This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically ge... more This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically gendered and sexualized ways. In doing this, it contributes to queer and feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, where visibility and invisibility, although central themes, are sometimes insufficiently problematized. In a case study of Russia’s contemporary project of “traditional values,” I show how the Kremlin-promoted heteropatriarchal definition of community relates to efforts to control the visibility of gendered and sexualized bodies, and how those regulations are resisted, with respect to queer visibility, on the one hand, and patriotic military visibility, on the other. I argue: (1) that efforts by states to define and delineate “the people,” involve the production of arrangements of visibility, regulating what gendered, sexualized, and racialized bodies can appear in public, and how they are seen; and (2) that those who resist hegemonic conceptions of community seek to disturb and reorder those arrangements of visibility, by making visible bodies that have been rendered invisible or making already present bodies visible in new ways. However, such forms of embodied appearance will not necessarily come in the form of antithetical opposition, but may be more ambivalent.
Gendering Nationalism: Intersections of Nation, Gender and Sexuality, 2018
In research on political homophobia in Russia, little attention has been devoted to its global po... more In research on political homophobia in Russia, little attention has been devoted to its global political dimensions. This chapter analyzes how dominant narratives of homosexuality are articulated in relation to domestic perceptions of Russia’s international role. Suggesting that political homophobia in Russia must be understood within the larger project of negotiating Russia’s geopolitical identity, I make two specific arguments: firstly, that Russia’s recent (re)turn to “traditional values” is a boundary-making move, delineating Russia from the West and seeking to restore Russia’s place in world politics by positioning the country as a leader in a transnational conservative alliance. This effort must be seen against the background of how sexual politics has emerged as a symbolic battlefield in an imagined clash of civilizations and competing conceptions of modernity. Secondly, at the heart of this geopolitical project is a contradiction which stems from Russia’s historically ambivalent relation to Western modernity. Dominant Russian narratives on homosexuality are undercut by overlapping and contradictory schemas of cultural differentiation, where Russia on the one hand is positioned as a counterhegemonic force opposing Western-imposed gay rights and, on the other hand, as a force of order and civilization in relation to “Muslim homophobia” within Russia’s borders.
This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create c... more This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symbolic in negotiating Europe and its borders. In Russia, the events were connected to a story of a Russian girl in Berlin being raped by migrants (a story later revealed to be fabricated) and a narrative of Europe collapsing because of immigration. In Sweden, the events were connected to reports of sexual violence at festivals, sparking a debate about “Swedish values” of gender equality being endangered by immigration. The article argues, firstly, that narratives of migrants‘ sexual violence performed bordering functions in both the symbolic sense of delineating national identity and Europeanness, and the concrete sense of legitimating a stricter border regime. Secondly, it argues that the narratives performed that function only by tapping into local geopolitical narratives, in the Russian case on the country‘s ambivalent relation to Europe, and in Sweden the idea of gender exceptionalism.
By examining photographic depictions of subjects labeled as ‘intellectually disabled’, this artic... more By examining photographic depictions of subjects labeled as ‘intellectually disabled’, this article theorizes how photography performs the ideological function of producing narratives of historical progression. Recurrent representations of, on the one hand, a dark past of state institutionalization and repression and, on the other hand, the present as a time when intellectually disabled people are active, included and happy, function to locate oppression in a bygone era, which effectively obscures how power has transformed rather than disappeared. This relates to how the narrative break between the past exclusion and present inclusion conceals an inherent paradox in the constitution of intellectually disabled subjectivity; at the same time, members of this group are both included by citizenship and classified as lacking the necessary characteristics of the ideal citizen.
Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and ... more Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creativity and artistic imagination in challenging dominant geopolitical narratives. It examines satire on the Russian-language internet, which played upon the Russian state’s geopolitical narrative about the war in Ukraine 2014–15. Three themes within this dominant narrative – (1) the imperialist idea of Russia as a modernising force, (2) the gendering of Ukraine as feminine and Europe as homosexual and (3) the idea that the current war was a re-enactment of Russia’s historical battle against fascism – all became the object of fun-making in satire. I argue that satire, by appropriating, repeating but slightly displacing official rhetoric in ways that make it appear ridiculous, may destabilise dominant narratives of ontological security and challenge their strive towards closure. Satire may expose the silences of dominant narratives and undermine the essentialism and binarism upon which they rely, opening up for estrangement and disidentification.
