The Queer Epistemologies: Challenges to the Modes of Knowing about Sexuality in Russia

Kondakov, Alexander

doi:10.4135/9781529714364.n4

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…I argue for the legitimacy of asking classical queer theory questions, such as questions about power relations and using Russian knowledges to find globally relevant answers to them. Secondly, I outline the contribution of scholarship on queer Russia (Essig 1999;Healey 2018;Kondakov 2020b) to this global queer theory. This contribution helps me to structure the book's narrative and start building my queer theory of neo-disciplinary power relations beyond sexual identity concerns.…”

Section: The Organisation Of the Bookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Violent Affections: Queer sexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia

Kondakov¹

2022

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List of figures and tables viii Acknowledgements ix Series editor's preface xii Introduction: neo-disciplinary power 1 Part I: The authority of law 23 1 The legal field 27 2 From a place of indifference 48 Part II: Unruly sexuality 74 3 Russia in queer colours 77 4 The sexual subject of law 101 Part III: Affects, emotions and law 125 8 Conclusion: the global Memeticon 198 References 211 Index 227VIOLENT AFFECTIONS viii List of figures and tables new guests brought along two more bottles of vodka. In the courtroom, these two men claimed that during the time that elapsed after their arrival, there was a marked increase in tension between Tatyana and Oleg. Tatyana allegedly called him a person with 'non-traditional sexual orientation', requested money from him, and repeatedly bothered him. At one point, Tatyana took Oleg to her bed and 'sat on his face with her genitals, also trying to push her panties into his mouth'. He resisted, which she saw as proof of his homosexuality. One of the guests stood up for Oleg and was locked in a closet, only to be taken to a cemetery later where he was forced to dig his own grave, in which he was buried alive.As the night progressed, Oleg was forced to put on the yellow dress and tights in which the police later discovered his body. The three defendants would soon be found guilty of beating him with their fists, feet and empty vodka bottles. According to the case file, blood was all over the place and Oleg could hardly walk when the drunken group took him to their car and drove in the direction of the Oka River dam. When they arrived, they opened the boot of the car and took Oleg out. He started to walk but fell into a nearby ditch, where he would lie for another week, unfound and eaten by maggots. The defendants left and headed to the victim's flat to pick up some of his belongings, including a TV, a microwave oven and a loudspeaker system. They returned to the original flat, where one of the defendants engaged in sex with Tatyana, and the rest of the guests had sex with another woman.The events of that night were interpreted by the district criminal court as manslaughter (the man who had been buried alive luckily survived the assault and was simply ignored by the court). The judge held that the defendants did not have the intention to kill (this would have constituted murder), but simply caused injuries eventually incompatible with life (manslaughter). In establishing whether the victim was a gay man, the court reviewed a forensic examination of his anus, in which 'spermatozoa were not found'. The three attackers were sentenced to 8 and 9 years in a high-security facility -two of the men were already convicted criminals and therefore received one additional year on their sentences. The rest of the group were summoned only as witnesses, including Tatyana.

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Section: The Organisation Of the Bookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Violent Affections: Queer sexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia

Kondakov¹

2022

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“…Nationalistiska grupper -från fascister och etniska nationalister till statspatrioter som ligger närmare president Putins officiella linje om ett mångnationellt Ryssland -använder sig både av retoriken om att försvara Rysslands suveränitet mot utländskt inflytande och att skydda barn som förkroppsligar nationens framtid. Som tidigare nämnts har akademiker, särskilt inom sociologi och psykologi, gett filosofisk överbyggnad och vetenskaplig auktoritet till diskursen om »traditionella värden» -inte minst genom att framlägga vetenskapliga »bevis» för hur barns utveckling påstås skadas av att utsättas för information om »icke-traditionell» sexualitet (Kondakov, 2020). Kanske mer anmärkningsvärt, åtminstone i internationellt perspektiv där moralkonservatism ofta förknippas med högerrörelser, är att det kommunistiska partiet införlivat idén.…”

Section: En Diskurskoalition Kring »Traditionella Värden» Växer Framunclassified

Rysslands konservativa vändning och den globala anti-genusrörelsen

Edenborg

2022

Nordisk Østforum

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Russia's conservative turn and the global anti-gender movementThe amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation adoped after a 2020 referendum included a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. This is a recent manifestation of the turn to 'traditional values' in Russian politics and society, the best-known expression of which is the 2013 ban on 'propaganda for non-traditional sexual orientation'. This development cannot be understood as solely reflecting 'traditional' attitudes of the Russian population, nor as a backlash against LGBTQ activism. The turn to 'traditional values' must be considered in the context of a global pattern of increased pro-family mobilization, which opposes LGBTQ rights, feminism and the alleged undermining of gender as biologically determined and strictly binary -described by researchers as 'anti-gender mobilization'. Traditionalist politics in Russia should be analysed in a transnational and international perspective, but conservative mobilization is not a monolithic phenomenon. Using the concept of 'discourse coalition' developed by Maarten Hajer, I show how the identification of shared storylines enables a range of actors to act in similar ways, sometimes coordinating their actions, despite ideological, religious or strategic disagreements, on the domestic as well as the global arena.

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“…Early examples were the ban on "propaganda for non-traditional sexual relations" among minors (Persson 2015), and the "Dima Yakovlev law" prohibiting adoption of Russian orphans by American families (Makarychev and Medvedev 2015), both passed in 2013 and clearly reflecting the storylines of safeguarding "traditional values" from outside interference, and protecting Russia's children. Another site of institutionalization has been universities, as critical research on gender and sexuality has been marginalized (Davydova 2019) while academics in some sociology and psychology departments have played a prominent role in giving scientific grounding to "traditional values" discourse (Kondakov 2020). Here, I examine two more recent examples of discourse institutionalization, both of which show the entrenchment of the storylines outlined above within government and society, but also illustrate how gender politics in Russia is a contested and conflictual terrain.…”

Section: Discourse Institutionalization-and Contestationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of “Traditional Values”

Edenborg

2021

Problems of Post-Communism

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This article proposes Maarten Hajer's concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of how "traditional values" are promoted by the Russian state. Two storylines, stressing the needs to protect "traditional values" from outside interference, and children from harmful sexual information, enable discursive affinities and interconnections across differences, domestically, internationally, and transnationally.

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The Queer Epistemologies: Challenges to the Modes of Knowing about Sexuality in Russia

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

Violent Affections: Queer sexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia

Violent Affections: Queer sexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia

Rysslands konservativa vändning och den globala anti-genusrörelsen

Anti-Gender Politics as Discourse Coalitions: Russia’s Domestic and International Promotion of “Traditional Values”

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