Spaces of Appearance and the Right to Appear: March 8 in Local Bodily Assemblies

Aiming to deepen our understandings of corporeal and embodied dimensions of transnational feminist and LGBTI + activism, this chapter is driven by the question: Why does the body still remain an important instrument of queer and feminist struggles in the era of digital solidarities? Following the International Women’s Day in diverse locales in Sweden, Turkey, and Russia, the ethnographic analyzes in this chapter bring forth the significance of embodied forms of resistance for the (re)making of space and explore how resistance flows across various scales. Engaging with the ambiguities of embodied resistance, this chapter visualizes the potential of corporeal modes of resistance to shift from the individual to the collective, showing that attention to multiple scales of resistance can provide more fine-grained understandings of the possibilities and constraints within which feminist and LGBTI+ struggles are located.

Transnational Spaces of Resistance

This chapter lays out the theoretical foundation of the book. It conceptualizes resistance as a space in-between small-scale mundane practices with a low level of collective organizing and large-scale protest activities which often exemplify resistance in social movement studies. In line with feminist and queer conceptualization of resistance, the authors suggest to examine multi-scalarity of resistant practices. The chapter attends to three scales of feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia. The first scale analyzes activism in relation to the civil society-state-market triad. The second scale problematizes the notion of solidarity in relations between feminist and LGBTI+ activists from different geopolitical regions and countries as well as between small- and large-scale activist organizations and groups. Finally, the third scale focuses on individual resistant practices and the role of individual bodies in emergence of collective political struggles.

Conclusion

This chapter revisits the points of departure for the book and approaches Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia as contested, multiple, ambivalent, and fluid categories. Recognizing the multiple convergences and shifts that have characterized feminist and LGBTI+ resistances throughout this book, the chapter locates these enactments within a broader context of more spectacular, attention-seeking forms of political expression as well as less visible and small-scale, everyday forms of resistance. Within such broader contexts, this chapter argues, it is possible to catch sight of the fluidity between various scales of resistance—individual/collective, micro/meso/macro, local-transnational—which can incite and inspire new practices of resistance. By so doing, it is concluded, these struggles can also be seen to carry hope for more open-ended futures.

Transforming Conditions of Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism

This chapter provides an in-depth understanding of the conditions for feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia, including legislative frames, access to resources and funding, employment conditions, and geographical and geopolitical locality. Instead of taking the relations between the state, civil society, and feminist and LGBTI+ activists for granted as an overarching explanatory model for comparative analysis, the chapter examines the multifaceted nature of the relations between the state, civil society and feminist and LGBTI+ activists in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia. Further, the chapter scrutinizes transnational, national, and local scales that influence the conditions of activism across the three research contexts. The discussions in the chapter are wrapped up by an interrogation of how donor politics influence the activist agenda in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia and of what resistant practices activists lean on in their everyday work.

Introduction

Presenting the research context of the book, this chapter familiarizes the reader with the conceptual, methodological, and ethical discussions and concerns that are present throughout the book. After a brief overview of gender and sexual politics in Russia, Turkey, and the Scandinavian countries, it introduces the book’s multi-scalar transnational methodology—an innovative approach to the study of transnationalizing feminist and LGBTI+ activisms that traces convergences and contrasts between seemingly disparate places and connectivities below and beyond the national scale. The chapter offers descriptions of the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Russia, Turkey, and the Scandinavian countries, as well as a discussion of how contested terms such as feminism, LGBTI+ , queer, activism, NGOs, West–East, North–South are navigated in the book.

Solidarities Across: Borders, Belongings, Movements

What is the role of affinity, friendship, and care, as well as of conflict and dissonance, in creating possibilities of and hindrances to transnational solidarities? Building on an emergent literature on everyday and affective practices of solidarity, this chapter offers a set of diverse ethnographic accounts of activist work oriented to recognizing and challenging inequalities and relations of oppression based on race, ethnicity, religion, and class, alongside gender and sexuality. Engaging a variety of material from feminist and LGBTI+ activisms, the chapter highlights ambivalences inscribed in the making of collective resilience, resistance, and repair by: First, problematizing activist efforts to build solidarity across geographic and contextual divides; second, highlighting the importance of solidarity as shared labor in challenging state actors and institutions and reversing colonial processes; and third, unpacking the implications of transnational solidarity campaigns in different locales. The chapter ends with reflections on how feminist scholarship can advance conceptualizations of solidarity across difference.