Kirill Polkov defends his thesis ”Queering Images of Russia in Sweden: Discursive Hegemony and Counter-Hegemonic Articulations 1991-2019”.

Subject: Gender Studies
Research area: Critical and Cultural Theory
Graduate School: Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
External reviewer: Katharina Wiedlack, Assistant Professor for Anglophone Cultural Studies, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria
Language: English

Abstract:
This study examines the role of non-normative sexuality in the construction of national images. It focuses on how non-normative sexuality affects and is affected by Swedish constructions of the image of Russia and, by extension, Sweden’s self-image. Employing queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories, and methodologically grounded in discourse-theoretical analysis with a queer sensibility, the dissertation explores what images of Russia are constructed, negotiated, and circulated in Swedish discourse.

The material includes mass media, examples from popular culture, art, and the club scene spanning the period 1991-2019. The analysis draws on texts and images in the five largest Swedish dailies: Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs-Posten, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen; video performances “Propaganda!” by Måns Zelmerlöw and “Folkkär” by Kamferdrops feat. Frej Larsson; visual arts projects, "State of Mind" by Axel Karlsson Rixon and Anna Viola Hallberg, and "At the Time of the Third Reading" by Axel Karlsson Rixon; and "Baba Bomba Diskoteka", a series of club events held in Stockholm by a group of Russian-speaking friends.

Analyzing the uses of non-normative sexuality across the material, the study focuses on aspects of space, temporality, and emotion. The study challenges the representational model of LGBTQ visibility by destabilizing the relationships between representation, visibility, and recognition, arguing for alternative conceptualizations of LGBTQ politics. The thesis finds that sexuality is central to shaping both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses on Russia in Sweden. In hegemonic discourse, Russian LGBTQ individuals are cast into subject positions circumscribed by expectations of intelligibility and visibility, while Russia is constructed as backward and homophobic. This perpetuates Swedish sexual exceptionalism, reinforcing notions of responsibility and progress while oversimplifying the complexity of Russian LGBTQ lives. Counter-hegemonic discourses prefigure alternative imaginaries of space, temporality, and emotion. Echoing queer, feminist, and postcolonial sensibilities these articulations disrupt binary understandings of geopolitical difference and offer alternative perspectives on Russian non-normative sexuality, thereby contributing to a reconfiguration of the image of Russia.

The thesis seeks to complicate the representational model of visibility, challenging the ideas of Russia as ethnically and sexually homogenous and Sweden as sexually exceptional, stressing the need for queerly plural visions of sexualities and nations.

Keywords: Russia, Sweden, non-normative sexuality, queer theory, national image, hybridity, temporality, Swedish sexual exceptionalism, homonationalism, visibility, discourse, LGBTQ