In Sweden, public sector organisations are legally required to promote gender equality. In 1994 gender mainstreaming was endorsed as the official way to achieve this objective. But what are fruitful strategies for sustainable development work - and how might these be implemented?The main focus of this book is on different dilemmas in gender equality work.

This relates both to how work on gender equality can be organised and what it might contain, e.g. the impact of gender-training and different ways of dealing with resistance. The book is based on extensive work with gender mainstreaming in the public sector - including schools, the social services, the rescue services and health care.

Gender Mainstreaming in Public Sector Organisations can be used as course literature in higher education in e.g. gender studies, political science, business administration and sociology as well as in-depth reading in connection with management and human resources management courses. It is also intended for practitioners with an interest in change processes in organisations, work-related development, evaluation and gender equality.

In Sweden, public sector organisations are legally required to promote gender equality. In 1994 gender mainstreaming was endorsed as the official way to achieve this objective. But what are fruitful strategies for sustainable development work - and how might these be implemented?The main focus of this book is on different dilemmas in gender equality work.

This relates both to how work on gender equality can be organised and what it might contain, e.g. the impact of gender-training and different ways of dealing with resistance. The book is based on extensive work with gender mainstreaming in the public sector - including schools, the social services, the rescue services and health care.

Gender Mainstreaming in Public Sector Organisations can be used as course literature in higher education in e.g. gender studies, political science, business administration and sociology as well as in-depth reading in connection with management and human resources management courses. It is also intended for practitioners with an interest in change processes in organisations, work-related development, evaluation and gender equality.

This thesis explores how coloniality of heritage, denial of racialization and forced passing impact Black women in Sweden. In response, it investigates practices of self-care adopted to buffer and cope with racism-related stress. Often, we connect self-care to spa-days, luxurious masks, and spoiling oneself as capitalism has translated self-care into one if its buzzword for people to consume. It is characterized by the privatization of wellbeing rather than a collective endeavor, which feeds into a capitalist agenda (Michaeli, 2017). Queering self-care and adopting self-care as self-preservation in the words of Audre Lorde (2017), provides a holistic embodiment of Black feminist thought, especially for us facing intersecting oppressions. Healing circles as a method for this research provides a safe-space where experiences can be shared over the commonality of being Black women in Sweden. Moreover, separatist settings are found to hold therapeutic value as they limit the risks of being alienated when talking about a common identity. In extension, the healing circles of this research explore how representation in media and art provide possibilities of being included in a global community as a response to not having access to physical affinity groups. Concludingly, I suggest how healing circles can and should be integrated in gender and feminist studies as an intersectional methodology that further develops the possibilities of not speaking for the Other.

Aims: This article addresses the under-researched area ofmen’s experiences of abuse. The aims were to estimate prevalence ofemotional, physical, and sexual abuse and abuse in health care in a random sample of Swedish adult men, to compare these estimates with previously collected prevalence rates in a male clinical sample to see if prevalence rates were dependant on response rate and sampling method. We also wanted to contribute to a more general analysis of men’s experiences ofvictimisation.

Methods: Cross-sectional study design. The NorVold Abuse Questionnaire that measures the prevalence of four kinds of abuse was sent to 6000 men selected at random from the population of Östergötland, Sweden.

Results: The responserate was 50% (n=2924). Lifetime experiences of emotional abuse were reported by 16.7%, physical abuse by 48.9%, sexualabuse by 4.5%, and abuse in health care by 7.3%. The proportion ofmen who currently suffered fromabusive experiences washighest for emotional abuse and abuse in health care. No difference in prevalence was seen between the random populationsample and the clinical sample despite significant differences regarding response rate and background characteristics.

Conclusions: Abuse against men is prevalent and men are victimised as patients in health care. Response rateand sampling method did not influence prevalence rates of abuse. Men’s victimisation from emotional abuseand abuse in health care was associated with low income and being born outside of the Nordic countries and hence needs to be analysed in the intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity.

The aim of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of and current suffering from emotional abuse (EA), physical abuse (PA), and sexual abuse (SA) and abuse in health care (AHC) among male Swedish patients and compare prevalences of abuse between female and male patients at a Swedish university hospital. For data collection we used the NorVold Abuse Questionnaire, which has been validated in a female sample and in the present study. The lifetime prevalences were EA = 12.8%, PA = 45.7%, SA = 3.8%, and AHC = 8.1%. Current suffering from abuse among participants was 1% to 9%. The women reported higher rates than men of current suffering from all kinds of abuse and more severe forms of abuse, such as life-threatening PA. Health care staff should be aware of the documented high prevalences of abuse and learn to make good judgments as to when to ask male as well as female patients about experiences of abuse.

Jämställdhets- och genusintegrering inom all högre utbildning är ett krav från regeringen, men det finns ingen generell plan för hur detta arbete ska gå till.

Begreppet genuslektorer lanserades av Linköpings universitet 2005. Deras uppgift var att genusintegrera all undervisning vid universitetet. Primärt har genuslektorerna på Hälsouniversitetet satsat på genus som innehåll i utbildningen, t ex genom att befintliga lärare stimulerats att komplettera kursinnehåll med genusrelevant kunskap, i enlighet med ett programspecifikt progressdokument.