In Russia, as in some other countries around the world, we are currently witnessing a wave of pol... more In Russia, as in some other countries around the world, we are currently witnessing a wave of politically sanctioned homophobia, most concretely manifested in the 2013 law against “homosexual propaganda”. By examining Russian mainstream media reporting, this article aims to reconstruct a dominant narrative on homosexuality and LGBT rights. It is found that this narrative revolves around three tropes: 1) that non-heterosexuals are a threat to the nation, 2) that LGBT rights are about imposing the minority ́s norms onto the majority; and 3) that LGBT rights is bound up with Western modernity, to which Russia offers an alternative. Discussing the findings in light of theories on nationalism, gender and sexuality, I argue that homophobia in Russia must be understood in a global geopolitical perspective: as an attempt to negotiate a meaningful international role for Russia in a world order where LGBT rights have become a symbolic marker of Western modernity.
Mediated mega-events are essentially projects of belonging: about imagining communities and about... more Mediated mega-events are essentially projects of belonging: about imagining communities and about creating attachment to such collective selves. However, events like the Olympic Games are not only an opportunity for states to reinforce official constructions of belonging but can also be sites for the articulation and dissemination of contesting identity narratives. This article investigates Russian media narratives around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, mainstream as well as alternative. It is argued that the Russian regime uses the Olympics to create national and global visibility for a specific project of belonging: that of a re-emerging great power – strong and united – but also an inclusive and tolerant place which can serve as an international example of ethnic and religious conviviality. This imagined community, however, rests on exclusions and silences. In addition, three alternative projects of belonging, emerging from the Circassian diaspora, LGBT rights activists and Islamists, are examined. Although these are very different, they all attempt to use the spotlight of the Sochi Olympics to disrupt the mainstream narrative and create visibility for challenging imaginations of community. On the more general level the article argues that the media contestations around the Sochi Olympics provide an insight into how the quest for visibility has become a central dynamic in the Russian media environment.
This article investigates Russian mainstream media’s coverage of the 2013 legislation banning “pr... more This article investigates Russian mainstream media’s coverage of the 2013 legislation banning “propaganda for non-traditional sexuality”. Inspired by theories on belonging, media and visibility, it reconstructs a dominant narrative representing non-heterosexuals as threatening the future survival of the nation, as imposing the sex-radical norms of a minority onto the majority, or as connected to an imperialistic West which aims to destroy Russia. This story, it is argued, functions as a hegemonic grammar regulating how non-heterosexuality is seen and heard in the public sphere. However, it is argued that sometimes the linearity and cohesiveness of the narrative breaks down, when things appear that do not fit this model of interpretation. The analysis illustrates how contestations of belonging in contemporary media are increasingly structured according to the logic of visibility: dominant actors attempt to regulate what can be seen and heard in the public sphere whereas oppositional actors attempt to establish their own visibility in the mediated space of appearance, putting forward alternative constructions of the nation and who belongs to it.
This article examines what kind of Russia is being projected in official rhetoric about the Sochi... more This article examines what kind of Russia is being projected in official rhetoric about the Sochi Olympics, arguing that the imagined community of Sochi-2014 is a diverse, inclusive and tolerant nation, even an international example of ethnic conviviality. The article puts this narrative in historical perspective, relating it to the mnogonatsionalnost policies of tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. It is argued that this imagination, though explicitly very inclusive, rests on important exclusions and silences. By selective exhibitions of minority-groups the other is domesticated, stereotyped and reduced to kitsch and folklore, glossing over conflict-ridden histories and prevailing inequalities.
