Nadiya Chushak, Galina Yarmanova

In current Ukrainian public discussions, the critical theory is often deemed useless after the brutal escalation of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Some of the students enrolled in our courses on feminist and queer theory and activism at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy express similar ideas; critical theorizing, they say, seems irrelevant and helpless in the face of the deaths, destructions, and suffering of humans (and non-humans). Such devaluation of critical theory is not only a reaction to the horrific events of this war, however. It is a continuation of the politics of neoliberal education (academic and non-academic) and neoliberal feminism that is hegemonic in Ukraine. In this talk lead by researchers and educators Nadiya Chushak and Galina Yarmanova, we will explore how the broader context of neoliberalization in Ukraine has contributed to the devaluation of certain types of feminist and queer theory and the consequences this has for here and now.

Event Link

This event is part of the series “New Directions in Research and Art: Perspectives from Ukraine”, organized in cooperation with the Threatened Scholars Initiative of the Open Society University Network (TSI-OSUN). Other events in this series are DO{K}VIRA (Trust Cut): Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics in Documentary Filmmaking and Hello, Europe! Russia Goodbye! Verka Serduchka and the History of Queerness in Ukrainian Pop Culture. To learn more about TSI-OSUN, visit their website. 

Nadiya Chushak is a researcher and educator from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Galina Yarmanova is a researcher and educator from Kyiv, Ukraine, now based in Germany.