Narrating feminisms : what do we talk about when we talk about feminism in Estonia?

Drawing on interviews with women who identify as feminists in Estonia, this article explores how the stories we tell about feminism and its past influence the kind of theoretical and political work we are able to do. Zooming in on the story of the emergence of feminisms in postsocialist Estonia which has not been thoroughly researched yet, this article calls upon feminists in Estonia to reflect critically on how they conceptualize feminisms, while at the same time building a framework to think about local feminism within transnational feminist context. Starting from stories of how women became feminists in Estonia since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, I reflect on the gaps, chance encounters and tensions that my fieldwork revealed to narrate feminism differently, to bring forth new aspects of feminism in this context. In particular, I focus on two moments: the common imaginary of ‘real’ feminism as Western mass movement and the tensions between the local context and ‘Western feminism’. I complicate the narrative in the article through including interludes in between the main text to highlight how the incidents that happened outside and around the interviews shape my story of feminism in Estonia

How to tell your story as the story of my feminism : notes towards solidarity

There are so many ways we can fall flat on our faces when trying to act in the name of solidarity, no matter how noble our intentions. There are ways our solidarity can painfully bruise those we are trying to support. Lately, when discussing – with my students and colleagues – the ongoing "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests in Iran, Russia's attack on Ukraine, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria or the University and College Union industrial action in the UK, amongst many other pressing issues and crises of our times, 'solidarity' has become a particularly flailing word. A word of futility, of inadequacy, of failure, and often also of manipulation, of self-interest, of dishonesty. The performative gesture of joining in with the chorus "enough is enough" is never enough, is it

The queer afterlives of texts

Four years after I published my thesis Whirling Stories: Postsocialist Feminist Imaginaries and the Visual Arts (2013) on Estonian queer feminist artist Anna-Stina Treumund, the artist took her own life, after years of struggling with depression. In utter shock and deep grief, I posted a part of the text above on social media. An interlude in the thesis, it captures my memories of the moment when we first met at a three-day feminist workshop in a small coastal village in the north-west of Estonia. Through an ethnographic engagement with Treumund’s photographic self-portraiture, the thesis explored the role of geopolitics and visual arts in producing feminist knowledge about time, space, gender and sexuality. In the process, we became good friends; which as many feminist researchers know, poses multiple challenges for research. Interested in the margins, the interstices, the spaces in between, I wrote a rather experimental thesis, putting experiences, bodies, subjectivities, words, and images at the centre of attention, while never losing sight of context

Transnational and Decolonial Feminist Insights Into the Neoliberalization of Estonian Academia

Since the 1990s Estonia has been characterized by the acceptance of neoliberal values, as an antidote to the Soviet past. Neoliberal practices, like quantification and market- orientation, have permeated most spheres of society, including academia. There has been very little critical reflection on the epistemic inequalities created by this academic model for Estonia as a semi-peripheral country. In this article, the authors aim to place the neoliberalization of academia within a broader framework of colonial practices within global knowledge production, continuing their previous work on the blind spots of transnational feminism  and intersections of feminisms and neoliberalism. Building on insights developed within transnational and decolonial  feminism, the authors propose three interventions into neoliberal academic culture: telling better stories, practicing slow scholarship to tease apart complex colonial entanglements and using creative writing practices.

Rendering race through a paranoid postsocialist lens activist curating and public engagement in the postcolonial debate in Eastern Europe

This chapter engages with the heated public debate on racial representation and colonial history that arose around Kumu Art Museum's exhibition Rendering Race (2021) in Estonia. As an academic activist intervention, it proposed an important shift by changing racist titles of artworks from the twentieth century and thereby for the first time in the museum's practice considered minority groups as its publics. The chapter analyses the curatorial strategies used and the key points of contention in the public debate to consider what it revealed and obscured about Eastern Europe's relationship to the aftermath of European colonialism

The postsocialist ‘missing other’ of transnational feminism?