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the role of visibility in the production and conte... more The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the role of visibility in the production and contestation of belonging to political communities. On the basis of an empirical enquiry of Russian media during the 2010s, a theoretical conceptualization of the relation between visibility and belonging is suggested, starting in the idea that what becomes visible to publics and how, and what is rendered invisible, are the objects of constant political regulation and contestation. The suggested theory seeks to move beyond both an exclusively speech-oriented approach to belonging, and a binary view on visibility as either emancipatory or repressive. In three case studies, the thesis explores aspects of the problem of belonging and visibility. In all cases – each of which focuses on a specific project of belonging as enacted in contemporary Russian media – gendered, sexualized and ethnicized conceptions of community are at the center of the contestations. First, by analyzing narratives in Russian media about the 2013 ban on “homosexual propaganda”, the thesis shows that as projects of belonging produce specific gendered and sexualized conceptions of community, they seek to regulate the visibility of undesired, non-normative subjectivities. However, those regulatory efforts contain tensions that may serve as starting points for contestation. Second, by studying media narratives about the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the thesis shows that spectacular media events may serve to depoliticize particular notions of community by making them hypervisible and producing them as natural and inevitable, but such events may also serve as sites of repoliticization. Third, by analyzing how the Russian state-promoted narrative on the war in Ukraine 2014-15 was challenged, by Russian internet satire and by the media exposure of how Russian soldiers who had died in Ukraine were secretly buried, the thesis shows that contestations of dominant projects of belonging draw on invisibility, and often have an ambivalent, inside/outside relation to dominant narratives. The central claim of the thesis is that projects of belonging, aimed at (re)constituting political communities and their boundaries, seek to produce particular arrangements of visibility regulating what can be seen and how it can be seen in the public sphere, and what cannot be seen. Moreover, as visibility cannot be fixed entirely, precisely those arrangements become the target of political contestation. On a more analytically useful level, it is suggested that politics of belonging involves efforts to contain, amplify and contest visibility.
This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically ge... more This article examines the role of visibility in efforts to define “the people” in specifically gendered and sexualized ways. In doing this, it contributes to queer and feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, where visibility and invisibility, although central themes, are sometimes insufficiently problematized. In a case study of Russia’s contemporary project of “traditional values,” I show how the Kremlin-promoted heteropatriarchal definition of community relates to efforts to control the visibility of gendered and sexualized bodies, and how those regulations are resisted, with respect to queer visibility, on the one hand, and patriotic military visibility, on the other. I argue: (1) that efforts by states to define and delineate “the people,” involve the production of arrangements of visibility, regulating what gendered, sexualized, and racialized bodies can appear in public, and how they are seen; and (2) that those who resist hegemonic conceptions of community seek to disturb and reorder those arrangements of visibility, by making visible bodies that have been rendered invisible or making already present bodies visible in new ways. However, such forms of embodied appearance will not necessarily come in the form of antithetical opposition, but may be more ambivalent.
Gendering Nationalism: Intersections of Nation, Gender and Sexuality, 2018
In research on political homophobia in Russia, little attention has been devoted to its global po... more In research on political homophobia in Russia, little attention has been devoted to its global political dimensions. This chapter analyzes how dominant narratives of homosexuality are articulated in relation to domestic perceptions of Russia’s international role. Suggesting that political homophobia in Russia must be understood within the larger project of negotiating Russia’s geopolitical identity, I make two specific arguments: firstly, that Russia’s recent (re)turn to “traditional values” is a boundary-making move, delineating Russia from the West and seeking to restore Russia’s place in world politics by positioning the country as a leader in a transnational conservative alliance. This effort must be seen against the background of how sexual politics has emerged as a symbolic battlefield in an imagined clash of civilizations and competing conceptions of modernity. Secondly, at the heart of this geopolitical project is a contradiction which stems from Russia’s historically ambivalent relation to Western modernity. Dominant Russian narratives on homosexuality are undercut by overlapping and contradictory schemas of cultural differentiation, where Russia on the one hand is positioned as a counterhegemonic force opposing Western-imposed gay rights and, on the other hand, as a force of order and civilization in relation to “Muslim homophobia” within Russia’s borders.