Vår formella strategi har varit att konkretisera genus i kursmålen på alla program och bygga upp en bank av relevanta examinationsfrågor.

Inventering, uppföljning och utvärdering har utgjort hörnpelare i jämställdhets- och genusintegreringsprocessen. Förutom att ge en överblick har dessa verktyg fungerat som katalysatorer genom att t ex tydliggöra för program­ansvariga vad jämställdhets- och genusintegrering konkret kan innebära.

Uppnådd jämställdhets- och genusintegrering bör återspeglas i lärares och studenters förhållningssätt till patienter och kollegor. Detta innebär ett arbete med attitydpåverkan mot diskriminering på någon som helst grund.

Jämställdhets- och genusintegrering i hälso- och sjukvårdsutbildningar behöver beforskas – som alla andra kunskapsområden.

The article introduces gender integration initiatives at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, 2005-2009.

The aim of this article is to deepen the understanding of male patients' experiences of abuse in health care (AHC). Thirteen patients who had experienced AHC were interviewed using a Grounded Theory methodology. Three categories, "Crises of Confidence," "Ignored" and "Frustration," intersected to form the core category "Mentally Pinioned." This last category referred to patients not being able to act in accordance with their own conviction and interests. This study shows that men's experience of AHC go far beyond what earlier research had suggested, which generally limited it to disagreements and misunderstandings in health care or hospital errors. In this study, AHC was shown to have a profound impact at a deep personal level, leaving the men concerned "mentally pinioned."

This thesis employs internet ethnography and a feminist post humanist perspective in order to investigate situated power in the construction of human and nonhuman others in humannonhuman animal relations. Through a case study within a Spanish context, the thesis focuses on these relations through the dichotomy between the concept of human family and interspecies family in regard to care, empathy and love. The primary data for the study consists of images from a news article and comments to it posted on Facebook in 2015, concerning medical research spaces used by dogs. Similar secondary data is used to support the study. The study is performed from a perspective of “situated knowledges” (Haraway 1991). The aim is to investigate how actions and articulations of thought affect others and, most importantly, nonhuman others, by meaning-construction in human-nonhuman animal relations. The theoretical frame of the thesis explores the concepts of anthroparchy (Cudworth 2011), caninophiliac narcissism (Haraway 2003), carnophallogocentrism (Derrida 1991), love and empathy, myth (Barthes 1957) and the deconstruction of the subject. A material-semiotic analysis combined with a deconstructive approach is performed using diffraction (Haraway 1997, 2004; Barad 2007) as an analytical tool and method applied to images and texts, which are treated as “imploded objects” (Haraway 1988, 1991). As a result, the constructions of human-nonhuman animal relations and their participating subjects (dogs and people, mainly the animal advocate woman) are analysed and discussed. The study concludes that the articulations of who the subject entitled to receive and give love and care is, affects both the construction of the human and the nonhuman other in humannonhuman animal relations.

Denna studie undersöker intersektionen mellan hantverk och feminism i den svenska kontexten genom att fokusera på två evenemang som organiserades i Stockholm under våren 2018: en feministisk marknad och en #MeToo taggning. Uppsatsen fokuserar på relationen mellan hantverk och samtida feminism i den svenska kontexten, framförallt i form av hur feminism uttrycks och görs genom hantverk liksom vilken typ av feminism som uttrycks och vem den kan sägas representera. Dessutom utforskar uppsatsen möjliga kopplingar mellan svenskt feministiskt hantverkande och aktivism.

Baserat på fältanteckningar från de två eventen liksom inspelat material från sex intervjuer med sju kvinnor från de två evenemangen så föreslår denna uppsats att det existerar en feministisk hantverksrörelse i den svenska kontexten. Dessutom visar uppsatsen att hantverk kan vara feministiskt på många olika sätt, så som när hantverk används för att förmedla explicita feministiska åsikter, när de tar plats i offentligheten eller när de stärker kvinnor. Den typ av feminism som uttrycks genom hantverk har kvinnor som sitt subjekt, dock utan att specificera om detta inkluderar alla kvinnor eller endast vissa grupper av kvinnor. Besökarna och utställarna vid den feministiska marknaden och taggningen visar att denna typ av feminism främst attraherar vita medelklasskvinnor och -feminister. Frågan om huruvida feministiskt hantverkande i allmänhet, och dessa två evenemang i synnerhet, är kopplade till aktivism kan inte besvaras enkelt och därför argumenterar uppsatsen för att det är viktigare att fokusera på om dessa två evenemang kan sägas göra skillnad snarare än om de kan tillskrivas en form av aktivistetikett.

