CBEES Advanced Seminar with Agnes Malmgren.

Speaker: Agnes Malmgren, Phd in the Cultural History of Eastern and Central Europe, affiliated researcher at Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University.
Chair: Tora Lane, Research Leader at CBEES
Discussant: Maryam Adjam, Senior lecturer at Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University

Abstract

It has probably not escaped anyone’s attention that forceful political and ideological divisions haunt contemporary Poland. No less divisive is the socioeconomic stratification of society, which gained momentum in the early 1990s and continues to leave tangible traces in public space, as well as in the wallets and life standards of individuals.

Simultaneously, there are numerous practices and initiatives, which seek to traverse these distinctions and divisions. One example is the newly formed network Queer Solidarnie (‘Queer in a solidaric way’) which combines the struggle for LGBTQ-rights with involvement on behalf of ‘other’ groups, such as tenants, migrants and precarious workers. Queer Solidarnie inaugurated its existence in September 2017 with a public screening, right outside the Polish parliament, of the British drama-film Pride, which tells the story of LGBTQ activists who supported the striking minors in 1984-5.

By letting this memory of hope, struggle and communality travel across time and space, Queer Solidarnie offered an alternative understanding of community than the one proposed by the politicians next door. Departing from this and a couple of other empirical examples, my presentation will discuss the nature and (potential) mnemonic fuel of solidaric practices and ideas in and beyond contemporary Poland.

Bio Note

Agnes Malmgren has a Phd in the Cultural History of Eastern and Central Europe. She is currently an affiliated researcher at Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. In 2018 she defended her dissertation with the title Aftermath. Memory, recognition and solidarity in Nowa Huta (Efterklang/efterskalv. Minne, erkännande och solidaritet i Nowa Huta’).