Category: gp

Work work W o r k

My paper is done! I am not really satified with it, but curious what my professor will say, but first of all, when he’ll be ready to say something.

Anyway, my next project is already on the table. Actually, it should have been finished by the end of last month, but I had no time for it. Or let’s say: I am not able to do two major things at a time. But I really want to get better on that particular problem of mine.

I am writing an article now that deals with family politics and the political, legal and fiscal recognition of different forms of living together and being responsible for another. I am trying to explore how a neo-liberal refamiliarization of individual economic security as well as household security opens up new possiblities for queer-feminist accounts regarding the recognition of the diverse forms families can exist in. This goes beyond campaigning for same sex marriage, by for example disconnecting household recognition from the idea that there is or was a couple in a sexual relationship. The main questions are: Does a queering of family politics go hand in hand with the privatisation of the social, and what, if anything, can we do about it?

There is an interessting statement on the issue which lots of people already signed, and I think that I’m going to take it as the main example in my paper:

Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships

Besides working on this paper, I going to prepare the introductionary seminar in political science, where I am going to be the tutor. It’s starting this month and I’ll have to teach the new undergraduate students how to find literature, how to read texts and how to write term papers. But for now, I am still dealing with the question of how the first session and the getting to know each other will take place.

queering the humanities – confernence (2004) – book published

Elahe Haschemi Yekani und Beatrice Michaelis (Hg.), Im Auftrag des Zentrums für transdisziplinäre Geschlechterstudien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin:

Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften. Perspektiven der Queer Theory

Berlin: Querverlag, 2005. 312 Seiten. Sprachen: deutsch und englisch

Wie queer ist queer eigentlich noch? Kann queeres Leben nur in Metropolen stattfinden? Und wie queer sind Captain Kirk & Co. wirklich? Antworten auf diese Fragen und weiterführende Beiträge zu u.a. Black Queer Studies, Trans-/Intersexualität und queeren Intellektuellen sind in Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften versammelt. Queer Theory ist heute weder aus dem öffentlichen noch aus dem universitären Diskurs wegzudenken. Mit Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften erscheint nun ein Werk, das über den aktuellen Stand der Diskussionen informiert und dabei international etablierte Stimmen aus den Literatur-, Kultur-, Film- und Sozialwissenschaften vereint. Dieser Band bietet einen umfassenden Überblick zum jetzigen Forschungsstand nicht nur für DozentInnen, StudentInnen und sonstiges Fachpublikum, sondern eignet sich auch bestens für NeueinsteigerInnen als erster Einblick in die breit gefächerten Themen und Diskussionsfelder der Queer Theory.
Mit Beiträgen von u.a. Judith Halberstam, Robert Reid-Pharr, Alan Sinfield, Annette Schlichter, Stefanie von Schnurbein und Stephen Whittle

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interesting speech at hamburg university on july 9th 2005

Appropriations of Queer as a Lifestyle: (How) Do We Resist It?

Tomasz Basiuk and Dominika Ferens

We would like to consider the paradoxes that haunt efforts to preserve the non-identitarian, fuzzy, and contaminated meaning of "queer" in the face of a need to invest the category “queer” with enough specificity to make it a recognizable style of thinking and a rallying point for radical activism. Related questions that concern us are: How can queer politics avoid becoming dissolved in the larger category of radical politics without becoming synonymous with LGBT activism? Is a radical political stance, such as queer, characteristic of extreme oppression or extreme privilege? And what precisely is the difference between them? Is the adoption of a queer stance a matter of mere survival or also a matter of imaginative joy? Are these two categories ever to be separated when it comes to gender and sexuality? We will attempt to address these issues with reference to the specifically Polish deployments and appropriations of queer since 2000.

Gay Pride in Warsaw

I got this messages via email

For the second year running the Warsaw city council have banned the gay parade in the city. Although officially done on a technicality this is just another example of a right turn in Polish politics. The Mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyñski, is a member of the Law and Order Party (PiS). In the city of Poznañ their members did a similar thing and argued that the gay parade was promoting paedophilia, necrophilia and bestiality. This party is not a fringe or regional party as it heads the parliamentary and presidential opinion polls. If you think there are ways of showing your solidarity with the Campaign Against Homophobia that would be good. You can contact them through email at: info a kampania.org.

There is also an English version of their website: http://www.kampania.org.pl/homofobia/angwer.php

The Parade is taking place in spite of the homophobic, undemocratic decision to ban it. It will be a very important manifestation of the will to fight the bigotry of Kaczynski, the Mayor of Warsaw, his party and also the even more extreme right wing that last year attacked
similar marches in Krakow and Poznan. These are the forces Kaczynski is promoting with his homophobic dictate.

There are now cheap flights going to Warsaw from different countries. If you have the possiblity: come to Warsaw on Saturday June 11, join the Parade to resist discrimination and direct a blow against right wing confidence. The Parade starts in front of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) at 12.00 noon.

Best regards
Ellisiv Rognlien
Komitet EFS 2006
Poland