Som sitt resultat så föreslår denna uppsats att feministiskt hantverkande reflekterar en bredare svensk feministisk diskurs som misslyckas med att analysera hur kön/genus är sammanflätat med etnicitet och ras, trots att den erkänner vikten av intersektionellt tänkande. En kritisk diskussion inom den feministiska hantverksrörelsen är därför nödvändig, där frågan om rörelsens homogenitet bör prioriteras. Mer specifikt så föreslår denna uppsats att rörelsen bör fråga sig själv hur den kan förändras och vilka åtgärder som kan tas för att göra feministiskt hantverkande attraktivt för en bredare grupp av feminister. På samma sätt bör den feministiska hantverksrörelsen också reflektera kring underliggande faktorer till varför den egna rörelsen är homogen och varför den misslyckas med att attrahera en mer mångfaldig grupp av feminister.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to knowledge about the equality work in public sector organisations. Especially, my aim is to bring light into everyday experiences of doing equality work. This is achieved through interviewing equality workers in Finnish ministries. The study draws also on my personal experiences as an equality consultant. The main question I ask is: Which issues influence the content of equality work? According to feminist research, promoting equality is always a political process, which includes conflicting interests. These conflicting interests are, however, not visible in official descriptions of equality work. For example, ministries’ equality policies mostly hide the various interests under vague definitions and beautiful structures. Despite the invisibility of the tensions in written documents, equality workers describe the negotiative nature of equality work by providing examples of equality negotiations in their organisations. In my analysis I conclude that equality workers are aware of their organisations’ capacities to change and, in their work, they adapt to these limitations by choosing their strategies to do equality work accordingly. The content of equality work reflects the strategies, which are carefully chosen based on the knowledge about the organisation. I argue that this process of choosing equality strategies by equality workers is one of the overlooked factors shaping equality work in organisations.

Gamete donors are actively searched by companies dedicated to assisted reproduction in the Spanish State, and advertising is not only legal but rather common. This thesis provides an overview of the main themes that arise from the analysis of mostly visual materials used to promote ovum donation in public spaces in Barcelona, and critically links them to current debates in intersectional feminist cultural studies of technoscience, bodily theory and visual studies. Conceptual and affective tensions between characterisations of women’s bodies, reproductive function and desires are identified and brought forward in terms that imply tropes of sacralisation, reification of cells/organs/tissues, and fragmentation of the bodily reality. It is argued that egg donation advertisements use an imagery that deeply connects with practices well rooted in Western biomedical traditions when it comes to female bodies, physiology and reproductive function, and that such practices are to be understood against the backdrop of neoliberalism. The analysis supports the idea that the publicity discourse of the assisted reproduction industry in Spain actively engages in a legitimation of the desire of biological parenthood as a right, in ways that value lives conceived in different circumstances and geopolitical contexts in radically different ways, and that can be interpreted as paving the way to prosurrogacy and/or eugenic positions. Future research is encouraged and directed towards exploring issues of agency, particularly in vulnerable groups such as migrant, poor, uneducated or racialised women. Further research is needed in order to build the foundations of a feminist ethical reflection on reproductive technologies and particularly of ovum donation.

Fertility struggles interact with our careers and emotional wellbeing in ways we might not ever fully recover from. This research explores how women navigate their careers and maintain their wellbeing when the goal of biological parenthood is complicated in ways we didn’t expect and we can’t control. This study compares the cases of a small cohort of white women in their thirties, living in Britain who have struggled with fertility (myself included), in an attempt to understand how our fertility struggle shapes our careers and wellbeing. This research strives to interrogate the usefulness of the Job Demand Control Stress model to understand work-stress and wellbeing, the Common Sense Model of health regulation to explore how women self-manage fertility struggles and wellbeing and a New Materialist approach to understand the role and power of non-human actors, such as medical apparatus and policy. I also employ an intersectional lens to better understand the cohort and review the shortcomings of the models and limitations of this research.

Domestic Violence and Gender Violence impact every society on many different layers, loss of capability of work, traumas, and economical losses are amongst the most talked issues. Domestic Violence is not exclusively a violence in which the perpetrator is a male and the victim is a female and they live as a married couple. A lot has been discussed in the last century regarding the equality amongst people irrespectively on their gender, sex, origin, religion. On the International legal level though, legislations protecting victims of Domestic Violence are new and not embraced for the majority of the countries. In this work the goal is to study some International Documents in order to better understand on a legal level if International Law is aiming to protect everyone who is victim of Domestic Violence equally, including members of the extended family. As an International Document there is the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) that aims to protect everyone who is a victim of Domestic Violence. Unfortunately, it is not compulsory to the state members from the council of Europe to ratify the document and therefore people might not have their Human Rights completely guaranteed in these countries.

Euro-American feminism’s embeddedness in a neo-liberal geopolitical framework has created new though contested spaces for knowledge production among scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. In particular, a theoretical tool that has lost its transformatory potential is disidentification, specifically as a signifier for forging collective activism within Europe. In the age of global mobility and border-crossings, Western feminist disidentification is increasingly framed through a preconceived notion of the ‘other’ as dis-empowered, exotic and violent. These faulty identifications rather than integrating multi-ethnic intersectional identities deepen the cleavages, especially within the academy. This article draws on two case studies that emerged following the Delhi gang rape case (2012) in New Delhi, India. These studies highlight how debates within the western academy are largely framed from the standpoint of the empowered European feminist self. Thus disidentification, rather than being a process for unpacking hegemonic discourses, becomes, instead, yet another way of packaging new hierarchies of knowledge.

