The Queer Epistemologies : Challenges to the modes of knowing about sexuality in Russia

Peer reviewe

Spatial justice : how the police craft the city by enforcing law on prostitution

(instead of abstract) This chapter deals with the law on sex work in contemporary Russia and highlights the role of a particular actor in economic transactions of the sex for sale, the police. I will analyse the tension that informs the current definition of sex work as a vicious criminal act of ‘prostitution’ on the one hand, and as an everyday normalised economic activity on the other. This analysis is undertaken within socio-spatial thinking, or ‘the idea that there exists a mutually influential and formative relation between the social and the spatial dimensions of human life, each shaping the other in similar ways’ (Soja 2010: 3). I look at the city as having at least in part been produced as a result of power relations in negotiations between sex workers and police officers who struggle for the right to the city using those legal tools available to them. This is the struggle for the right to use the city on one’s own terms, a process known as spatial justice.Peer reviewe

Regulating desire in Russia

Kondakov A. (2020). 'Regulating desire in Russia,' in: C. Ashford and A. Maine (eds.) Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality and the Law (pp. 396-408). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.This chapter discusses the ways that regulation of sexuality takes in current Russia. Since 2013 when Russian legislature introduced a censorship law on ‘propaganda’ of homosexuality, courts have been tasked with decisions about what published materials or public actions constitute the ‘harmful’ content which this legislation seeks to ban. The following is the analysis of these decisions and other developments of regulation of sexuality that make up political and legal context. The main purpose of the study is to uncover a particular form of sexual subjectivity that judges convey through their texts. The use of Foucauldian discourse analysis helps to discover a split sexual subject who is simultaneously ‘born gay’ and chooses to become one. Such a structure of sexual subjectivity makes it possible to impose regulatory powers of the law.Peer reviewe

Violent Affections

Violent Affections uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of ‘gay propaganda’ law, the book shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials. It then utilises an original methodology of studying ‘legal memes’ and argues that these individual affective states are directly connected to the political violence aimed at queer lives more generally. The main aim of Violent Affections is to explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence evidenced in the reviewed cases. Alexander Sasha Kondakov expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature – queer theory and affect theory – in order to conceptualise what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. Taking the empirical observations from Russia as a starting point, he develops an original explanation of how contemporary power relations are changing from those of late modernity as envisioned by Foucault’s Panopticon to neo-disciplinary power relations of a much more fragmented, fluid and unstructured kind – the Memeticon. The book traces how exactly affections circulate from body to body as a kind of virus and eventually invade the body that responds with violence. In this analytic effort, it draws on the arguments from memetics – the theory of how pieces of information pass on from one body to another as they thrive to survive by continuing to resonate. This work makes the argument truly interdisciplinary

Стать невидимок: виробництво лакун в дискурсі про гомосексуальність в Росії

In the new Russia, some people experience exclusion from citizenship. This exclusion is based on different claims of identity: lesbians and gay men are among those who are excluded. Though in some states the mechanism of this exclusion is expressive so long as it is inscribed in the law manifestly, in Russia the mechanism is hidden in the field of silence: the articulated field of discourse on homosexuality is full of lacunas. While the most productive speakers are certainly LGBT activists, the most passive ones are the officials. These forces come into discursive play where rights are at stake. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the regulative features which silence entails in the Russian discourse on homosexuality

Sex, Alcohol, and Soul : Violent Reactions to Coming Out after the “Gay Propaganda” Law in Russia

This article is focused on a particular set of social relations in Russia: sexuality and violence in the context of consumption of alcohol. We look at how violence erupts after revelation of queer sexuality of one of the participants of collective drinking. Discussions of homosexuality in Russia became especially heated after the adoption of the bill against the “propaganda of non‐traditional family values” in 2013. This law primarily marks information about homosexuality as inappropriate and dangerous to minors. We review court decisions on violence against gay men before and after the introduction of this law. The court cases we analyze are not cases of the “propaganda” law enforcement, but routine violent felonies. As we selected only those cases that involve alcohol consumption from a larger sample, we analyze the stories told in these court files focusing on interaction rituals during the practice of collective heavy drinking. We demonstrate how this ritual is centered around confirmation of masculinity, ceremonies of sharing, and exchange of respect. We also show that these ritualized practices are interrupted and confused by introduction of information about one of the participants' queer sexuality. This interruption evolves into violent reactions, including murder. Nevertheless, the ritual of drinking supports both a “conversation of souls” (sharing intimate secrets) and violent reactions to the information that challenges masculinity of the ritual's participants.Peer reviewe

Chechnya, Detention Camps in

Kondakov, A. (2019) Chechnya, Detention Camps in. In: The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History, pp. 315-318. Boston: Cengage.The imprisonment of men in the Russian republic of Chechnya for alleged homosexuality.Peer reviewe

The Censorship “Propaganda” Legislation in Russia

Kondakov, A. (2019) The Censorship “Propaganda” Legislation in Russia. In: L. Ramon Mendos, State-Sponsored Homophobia 2019, pp. 213-215. Geneva: ILGA.The 135-FZ law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors is a censorship legislation that limits freedom of expression by making neutral and positive information about LGBTQ topics a misdemeanor subjected to penalties. The text of the law is clear, and the procedure of its implementation does not require an actual child to be harmed in any way. The legislation has a variety of other effects, beyond its implementation. One of the most important results of the spread of bigotry it generated is the growth of violence against queer populations in Russia. Since the law is in place, Russia is a less safe location for queer expressions than it has been before. Therefore, the law sends the country backwards on the line of progression to a more inclusive sexual citizenship

Queer Archive, LGBT Museum, and the Lost Boys : Two versions of the history of sexuality

Peer reviewe

Same-Sex Marriages inside the Closet: Deconstruction of Subjects of Gay and Lesbian Discourses in Russia

This work aims to analyse LGBT discourse in Russia conducted by human rights non-governmental organisations concerned with the protection of gay and lesbian rights in the country. The main emphasis is given to deconstruction of subjectivities of the discourse with tools of Foucaultian and critical discourse-analyses. One of the most evident examples is provided in the last section of the work. It is concerned with strategies employed by the organisations under research to guarantee marriage opportunities to homosexuals in Russia. It was also important for the purposes of the research to uncover the meanings of discursive practices employed by the officials in their discussion of gay and lesbian issues. In this regard, a brief analysis of relevant legal norms and public policies is included in the work. The attitude of state power towards LGBT problems is described in the terms of environment where the human rights organisations have to perform their activities. The role of state power turns out to be important in organising and correcting the strategies of the organisations so long as the strategies are influenced by governmentality of the discourses. It results into a situation where the non-governmental organisations are to some extent governed through workings of political discourses where the power of the authorities sets the scene