The international conference Fucking Solidarity: queering concepts on/from a Post-Soviet perspective was held from 20-23 September 2017 at the University of Vienna, Department for English and American Studies. It was part VIII of the international conference series Queering Paradigms. The Queering Paradigms network is dedicated to examining the current state and future challenges of queer studies from a broad trans-disciplinary and polythetic perspective, and by interrogating numerous social, political, cultural and academic agendas.

With the conference Fucking Solidarity, the possibilities, gains and limits of queer solidarity were discussed. “Fucking” solidarity meant on the one hand side to thoroughly and critically investigating into the idea, the theories, the practices and the art of solidarity, from different angles, different spaces, from and with different groups. Moreover, it meant to discuss the pleasures and erotics of queer solidarity, their drives, and desires behind it. In this way, the conference participants reflected on hegemonies and the possibility for anti-hierarchical or empowerment. They were especially interested in the possibilities of queering existing concepts and practices of solidarity, not the least those solidarity approaches towards the post-soviet/post-socialist and postcolonial spaces and their respective inhabitants.

Some of the results of the conference will be published as Special Issue of Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies. Furthermore, they will be compiled in an anthology published within the Queering Paradigms series by Peter Lang Publishing Group. You can find the Call for Chapters and Articles in the section below to download.

Some of the exciting and provocative presentations can be watched at the Queering Paradigms YouTube Chanel:

Elena Kostyuchenko: Chechnya – Monologue of a Survivor

Vanya Solovey: “Global Standards” and “Internalized Coloniality”: How Feminists in Russia See the “West”

Сяйво Північне/Siajvo Pivnichne: На глубине политик опыта/In the depth of the politics of experience

S.N.Nyeck: (African) Queer Dialectics and Politics: Simulations & Simulacra

Leonardo Raznovich: The Impact of the Sodomy Laws in the Caribbean

Bee Scherer: Intersectional Assemblages, Dilemmas and Betrayals

Thamar Klein: Decolonizing Juridico-Medical Concepts of "Trans*"-bodies and -identities

You can find the Conference Program, Book of Abstracts as well as the Call for Papers below.