Cell Project Space

Please join us on Thursday, 21 September, for the launch and first session of the CEED (Central Eastern European and Diaspora) Feminisms reading group series, organised by Cell Project Space in collaboration with Feminist Duration Reading Group to take place between September 2023 - February 2024. We look forward to collectively exploring the role of current and historical feminist thinking in constructing cultural narratives of Central Eastern Europe and British Central Eastern European diaspora.

 

The first three reading groups will address decolonial Central 'Eastern' European feminisms; transnational feminist solidarity in war, and labour and 'East' to 'West' migration, as focus areas selected by an initial group of respondents to our initial Info Meeting in Spring 2023.

 

Reading Group 1 considers the specificities of Central Eastern European feminisms inflected by postsocialism, continuities in postsocialist and postcolonial feminisms and routes to decentring Western Feminisms. Extracts from Ewa Majewska's Feminist Antifascism (2021), focus the case of postsocialist neoliberal Poland, a ‘semi-peripheral state’ through the lens of the legacy of Polish 1980s trade union-led social movement Solidarność, weak resistance, and publicfeminist protest, to situate feminism as a political antithesis to fascism. In counterpoint, Madina Tlostanova, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, and Redi Koobak's ‘Border thinking and disidentification,’,(2016) advocates for transversal dialogues and ‘volatile but effective coalitions between postsocialist and postcolonial feminists,’, proposing tools for a feminist practice that escapes the terms of feminism's 'Western' hegemonic centre.

 

Together we will read:

 

- Extracts from Ewa Majewska (2021), 'Introduction: Why Should We Reclaim the Public?,' Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common, Verso

- Madina Tlostanova, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, and Redi Koobak (2016), 'Border thinking and disidentification: Postcolonial and postsocialist feminist dialogues,' Feminist Theory, 17(2), pp. 7-14

 

There is no expectation to read the texts in advance, we will read out loud, one person and one paragraph at a time, together. Please bring copies of the texts with you if possible. Access to texts will be granted upon RSVP.

 

Creating spaces of mutual support, curiosity and learning, CEED Feminisms aims to respond to cultural blind spots around prejudice and xenophobia in the UK towards the 'Eastern European' immigrant, sharpened by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and by Brexit. ​

 

As we aim to bring together a network of practitioners based in and beyond the UK and Central Eastern Europe, CEED Feminisms will be active through Autumn 2023 - Winter 2024, as the group distils their manifold feminist perspectives into a bibliography that expands upon the concerns of each reading group session. Additional public events will be announced in the new year. To learn more about the forthcoming sessions, click here.

 

The Art Practices and British Central Eastern European Diaspora Research Group is facilitated by Jessie Krish and Adomas Narkevičius (Cell Project Space).

 

 

CEED Feminisms is a Research Group of the British Art Network (BAN). BAN is a Subject Specialist Network supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

 

CEED Feminisms is additionally supported by the Cockayne Foundation.