féministe polonais de la protestation contre la violence sexospécifique à la fin des années 1990 et au début des années 2000. Examinant des entrevues sur l’histoire orale avec des activistes et des productions culturelles communautaires datant de la période de transformation politique, comme des fanzines, des brochures et des représentations graphiques, l’article se penche sur divers concepts et stratégies d’une grève féministe. Ces différentes sources historiques mettent en relief de multiples inspirations pour les stratégies de protestation employées par les collectifs analysés, notamment la tradition des grèves de femmes durant l’époque socialiste, les manifestations de jeunes durant les années 1960 ainsi que le féminisme anglo-américain. Elles permettent également de réexaminer les dynamiques émotionnelles et les significations de la violence qui ont émergé de documents d’archives anarcha-féministes et de souvenirs d’activistes sur une base individuelle