CGF Higher Seminar Online with Olga Plakhotnik
The Temptation of Citizenship: Sexual Politics and LGBT-activism in Post-Maidan Ukrain
Olga Plakhotnik, Open University, UK
This seminar is based on my recently accomplished doctoral research project that explores the discourses of sexual citizenship in post-Maidan Ukraine by asking how LGBT+ communities seek to position themselves in relation to hegemonic discourses of state and nationhood. In my study, I reconceptualised the ‘sexual citizenship’ concept (Evans, 1993) by drawing on a feminist (Lister, 2002) and a poststructuralist (Cossman, 2002) account of citizenship and pursuing a decentering approach to the study of sexualities in non-Western societies (Mizielińska & Kulpa, 2011). In my presentation, I summarise the findings of my study and develop further queer feminist theorising on citizenship in the Eastern European context.
Olga Plakhotnik is currently Research Fellow at the Open University (UK) and editor-in-chief of Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies (Ukraine).