In response to demographic changes leading to an older population, social companion robots are increasingly considered as possible tools in care for older adults. During the last years, deployments in care homes for older adults have increased, and older adults in different stages of life are living and interacting with social robots daily. Previous research also shows that social robots can decrease loneliness and stress levels, and increase mood and communication among older adults, especially people with dementia. 

In this paper, we argue that this development calls for a greater attention to what happens to the concept and practices of care when care robots are introduced. What does it mean for the care between caregivers and caretakers when a care robot is deployed and what different kinds of care can a social robot provide? We start with posing these questions and exemplify with observations from past studies in care homes. Finally, we conclude with reflections for future studies.  

During the past decade, there has been an increased interest in using social companionship robots for older adults in care homes. Previous studies have shown that these robots, often in the shape of a household pet, can decrease stress and loneliness while increasing communication and quality of life. In our research, studying the effects of cat and dog robots at care homes, we got the impression that these robots are quite common and that the reason for implementing them varies. Therefore, we conducted an online survey, asking all municipalities in Sweden if they have social companionship robots, how they are using them and for what kind of care organisation. The result showed that more than half of the municipalities use pet robots for older adults, and most commonly for people with dementia to lower stress and increase the feeling of safety.

In response to demographic shifts contributing to an older population, limited health and social care budgets and staff shortages in institutionalised care for older adults, caring robots are increasingly imagined as potential caregivers for older adults. During the past 20 years, several initiatives have sought to design, develop, and deploy robots in care environments, focusing on robots assisting with, for example, physical and cognitive training, or providing social companionship. In this workshop we want focus on the concept of care in the development and use of care robots for older adults. We are interested in: What different understandings of care are at play in care robotics for older adults, how do ideas of 'good care' differ between different contexts and stakeholders, and who are the envisioned recipients of robotic care? We want to encourage critical reflection around these questions and invite creative ideas for how to design care robots for older adults.

In response to demographic shifts contributing to an older population, limited health and social care budgets and staff shortages in institutionalised care for older adults, caring robots are increasingly imagined as potential caregivers for older adults. During the past 20 years, several initiatives have sought to design, develop, and deploy robots in care environments, focusing on robots assisting with, for example, physical and cognitive training, or providing social companionship. In this workshop we want to focus on the concept of care in the development and use of care robots for older adults. We are interested in: What different understandings of care are at play in care robotics for older adults, which practical implementation factors are there (such as infrastructure, WIFI, staff digital health literacy, investment potential), and how are care robots perceived by different key stakeholders (such as older adults, care staff, family, municipalities/care companies). We want to encourage critical reflection around these questions and invite creative ideas for how to design care robots for older adults.  

The aim of this half-day workshop is to provide a forum to share and learn about recent research and experiences with care robotics for older adults. The workshop will be a hybrid event.

We welcome participants to submit abstracts, of 1-2 pages, excluding references, covering any topic that could contribute to the discussion around care in the context of care robots. We welcome also ongoing work. Possible topics welcomed for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical approaches that help problematise care in care for older adults 
• Empirical studies of the use of care robots  
• Norm critical design approaches to care robots
• Technical solutions & designs for enhancing care of older adults
• Discussions of societal, political & ethical implications of care robots for older adults
• Engagement of key stakeholders and navigation of conflicting needs when implementing care robots
• How to go from a lab environment to studies in the wild to actual products considering e.g., social and technical failures, different stakeholders, nurse workload 

Welfare technology has recently reached older adults in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Many Swedish municipalities are introducing emerging technologies such as virtual reality, robotic assistive devices, and social robots in LTCFs as part of everyday care. However, not only older adults are affected by these deployments. Healthcare workers are left to master these technologies - and integrate them into existing care practices. Previous research has identified an increase in work-related stress associated with the introduction of technology for healthcare workers. The literature is, however, sparse on how healthcare workers in LTCFs are affected by the introduction. Therefore, we explored different factors that could affect healthcare workers technostress through an online survey and semi-structured interviews to get a deeper understanding of how healthcare workers are experiencing deployments of welfare technology. The main findings showed that some of the healthcare workers are finding it difficult to adopt and use welfare technology due to, for example, older age, language difficulties, or a negative attitude toward technology. We conclude that municipalities and LTCFs need to invest in their healthcare workers in order to achieve better on-boarding and reduce technostress.

This thesis investigates the portrayal of non-violent direct action (NVDA) in This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by considering the two chapters “Courting Arrest” by Jay Griffiths, and “The Civil Resistance Model” by Roger Hallam. Using critical discourse analysis in the style of Norman Fairclough, I examine the textual features, discourse practices, and social practices of the chapters by applying theories of environmental justice, intersectionality, and embodiment. I argue that Griffiths and Hallam reproduce oppressive power structures by excluding certain identities and experiences from their discourse. First, the lack of a discussion of the situatedness of violence within the NVDA strategy employed by Extinction Rebellion – focusing on having as many protestors arrested as possible – represents the acts of arrest as inherently non-violent. This representation erases other possible experiences of arrest from the discourse. Second, the authors portray their own experiences as universal, and thereby create a universal subject that is white, middle-class, able-bodied, and a legal resident of the UK. Discourse is seen as both constitutive of, and constituted by, the social world; this portrayal of subjectivities is shown to have very real effects on to what degree certain identities feel at home within the Extinction Rebellion movement. I conclude the study with a discussion of possible paths for Extinction Rebellion and other similar movements to become more inclusive by adopting a more intersectional perspective that acknowledges the embodied realities of different identities. By applying this perspective, these movements can start working against hegemonic structures of oppression that exclude certain (non-white) identities from decision-making processes.

