ODD THEORY #23 “Fuck Off Polish Scum” – Eastern Europe in the Times of Populist Revolt Jan Sowa There was a time in the 90s when it seemed that all differences between the East and the West would have been blissfully overcome and, given enough time, Europe would unite into a homogenous social, cultural and economic entity. That was supposed to be our way of living through the end of history. Nowadays it is not only difficult to believe in that utopia, but even to understand how anyone could have come up with it in the first place. The division between the West and the East does not look like a Cold War residue nor like an invention of the Enlightenment as it was (in)famously claimed by Larry Wolff. Even a brief look at various maps of Europe, past and present – from contemporary air quality to expansion of the Roman Empire in 1 century AD to geography of serfdom in early modern times – reveals a deep cleavage separating the West and the East of the continent. Inferiority of the East is now experienced by those who emigrate to the West in a form of essentializing racism that puts Eastern Europeans in a bizarre and dangerous category of “off-white”.
LECTURE Monday, 30 September 19:00 The lecture Mapping the Real. Eastern Europe as a Subject of Lackpresented by Jan Sowa is going to explore the historical East-West division of the European continent. WORKSHOP Tuesday, 1 October 19:00 – 21:00 Please email [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> to register. The workshop entitled The East European Subaltern – Peripheral Inferiority and its Desublimation into the Populist Revolt (including a presentation of Janek Simon’s work Synthetic Poles) will focus on the experience of Eastern Europeans in the West and its role in the spread of anti-European and anti-immigrant attitudes in the EU. The workshop will also aim at developing an alternative materialist framework allowing for a progressive political articulation of the Eastern European malaise. Reading material is available on our website. Jan Sowa (born 1976) is a dialectical-materialist social theorist and researcher. He holds a PhD in sociology and a habilitation in cultural studies, he concentrates on researching modernity. Author and editor of a dozen of books, including Joy forever – political economy of social creativity and, in 2019, Solidarity 2.0 or Democracy as a Form of Life. His research and teaching assignments took him to several academic and non-academic institutions in Poland and abroad, recently, University of São Paulo, Warsaw University and Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne. Jan Sowa was the curator of discursive programs and research of Biennale Warszawa and he currently is associate professor at the Department of Culture Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. ODD THEORY <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=091526a1a9&e=2ca14297a6> has been since the beginning an attempt to understand as well as to reconfigure, with the delicate means afforded by a small-scale initiative, the Romanian imaginary. It functioned as a learning and sharing tool, and in the current configuration succeeded in its initial bet of bringing together a community of curious and courageous people. The small following overlapped ODD’s general following, but also managed to stand out as a work group of hybrid practitioners, one that is slowly developing common tools and initiatives. In working with a collective imaginary, regardless of the scale of that collective, one has to face the challenge of the poor political imagination characterizing the contemporary world. Romania is, in that respect, eternally blocked in binaries which do not serve its citizens. The misery of catching up conflates with extremely narrow local politics, producing a public sphere in which important issues marking the world are never properly discussed. In that respect, ODD THEORY makes a point in choosing speakers who can deliver presentations and workshops on subjects that remain poorly known and understood on the local scene, topics which overlap and create a series of mind-opening mirrorings. ODD THEORY is curated by Cristina Bogdan. A space for theoretical discussion and social gatherings of all kinds, ODD welcomes to Bucharest artists, writers, critics, philosophers, performers, scientists, activists. Through residencies and informal events such as discussions, workshops, reading groups, performances, ODD provides for a combination of intimacy and playfulness, dialogue and resistance, from which to act upon the world. Project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not to be held responsible for the content of the project, nor for the ways in which the results of the project might be used. Those are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant. <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=f9a84fb19b&e=2ca14297a6> <mailto:[email protected]> <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=d14f4e96ad&e=2ca14297a6> <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=741aee8adb&e=2ca14297a6> <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=5082ab076d&e=2ca14297a6> <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=585bff4a9c&e=2ca14297a6> Share <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=61ffad1a61&e=2ca14297a6> <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=53e508af35&e=2ca14297a6> Tweet <https://oddweb.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=245309b5e8&e=2ca14297a6> <http://us11.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=5a0c39a2ac&e=2ca14297a6> Forward <http://us11.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=5c8fa24225389d3209bc8a496&id=5a0c39a2ac&e=2ca14297a6>
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