This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create c... more This article maps the specific ways in which gendered and racialized boundary constructs create conditions of possibility for certain bordering practices. Connecting Critical Border Studies with feminist theories of geopolitics, it examines media reporting in Russia and Sweden about “migrants‘ sexual violence” in the wake of the 2015 New Years‘ events in Cologne. Despite contextual differences, in both countries these events were narrated as symbolic in negotiating Europe and its borders. In Russia, the events were connected to a story of a Russian girl in Berlin being raped by migrants (a story later revealed to be fabricated) and a narrative of Europe collapsing because of immigration. In Sweden, the events were connected to reports of sexual violence at festivals, sparking a debate about “Swedish values” of gender equality being endangered by immigration. The article argues, firstly, that narratives of migrants‘ sexual violence performed bordering functions in both the symbolic sense of delineating national identity and Europeanness, and the concrete sense of legitimating a stricter border regime. Secondly, it argues that the narratives performed that function only by tapping into local geopolitical narratives, in the Russian case on the country‘s ambivalent relation to Europe, and in Sweden the idea of gender exceptionalism.
By examining photographic depictions of subjects labeled as ‘intellectually disabled’, this artic... more By examining photographic depictions of subjects labeled as ‘intellectually disabled’, this article theorizes how photography performs the ideological function of producing narratives of historical progression. Recurrent representations of, on the one hand, a dark past of state institutionalization and repression and, on the other hand, the present as a time when intellectually disabled people are active, included and happy, function to locate oppression in a bygone era, which effectively obscures how power has transformed rather than disappeared. This relates to how the narrative break between the past exclusion and present inclusion conceals an inherent paradox in the constitution of intellectually disabled subjectivity; at the same time, members of this group are both included by citizenship and classified as lacking the necessary characteristics of the ideal citizen.
Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and ... more Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creativity and artistic imagination in challenging dominant geopolitical narratives. It examines satire on the Russian-language internet, which played upon the Russian state’s geopolitical narrative about the war in Ukraine 2014–15. Three themes within this dominant narrative – (1) the imperialist idea of Russia as a modernising force, (2) the gendering of Ukraine as feminine and Europe as homosexual and (3) the idea that the current war was a re-enactment of Russia’s historical battle against fascism – all became the object of fun-making in satire. I argue that satire, by appropriating, repeating but slightly displacing official rhetoric in ways that make it appear ridiculous, may destabilise dominant narratives of ontological security and challenge their strive towards closure. Satire may expose the silences of dominant narratives and undermine the essentialism and binarism upon which they rely, opening up for estrangement and disidentification.
In Russia, as in some other countries around the world, we are currently witnessing a wave of pol... more In Russia, as in some other countries around the world, we are currently witnessing a wave of politically sanctioned homophobia, most concretely manifested in the 2013 law against “homosexual propaganda”. By examining Russian mainstream media reporting, this article aims to reconstruct a dominant narrative on homosexuality and LGBT rights. It is found that this narrative revolves around three tropes: 1) that non-heterosexuals are a threat to the nation, 2) that LGBT rights are about imposing the minority ́s norms onto the majority; and 3) that LGBT rights is bound up with Western modernity, to which Russia offers an alternative. Discussing the findings in light of theories on nationalism, gender and sexuality, I argue that homophobia in Russia must be understood in a global geopolitical perspective: as an attempt to negotiate a meaningful international role for Russia in a world order where LGBT rights have become a symbolic marker of Western modernity.
Mediated mega-events are essentially projects of belonging: about imagining communities and about... more Mediated mega-events are essentially projects of belonging: about imagining communities and about creating attachment to such collective selves. However, events like the Olympic Games are not only an opportunity for states to reinforce official constructions of belonging but can also be sites for the articulation and dissemination of contesting identity narratives. This article investigates Russian media narratives around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, mainstream as well as alternative. It is argued that the Russian regime uses the Olympics to create national and global visibility for a specific project of belonging: that of a re-emerging great power – strong and united – but also an inclusive and tolerant place which can serve as an international example of ethnic and religious conviviality. This imagined community, however, rests on exclusions and silences. In addition, three alternative projects of belonging, emerging from the Circassian diaspora, LGBT rights activists and Islamists, are examined. Although these are very different, they all attempt to use the spotlight of the Sochi Olympics to disrupt the mainstream narrative and create visibility for challenging imaginations of community. On the more general level the article argues that the media contestations around the Sochi Olympics provide an insight into how the quest for visibility has become a central dynamic in the Russian media environment.