No abstract availabl

The magic of feminist bridging : a mosaic of anti-racist speech bubbles about othering in Swedish Academia

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, reflections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well

Loving coalitions : seven texts on feminist resistance

In 2021, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, who have worked/still work in different gender studies centres in Sweden, formed a collective called Loving Coalitions. Our initial aim was to take as a point of departure our different yet intersecting everyday experiences of feeling epistemically, racially, and existentially Othered within Swedish gender studies and society, and start to work towards feminist coalition building. During these years we engaged with creative and artistic modes of knowledge production, such as automatic writing, collective memory-work, poetry, letters, and fiction. In our Loving Coalitions we learnt that by creatively writing about and collectively discussing our experiences and memories of multiple challenging and, at times, impossible border crossings—national, epistemic, racialised, gender, legal, existential—we organically created a safe space in which we can compare notes between our different backgrounds and academic trajectories, and collectively understand and theorize about them in new transformative ways. We are also currently weaving together our discussions, letters, poems, memories, testimonies, and stories into a collective book publication that will celebrate the journey of a beautiful coalition of seven different yet interconnected feminist scholars: Memories that Bridge: Weaving Feminist (Her)Stories in Loving Coalition

Virvlande berättelser : Postsocialistiska feministiska föreställningar och bildkonst

This thesis is about the geopolitics of feminist knowledge and the role of the visual arts in conceiving and reconfiguring postsocialist feminist imaginaries. Its central concern is to contest the fantasy, prevalent within Western feminist theorizing, of a “lag” between Western and former Eastern Europe. The thesis explores these imaginaries on a micro scale, zooming in on the deeply personal and political artwork of a contemporary feminist and lesbian-identified Estonian artist, Anna-Stina Treumund. This partial and limited focus on Treumund’s photographic self-portraiture enables us to look into the intensities and specificities of individual experience in postsocialist space. Throughout, the thesis evokes a whirling subject as a feminist figuration. This is simultaneously a reference to the embodied and the relational structure of knowledge-systems and world-making. Drawing on postsocialist, postcolonial, queer and feminist visual culture studies, the author argues that Treumund’s art is always already embedded in the local context, as it builds on and problematizes the existing discussions of feminist generations, theorizing, activism and art practices. Combining close readings of Treumund’s artworks with contemporary theoretical debates in feminist studies, encounters with the artist and autobiographical narratives, this thesis asserts: there is no “lag”. More importantly, it is of utmost ethical and political importance to pay closer attention to geopolitical locatedness as an axis of difference that matters in contemporary feminist theorizing.Den här doktorsavhandlingen handlar om geopolitik i feministisk kunskap och bildkonstens roll i förståelse och omskapande av postsocialistiska feministiska föreställningar. Dess huvudsakliga fokus handlar om att bestrida den i västerländsk feministisk teori ofta förekommande fantasin om att före detta Östeuropa på olika sätt ”släpar efter” i relation till väst. Doktorsavhandlingen utforskar dessa föreställningar på mikronivå då den zoomar in på det djupt personliga och politiska bildkonstarbete utfört av den samtida feministiska och självidentifierat lesbiska estniska konstnärinnan Anna-Stina Treumund. Avhandlingens partiella fokus på Treumunds fotografier i form av självporträtt möjliggör för oss att få inblick i de intensiteter och specifika förhållanden som utgör en individuell erfarenhet av att befinna sig i det postsocialistiska rummet. Genomgående i doktorsavhandlingen används det virvlande subjektet som feministisk figuration. Figurationen innebär simultant en referens till den förkroppsligade och den relationella aspekten av kunskapssystem och skapande av världen. Med utgångspunkt i postsocialistiska, postkoloniala, queera och feministiska studier av visuell kultur argumenterar författaren att Treumunds bildkonst alltid redan är inbäddad i en lokal kontext, detta sedan den växer fram ur och problematiserar de diskussioner som pågår mellan feministiska generationer, i teori, aktivism och bland konstutövare. Genom att kombinera närläsning av Treumunds konstnärliga arbete med samtida teoretisk debatt inom feministiska studier, med möten med konstnärinnan, och med självbiografiska berättelser, försäkrar denna avhandling: det finns ingen “eftersläpning”. Än mer väsentligt är att betona att det är av yttersta etisk och politisk vikt att ägna mer uppmärksamhet åt geopolitiska lokaliseringar som skillnadsskapande faktor i samtida feministisk teoribildning

Intersections of Feminisms and Neoliberalism : Post-State-Socialist Estonia in a Transnational Feminist Framework

The article talks about the divide between feminism and neoliberalism in post-state socialist Estonia in the 1990s. It states that neoliberal framework has had an impact on alternative social philosophies and movements, which covered individual rights of women. Topics include postsocialism in political landscape, corporate capitalism, and individualism and free markets.Funding Agencies|Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies (CEES, European Regional Development Fund); Estonian Research Council [PUT 1481]</p