In this theoretical study, I apply a historiographical approach to examine the development of the Anthropocene as a concept and its use across disciplines and through time. Using a synthesis of the literature of the Anthropocene, I uncover eight “hidden” narratives that are embedded within its discourse, and further link these to European humanist thought and the creation of subject and Other. I use these narratives to inform my intersectional analysis, wherein subjects are formed through the interplay between identity construction, symbolic representations, and social structures. These levels provide a framework with which to examine subject formation, with a special focus on the dimensions of coloniality, class, gender, and race within the discourse of the Anthropocene. By applying an intersectional perspective, I discuss who the subjects of the Anthropocene are presented as and how they are created. Finally, I apply posthuman perspectives to discuss how and why subject formation must be made more complex. I argue that subject formation in the Anthropocene must better adhere to relationalities between humans – as well as between humans and the more-than- human world – if we are to effectively envision alternative trajectories away from the current ecological and social crises that define this time of environmental change. 

The main contributions of this study are thus: (1) a review and synthesis of literature on the Anthropocene, (2) an identification of eight narratives that are embedded in the discourse surrounding the term, and (3) an analysis that applies intersectional and posthuman perspectives to subject formation within the discourse of the Anthropocene. 

This article / conference paper lies within the framework of alarger research project concerning the feminization of peace, that is, how peace work was transformed from a masculine arena to one primarily associated with and populated by women. We aim to explain how peace work was feminized, analyse the gendering of peace over time and discuss how the feminization process affected the status of the peace question.

Published to document a project by the Dagestani artist Taus Makhacheva that consists of the film Tightrope and the series of performances On the Benefits of Pyramids in Cultural Education, Strengthening of National Consciousness, and the Formation of Moral and Ethical Guideposts, this book is built around a dialogue between Makhacheva and the protagonist of her film, the tightrope walker Rasul Abakarov. The publication offers insight into the artist’s practice and elaborates on the topics she tackles in her works. The interplay between the histories of art and the narratives that structure one’s identity are further examined in the contributions by curator Bart De Baere, decolonial theorist Madina Tlostanova, and archivist Sabih Ahmed.

Decolonial critique of modernity/coloniality emerged at the end of the Cold war when the happy image of globalization was launched as the only option left for the humanity. Decolonial thought instead came up with the idea of decoloniality as an alternative possible world with a specific epistemology, ethics and politics. This decolonial model has gradually become attractive worldwide against the failure of the positive phase of neoliberal globalization epitomized in the Covid-19 crisis. The binaries of conservatism and radicalism as well as right and left, democracy and authoritarianism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism are outdated products of the previous model of knowledge unable to describe the present social and political reality in which conservatism easily becomes radical and calling for change, whereas yesterday’s radicals turn into supporters of status-quo who are nostalgic of the past. The present shift from neoliberal globalism to right-wing nationalism and populism essentially leaves the global coloniality intact and multiplies the number of the new dispensable defutured lives - human and other. It also adds additional angles of discrimination and dehumanization such as technological coloniality. Possible venues for decolonial re-existence are linked with relationality, refusal to compete for a better place in modernity or a tag of a victim, and working for “deep coalitions”, thus attempting to give the world back its future dimension.

This chapter problematizes methodologies as a Euromodern/colonial epistemic framework. It reflects upon alternative decolonial instruments of analysis and broader practices of knowing and making sense of the world, which escape conventional methodological definitions. Methodology is seen as a specific classifying operation that is rationally limited by default and distorting for those who are not part of the Euromodern sameness. Revisiting decolonial and Indigenous texts while claiming to do away with modern/colonial methodologies or entering into an intense debate with them, this chapter argues that there is a corpus of core decolonial feminist texts (by scholars such as Chela Sandoval, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, María Lugones, and Gloria Anzaldúa) that have engaged in dialogue with each other and, at different levels, with major methodological issues, and have come up with an open approach of relational experiential epistemic togetherness. The author addresses its main elements, including defamiliarization, decolonial hermeneutics, the corpopolitics and geopolitics of knowledge, being, sensing, the “Coatlicue state” and “la facultad” (as described in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands 1987). This chapter overall argues for emerging transversal decolonial agendas that advocate a shift towards imagining a redirected future that would come to life through the agency of changing communities and coalitions striving for re-existence.

Madina Tlostanova discusses artistic strategies of regenerating and ‘re-futuring’ in relation to the darker colonial side of post-Soviet existence.

