Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a study in progress conducted by LGBTQ people in Bishkek seeking self-knowledge regarding their sexual lives, bodies and relationships. While aiming at a very practical goal of creating accessible and adequate queer sex education materials by the community for the community, this project also seeks to empower people to become the scholars and bards of their own lives, to write their own history and valorise local queer culture. The paper investigates the merits and challenges of conducting participatory action studies, problematises researcher positionality and poses ethical questions with regard to such a study.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to conceptualize the current feminist narratives in Kyrgyzstan concerning the societal expectations and roles of women within the country's own search for identity, while also localizing these narratives within the greater context of the country's status as a 'transitional democracy' that is catering to both 'liberal' and 'conservative' global and regional agendas, and the resulting 'hybrid morality' of the country. The paper analyses narratives of some of the most vocal groups in the country (Bishkek Feminist Initiatives, LGBT organization "Labrys", Reproductive Health Alliance Kyrgyzstan, STAB) on normative images of women, as well as their proposed alternatives to them. Additionally the paper provides background on temporalities and geographies of feminism in Kyrgyzstan from a postcolonial point of view as a complex interplay of local thought and foreign learning.

Kyrgyzstani feminist and gender studies scholarship, as well as activist network, have been quite prolific in publishing results of grant-based research, as part of the development agenda on gender in post-Soviet countries. There is literature on women in Kyrgyz economy, women and their political and social rights, bride kidnapping, Islam and gender in Kyrgyzstan. However, the vast majority of these studies paints a picture of a binary opposition between the presumably archaic or traditional gender discourses (usually related to Islam) and modernized Western-style emancipation of women from the 'universal' patriarchal system, with the in-betweenness of the Soviet period that was half-traditional and half-modern.

The paper proposes that Kyrgyzstani scholarship lacks critical reflection and analysis of this self-colonising practice, where Kyrgyz feminists and activists become a kind of 'native' informant or agent of Western feminist imperialism. Rarely do gender scholars in Central Asia question whether the main subject matter of gender studies research in Kyrgyzstan being bride kidnapping, in Kazakhstan - institute of toqals, in Uzbekistan - the self-immolation of women, and in Tajikistan/Turkmenistan - that of arranged marriages, is an example of Orientalist cliches about Central Asia, or in this case - of self-Orientalization by Central Asian feminist scholarship. Majority of gender studies in the region remains strictly developmental in logic with a straight vector teleology of progressive movement from 'backwards' tradition to Soviet half-tradition/half-modernity to idealised Western model of female emancipation.

This paper aims to provide a meta-analysis of "feminist" subjectivities in Kyrgyzstan based on the study of an interplay between the 'colonised' and 'coloniser' feminist subjectivities, and by engaging with feminist epistemologies both Western and decolonial.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is presenting a research that will be undertaken within the framework of my MA thesis. This study aims to explore the processes through which erotic desires are constructed and expressed among young women in Dushanbe. Thence, the research is addressing the formation of young women's sexual subjectivities that evolve in the process of personal navigations trying to reconcile tensions between personal (intimate) desires and societal norms and ideas of what is il/legitimate. Narrative interviewing is chosen as one of the main methods of inquiry.

Currently, I do not have any empirical material, however, by the time of the conference I am planning to present preliminary results of the research project. So far, the starting point of my argument is informed by the scholarship of micro-political scientist Collete Harris on gender relations in Tajikistan. One of the conclusions the scholar draws in her research is that unmarried young women in Tajikistan have to repress all their sexual feelings because of anxieties on "lost virginity". While the discourse of "virginity" is indeed policing sexualities, I disagree with her line of argumentation, because erotic desires can be expressed and experienced in a multitude of ways and importantly also outside of marriage.

The paper will conclude sketching out the relevance of the research project in several aspects. Since the issue of erotic desire among young women in Tajikistan is not well researched, the study is attempting to provide non-normative analysis of contemporary sexual practices among young women in Dushanbe and contribute to the existing scholarship. Additionally, the topic might be relevant for both grassroots women's rights movements and established NGOs, because control of female sexuality constitutes a significant part of gender based violence and inequalities. Given very strong tradition of medicalisation of sexuality research, I would be very careful to claim relevance of my research to this field. However, certain contributions can also be indirectly useful for reproductive health/rights activists and specialists.

Keywords: sexuality, Tajikistan, agency, virginity, young women, narrative interviews

Paper long abstract:

My talk will deal with the concept of the "national body" or the body of the nation (Yuval-Davis) represented in different discourses in Central Asia. Apart from arguing and deciphering the "power" side of such attempts to nationalise women's bodies and to ethnicize them further, I will also highlight the creative resistance to these attempts. Women are not the silent "abused" and moralised bodies of objects of nationalisation but active participants in these discussions. Some prefer to accept the rules of the game following the legitimation through "sacred traditions" and others revolt against these frameworks. In deconstructing these responses I question why the response to these policies, informal and formalised rules have met such diverting approaches in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In Almaty women are actively protesting against shaming men (uyat-man) by exposing their naked bodies and openly discussing their sexual preferences. "Toqal" - second wife and "uyat-man" - literally shaming man from Kazakh language quickly became the new cultural terms in Kazakhstan that approaches hybrid globalised and traditionalised divides. In Uzbekistan traditional "ikat" silk turns what is known as "national dress" into the trendiest and expensive clothes beyond just Uzbek borders. There is even jeans ikat on sale in Uzbekistan. At the same time Tajik government officially announces the "traditional dress" dress code for women. These divergent discussions, trends, restrictions and frameworks only target women - men in all of these cases do not fall into the "nationalisation" of the body frame. In this talk I question how women's representation of the "body of the nation" changed in the past two decades and how and why these trends vary in different countries, contexts and regimes.