This article investigates Russian mainstream media’s coverage of the 2013 legislation banning “pr... more This article investigates Russian mainstream media’s coverage of the 2013 legislation banning “propaganda for non-traditional sexuality”. Inspired by theories on belonging, media and visibility, it reconstructs a dominant narrative representing non-heterosexuals as threatening the future survival of the nation, as imposing the sex-radical norms of a minority onto the majority, or as connected to an imperialistic West which aims to destroy Russia. This story, it is argued, functions as a hegemonic grammar regulating how non-heterosexuality is seen and heard in the public sphere. However, it is argued that sometimes the linearity and cohesiveness of the narrative breaks down, when things appear that do not fit this model of interpretation. The analysis illustrates how contestations of belonging in contemporary media are increasingly structured according to the logic of visibility: dominant actors attempt to regulate what can be seen and heard in the public sphere whereas oppositional actors attempt to establish their own visibility in the mediated space of appearance, putting forward alternative constructions of the nation and who belongs to it.
This article examines what kind of Russia is being projected in official rhetoric about the Sochi... more This article examines what kind of Russia is being projected in official rhetoric about the Sochi Olympics, arguing that the imagined community of Sochi-2014 is a diverse, inclusive and tolerant nation, even an international example of ethnic conviviality. The article puts this narrative in historical perspective, relating it to the mnogonatsionalnost policies of tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. It is argued that this imagination, though explicitly very inclusive, rests on important exclusions and silences. By selective exhibitions of minority-groups the other is domesticated, stereotyped and reduced to kitsch and folklore, glossing over conflict-ridden histories and prevailing inequalities.
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the role of visibility in the production and conte... more The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the role of visibility in the production and contestation of belonging to political communities. On the basis of an empirical enquiry of Russian media during the 2010s, a theoretical conceptualization of the relation between visibility and belonging is suggested, starting in the idea that what becomes visible to publics and how, and what is rendered invisible, are the objects of constant political regulation and contestation. The suggested theory seeks to move beyond both an exclusively speech-oriented approach to belonging, and a binary view on visibility as either emancipatory or repressive. In three case studies, the thesis explores aspects of the problem of belonging and visibility. In all cases – each of which focuses on a specific project of belonging as enacted in contemporary Russian media – gendered, sexualized and ethnicized conceptions of community are at the center of the contestations. First, by analyzing narratives in Russian media about the 2013 ban on “homosexual propaganda”, the thesis shows that as projects of belonging produce specific gendered and sexualized conceptions of community, they seek to regulate the visibility of undesired, non-normative subjectivities. However, those regulatory efforts contain tensions that may serve as starting points for contestation. Second, by studying media narratives about the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the thesis shows that spectacular media events may serve to depoliticize particular notions of community by making them hypervisible and producing them as natural and inevitable, but such events may also serve as sites of repoliticization. Third, by analyzing how the Russian state-promoted narrative on the war in Ukraine 2014-15 was challenged, by Russian internet satire and by the media exposure of how Russian soldiers who had died in Ukraine were secretly buried, the thesis shows that contestations of dominant projects of belonging draw on invisibility, and often have an ambivalent, inside/outside relation to dominant narratives. The central claim of the thesis is that projects of belonging, aimed at (re)constituting political communities and their boundaries, seek to produce particular arrangements of visibility regulating what can be seen and how it can be seen in the public sphere, and what cannot be seen. Moreover, as visibility cannot be fixed entirely, precisely those arrangements become the target of political contestation. On a more analytically useful level, it is suggested that politics of belonging involves efforts to contain, amplify and contest visibility.
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