A central concept of decolonial thought, “coloniality,” was coined by A. Quijano at an uneasy moment of the collapse of state socialism and discrediting of its utopia, and the arrival of neoliberal globalisation as the only legitimate narrative. Decoloniality is a reflection of disillusionment and a subsequent transference of decolonisation rhetoric from embodied anticolonial political struggles to the spheres of knowledge production and aesthesis. This meant at once a deeper critical delve into the modern/colonial mechanisms of the production of knowledge and subjectivities, but also a potential danger of depoliticisation. Whitewashed and sanitised “decolonial studies” or “decolonial theory” that fail to see the profound differences between postcolonial theory and decoloniality and often substitute decoloniality for deconstruction, yet keep the Euromodern epistemic framework intact, is what we find today in European and especially Nordic contexts. They are often marked by a blindness towards their own specific colonial trajectories and especially the imperial difference, and the struggles of indigenous peoples. A thorough decolonial revisiting of the Nordic colonial trajectories including the early suspended expansionist projects and specific forms of settler colonialism, could help enrich decolonial thought with additional critical optic and bring it more in tune with the current global challenges. These challenges go beyond the original decolonial focus on the intersection of race and capitalism incorporating the climate change, chronophobia, defuturing, and global unsettlement. They also urge decoloniality to move in the direction of relational agency unlimited to colonial difference alone and avoiding both the extreme of imagined indigeneity and a confinement to the ivory academic tower. Taking these nuances into account could help us come closer to an understanding of decolonial potentials in the future and its applicability in other places such as Nordic Europe.

For most of us postsocialism is not a time after socialism, it is a space of our lives which we would like to claim as a geo-political and corpo-political  location with its own genealogy of knowledges  that does not have to be necessarily fit into or distorted in accordance with the grand  narrative of the global modernity/coloniality which does not have a place for us. We remain invisible, appropriated, packaged according to fashionable theories. But we have our own stories to tell and they need to be finally heard for the postsocialist people to be able to leave the void that we have inhabited for the last twenty five years and attempt a re-existence as a positive world re-creation anew. 

Contemporary political, economic and social institutions have no adequate tools to deal with diversity and tend to see it as a challenge. The unresolved evils of modernity that neoliberal globalization attempted to lacquer in its first triumphant years, have reemerged with full force confirming the discriminatory nature of the global culture, its unfair conditions of inclusion through erasing identities or through their commercialization. The overwhelming negative sensibility marking the present darker stage of neoliberal globalization, is not a brotherhood but merely a condition of fellow sufferers who have not fully realized that we are in the same boat and need to cooperate rather than compete to survive. The opinion article addresses the danger of multiplying victimhood rivalries as a manifestation of the modern/colonial agonistics. This position replaces politics with manipulative moral zeal and withdraws the dimension of the future as a collective existential condition from the horizon. Delinking from victimhood rivalries is a difficult but urgent task of transcending modernity and looking for other options and other worlds intricately correlating and interacting in a complex pluriverse.

O design é considerado, no artigo, como um instrumento ontológicocapaz de transformar a realidade social e cultural e modelar aexperiência humana, a subjetividade e o ambiente. Concentro-me nasinterseções entre a compreensão de Tony Fry a respeito do designontológico e a interpretação decolonial da modernidade/colonialidadecomo um design global que determina a relação entre o mundo, as coisase os humanos. O artigo tenta traçar uma divisão entre os designsontológicos positivo (re-existentes) e negativo (desfuturizantes).Aborda a colonialidade do design que controla e disciplina nossapercepção e interpretação do mundo, de outros seres e das coisas, deacordo com certos princípios legitimados. A colonialidade do designtem acompanhado as utopias universalistas modernas predominantes, comoo marxismo ou o liberalismo e tem sofrido resistência, internamentee externamente, através de várias manifestações do pensamentoe da existência fronteiriços. Eu analiso o conceito de Fry dedesfuturização em relação ao conceito decolonial de pluriversalidade.Isso permite abordar mais detalhadamente o princípio correlacionaldinâmico como central para o design ontológico decolonial. Entre asferramentas especificamente decoloniais de design ontológico positivo,eu me concentro no Sumak Kawsay, na Democracia Terrestre e em maisalgumas iniciativas especificamente originadas nos movimentos sociaisde povos originários das regiões fronteiriças da Eurásia. O artigotambém aborda a descolonização de uma esfera afetiva como fundamentopara um design ontológico positivo. Por fim, defendo a necessidadede provincializar o design ocidental/do norte e permitir que odesign decolonial no Sul Global desenvolva sua fronteira “tantoquanto” posicionalidade positiva, uma postura transcultural negociala partir da geopolítica local e corpo-política colocar em diálogoe disputa com o moderno/colonial desarmamento design premissas.

O design é considerado, no artigo, como um instrumento ontológico capaz de transformar a realidade social e cultural e modelar a experiência humana, a subjetividade e o ambiente. Concentro-me nas interseções entre a compreensão de Tony Fry a respeito do design ontológico e a interpretação decolonial da modernidade/colonialidade como um design global que determina a relação entre o mundo, as coisas e os humanos. O artigo tenta traçar uma divisão entre os designs ontológicos positivo (re-existentes) e negativo (desfuturizantes). Aborda a colonialidade do design que controla e disciplina nossa percepção e interpretação do mundo, de outros seres e das coisas, de acordo com certos princípios legitimados. A colonialidade do design tem acompanhado as utopias universalistas modernas predominantes, como o marxismo ou o liberalismo e tem sofrido resistência, internamente e externamente, através de várias manifestações do pensamento e da existência fronteiriços. Eu analiso o conceito de Fry de desfuturização em relação ao conceito decolonial de pluriversalidade. Isso permite abordar mais detalhadamente o princípio correlacional dinâmico como central para o design ontológico decolonial. Entre as ferramentas especificamente decoloniais de design ontológico positivo, eu me concentro no Sumak Kawsay, na Democracia Terrestre e em mais algumas iniciativas especificamente originadas nos movimentos sociais de povos originários das regiões fronteiriças da Eurásia. O artigo também aborda a descolonização de uma esfera afetiva como fundamento para um design ontológico positivo. Por fim, defendo a necessidade de provincializar o design ocidental/do norte e permitir que o design decolonial no Sul Global desenvolva sua fronteira “tanto quanto” posicionalidade positiva, uma postura transcultural negocial a partir da geopolítica local e corpo-política colocar em diálogo e disputa com o moderno/colonial desarmamento design premissas.

After a short critical reflection on what is understood under anticolonial aesthetics and how it relates to the shift from political decolonization to a more epistemologically and aesthetically oriented decoloniality, the essay focuses on the seldom considered anticolonial and decolonial trajectories originating in the ex- and present colonies of the Russian/Soviet empire and post/neo-imperial Russia. It is analysed how these trajectories intersect with and diverge from the predominantly Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial conceptual and theoretical frames and what role is played in this configuration by the state socialist form of coloniality. Its most negative effects consist in recolonization presented as decolonization and the interrupted genealogies of anticolonial resistance and re-existence. As a result, each new generation has to start from scratch, while anticolonial thinkers and artists become enchanted by western (neo)liberalism presented as the only viable alternative to Russian and local authoritarian regimes.

This book uses an interdisciplinary inter-mediational approach to reflect on the relational complexity of unsettlement as a predominant sensibility of the present époque.

The book tackles interrelated aspects of unsettlement including temporality, the disconcerting effects of the Anthropocene, the biomedical facets of unsettlement, and the post-pandemic futures. It uses a chimeric approach combining essayistic and speculative fiction writing methods, negotiating rational, affective and imaginative ways of inquiry, and showing rather than merely explaining. The book poses questions, but gives no ready-made answers, and invites us to think together on the unsettlement as a negatively global human condition that can be collectively made into a generative move of resurgence and refuturing.

Contributing to critical reflections on the main features and sensibilities of the current époque, the book will be of interest to scholars and undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the general public, interested in critical global and future perspectives, in decolonial research, gender studies, and posthumanities.

A transcript of the public discussion that took place on May 27, 2023 at Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw

A Skovorodian towards Shevchenko’s and Gogol’s Man 

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent”. Do those famous words spoken by Winston Churchill in 1946, which for years confirmed the simple dichotomy of Europe, still hold true? Did the breakthrough of 1989 really change the semantics of the concepts of East and West? In recent years, the metaphor of the “new Iron Curtain” has been reappearing more and more often. The still present inferiority complex of the periphery, populist governments based on nationalist and anti-European slogans, and, finally, the war in Ukraine and mass migrations strongly influence the creation of new divisions, but also provide an opportunity to create a new balance of power and a community far from right-wing populism and, at the same time, devoid of Western-centric hegemony. Today, the question of new European solidarity also becomes a question about the possibility of a new world and the values on which it is to be based”. A record of a debate held at the Powszechny Theatre as part of the Forum of the Future of Culture 2023.

Unsettlement is our current shared pluriversal human condition. We experience it differently depending on our trajectories, privileges and disadvantages. What we all share is the sense of ultimate defuturing. The negative phase of globalization coming to its apex, threatens to fold the world into a digital slavery in which coloniality would finally stop to be seen as a problem of refugees, migrants and indigenous people or a fashionable term of the academic elite, to be faced directly by each and every. The Covid-19 crisis has acted as an epitome of this tendency. Previously decoloniality has focused mainly on the critique of the intersections of race and capitalism in the production of knowledge and subjectivities, with a clear focus on the past. It has seldom addressed the future or ventured outside the position of the colonial difference (exteriority). In the face of the global challenges such as defunct politics and the ultra-right populist turn, the Anthropocene and technological colonization, the ongoing fragmenting of the human species, coloniality needs to be complemented with additional dimensions that would allow overcoming its stand-pointism and potentially unproductive refusal to dialogue across the imperial difference with other critical positions. One of such dimensions is unsettlement which is discussed in the article as a promising concept in the agenda for refuturing. It aims at transcending academic thinking to go in the direction of agency and bottom-up activism (political, social and artistic). In the last decade unsettlement has turned into a leitmotif of life in crisis per se manifested on the ontological, existential, affective and material levels of increasingly precarious lives of even those who seemingly stay in place thus bursting the modern/colonial binary of a rooted citizen versus an unsettled outlaw. With the Covid-19 crisis we have all become unsettled and brought to face the crisis of legitimacy of evacuated politics, of the nation-state, of international unions, institutions and bodies that have nothing to offer except a looming permanent state of exception and farmacopornographic control. Can the pluriversal unsettlement generate new transversal relational solidarity beyond the bankrupt institutions and power structures? Can it launch new communities of change which would inevitably also change us as humans? How would art and fiction react to these tectonic shifts and advance the shaping of the agendas of these communities of change? The article briefly addresses two possible paths for artistic representations of the unsettlement – the introspective one struggling with multiple identifications and re-weaving oneself and one’s world anew (exemplified by Hayv Kahraman’s works), and a less realized though promising way of the positive ontological design fictions and utopias/dystopias transcending modernity/coloniality to imagine an alternative other world (as manifested in a recent Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas exhibition). The unsettled birds rather than rooted trees are likely to be the main protagonists of these fictions and of the communities of change, helping us to learn that unsettlement can eventually bring a positive sense of the self and/in the world and a new political imagination to refuturing.

Design is regarded in the article as an ontological instrument that is able to transform the social and cultural reality, and model human experience, subjectivity and environment. I focus on the intersections between Tony Fry’s understanding of ontological design and the decolonial interpretation of modernity/coloniality as an overall design determining relation between the world, the things and the humans. The article attempts to draw a division between the positive (re-existent) and negative (defuturing) ontological designs. It addresses the coloniality of design that is control and disciplining of our perception and interpretation of the world, of other beings and things according to certain legitimized principles. The coloniality of design has accompanied the predominant modern universalist utopias such as Marxism or Liberalism and has been resisted internally and externally through various manifestations of border thinking and existence. I analyze Fry’s concept of defuturing in relation to the decolonial concept of pluriversality. This allows to address in more detail the dynamic correlational principle as central to decolonial ontological design. Among specific decolonial tools of positive ontological design I focus on Sumak Kawsay, Earth Democracy, and a few more specific initiatives originating in the indigenous social movements from Eurasian borderlands. The article also addresses decolonizing of the affective sphere as ground for a positive ontological design. Finally I argue for the necessity of provincializing the Western/Northern design and allowing the decolonial design in the Global South develop its positive border “both and” positionality, a negotiating transcultural stance starting from the local geopolitics and corpo-politics put into dialogue and dispute with the modern/colonial defuturing design premises.

This book tackles the intersections of postcolonial and postsocialist imaginaries and sensibilities focusing on the ways they are reflected in contemporary art, fiction, theater and cinema. After the defeat of the Socialist modernity the postsocialist space and its people have found themselves in the void. Many elements of the former Second world experience, echo the postcolonial situations, including subalternization, epistemic racism, mimicry, unhomedness and transit, the revival of ethnic nationalisms and neo-imperial narratives, neo-Orientalist and mutant Eurocentric tendencies, indirect forms of resistance and life-asserting modes of re-existence. Yet there are also untranslatable differences between the postcolonial and the postsocialist human conditions. The monograph focuses on the aesthetic principles and mechanisms of sublime, the postsocialist/postcolonial decolonization of museums, the perception and representation of space and time through the tempolocalities of post-dependence, the anatomy of characters-tricksters with shifting multiple identities, the memory politics of the post-traumatic conditions and ways of their overcoming.

Postkolonialność powinna być postrzegana jako ludzka kondycja, sytuacja egzystencjalna, podczas gdy dekolonialność jest opcją, świadomie wybraną jako pozycja polityczna, etyczna i epistemiczna. Takie niekonwencjonalne rozumienie terminów „postkolonialny” i „dekolonialny” pozwala przekroczyć długotrwałą rywalizację i geopolityczne podziały między studiami postkolonialnymi a opcją dekolonialną za pośrednictwem optyki i dyskursów postsocjalistycznych i postzależnościowych. Postsocjalistyczna interwencja wprowadza szereg pojęć niezbędnych do analizy relacji postsocjalistycznych i postkolonialnych. Wśród nich można wymienić imperialną różnicę, geopolitykę i korpopolitykę wiedzy, bycia, płci i odczuwania, dekolonialną estetykę oraz odwrócenie kierunków czasowych w kontekście postsowieckim. Dyskurs postkolonialny musi zostać skontekstualizowany i zradykalizowany. Oznacza to przejście od wyjaśniania „innego” w języku zrozumiałym dla niego samego do oderwania się od retoryki nowoczesności z jej ukrytą logiką kolonialną i prześledzenia innych genealogii wiedzy i aktywizmu oraz innych sposobów interpretowania nowoczesności / kolonialności.

The postcolonial is regarded in this article as a human condition of those who belong to the colonial side of modernity. Decoloniality is interpreted as a conscious choice of ones political, ethical and epistemic position. This allows for the overcoming a lack of understanding between postcolonial studies and decolonial thought. The author considers postcolonialism and decolonial option through the mediation of post-socialist optics and formulates the possible ways of building their "deep coalitions" in the future.