Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on the cases that formed the contemporary politics of mourning in contemporary Greece through an intersectional feminist approach that will draw on the cases of the murder of Zak Kostopoulos, the femicide of Eleni Topaloudi and the transcide of Dimitra/Dimitris Kalogiannis.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2015 the queer and feminist movements in Greece have entered a new era of political action fighting for social injustice and defending several emerging forms of the politics of mourning and loss. The murder of Zak Kostopoulos, the femicide of Eleni Topaloudi and the transcide of Dimitra/Dimitris, are some of the cases that formed the politics of remembrance and mourning and shaped the attempts for the intersectional feminist politics in Greece. Reflecting on the interviews of my interlocutors that are vivid parts of the social movements and the political communities in Athens, I intend to approach the topic through the notion of intersectionality as a critical social theory (Collins 2019, Crenshaw 1991) and the theoretical framework of situated knowledges (Haraway 1988). Through this presentation I will try to underline the ways in which the vulnerability of the subalterns and the fragile bodies under the oppression of patriarchy, capitalism, ableism and white supremacy, shape the political responses and the feminist resistance in Greece.

Paper short abstract:

Ultrarunning entails self-inflicted pain and suffering that place the runner’s gendered and classed body in an uncertain and vulnerable condition. This paper scrutinises the moral language that runners use to justify this in the example of recreational ultrarunners in Estonia.

Paper long abstract:

Various sports – endurance sports in particular – entail self-inflicted pain and suffering that place one’s body in an uncertain and vulnerable condition. Building on the ethnographic example of recreational ultrarunners in Estonia, this paper scrutinises the moral language that many runners use to justify and make sense of the pain and suffering that running extended distances often results in and how this is reflective of the gendered and classed essence of the runners’ bodies. As I will argue, the moral language that runners use is a technology of the self that, according to Foucault (1985), can be understood as consisting of various practices and techniques that individuals, drawing from available and imagined cultural models, perform on themselves to become moral subjects. Sensations of extreme exhaustion, severe physical pain, sleep deprivation, and other common effects of ultrarunning constitute “bodily affordances” (Gibson 1986) in this self-making process. Occasionally, these bodily experiences are reframed in spiritual or even religious terms and experienced by ultrarunners as emotionally uplifting and as means for living a “more authentic” life. But ultrarunners’ willingness to subject their bodies to long-term physical strain and to put their will power on trial can also be interpreted as corresponding to various middle-class specific ideals of self-discipline, motivation, success, and perseverance. The ultrarunning bodies are usually tracked, monitored, and measured by means of modern technology, and such technologically enhanced and informed “optimisation of the self” constitutes a form of biopolitics that fits with various neoliberal values such as efficiency and productivity.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the testimonies of shame for one’s body shared by people who encountered fat shaming; it explores how they perceive and conceptualize their responsibility for fat and narratively cope with the feeling of shame for the body.

Paper long abstract:

According to the WHO, we live in the era of globesity. As the number of people with overweight and obesity grows, so does the fat shaming narrative, which spreads across social media, causes (cyber)bullying, and even penetrates public healthcare (Brewis et al., 2018; Talumaa et al., 2022). Experts warn that fat shaming can lead to negative health impacts, trigger eating disorders, and contribute to discrimination and isolation. Although fat shaming can target both men and women, female bodies experience more intensive disciplinization in terms of body image and are thus more exposed to body-related comments (Kłonkowska, 2015).

Weight stigma builds on attributing the responsibility for fat to the person herself, even though it has been widely discussed that being overweight can be caused by factors beyond one’s control, such as epigenetics, environmental exposure, and socioeconomic inequality. Still, deviating from the socially acceptable body normativity is perceived as a personal failure and a sign of out-of-control behavior (Trainer et al., 2021).

While the consequences of fat shaming are intensely studied and discussed, the shame itself remains under-examined. Drawing on personal testimonies shared with the initiative “Moje tělo je moje” (My body is mine), this paper analyzes how fat shaming becomes fat shame (Schülter et al., 2021). It examines how the responsibility for fat is redistributed through the narratives of self-responsibilization, medicalization, normalization, and gendered relations. It further explores the coping strategies of the subjects of (self)blaming, including the role of collective action and campaigns in body positivity.

Paper short abstract:

In seemingly uncertain and insecure times in urban spaces, gendered safety gadgets and Tik Tok videos are being used as means of protection over the body. This paper will address the materialisation and digitization of safety as a gendered experience in Brooklyn, and the impact this has on the body.

Paper long abstract:

‘I don’t have my taser with me but I’ve got My Kitty.’ Marisol

In times of insecurity and uncertainty in urban spaces, my research in Brooklyn has found women and non-binary folks turning to non-lethal weaponization in the form of safety gadgets; self-defence weapons, such as tasers, pepper sprays, alarms and kubotans. These tools are frequently advertised directly to women and are gendered as such, from pink spikey cat ears attached to key rings, to cute mushroom-shaped tasers. This paper will address the complex relationship between gendered-safety-gadgets and their user’s conceptions of their body, as both gendered and supposedly insecure. This paper will explore how this connects to the digitization of safety, as these gadgets are often advertised and purchased via Tik Tok. My interlocutors also use Tik Tok to watch and post videos about their experiences of gender-based violence in the city, such as harassment, stalking and assault, posted as a means of empowerment, to warn others, and to engage in community conversation.

This paper will address how safety, as a gendered experience, has been materialised and digitalised, and explore the implications this has for how the body is envisioned in urban spaces. It will also ask, do these Tik Tok videos and safety gadgets create agency or anxiety? Are they technologies of care or rather do they reaffirm the very sense of insecurity and anxiety that they attempt to dispel? A question that is particularly pertinent in the context of the US and its constructed atmosphere of fear.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the concept of uncertainty as perceived by mothers living with HIV and AIDS in Egypt in the aftermath of 2011.I’ll depict how interlocutors navigated the biomedical, the familial,the social uncertainties,and authorities, in pursuit of ameliorating their living with HIV

Paper long abstract:

The moment of rupture caused by knowing the positive HIV status creates states of psychological, emotional as well as social uncertainties, in which the HIV-positive mother perceives it as passing through the “unknown” and its related panics. Living with embodied risk and embodied uncertainty makes configuring new realities somehow distant because of the momentary recognition of the precarious nature of life,which turns her future as she used to imagine it into a past. this embodied risk from a pathology would influence the type of uncertainty that the person would experience (Mol and Law 2004).This paper focuses on the concept of uncertainty in its biomedical and political aspects as perceived by mothers living with HIV and AIDS in Egypt in the aftermath of 2011 revolution. I’ll depict how my interlocutors navigated the biomedical, the familial, and the social uncertainties, and authorities, in pursuit of ameliorating their living with HIV. By doing so, they were preoccupied with fulfilling their roles as mothers and care givers whilst realizing the fleeting nature of their pathological as well political realities. The paper is part of a more detailed year-long ethnographic research that was conducted from spring 2014 to spring 2015, to explore how the research interlocutors perceived their individual experiences of living with HIV within the social and political context of Egypt post 2011. The ethnography situated the stories of the main research interlocutors within the interlinked discourses of power and authorities such as the medical, the social, the religious, the economic, and the political.

Paper short abstract:

My research focuses on trans (“travesti”) women’s body modifications as practices that situate them in the world while showing up the uncertainties generated by some biopolitical technologies which have failed when producing “undisciplined” and intelligible bodies who, ultimately, “deserved to die”.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I seek to go beyond the agency/subordination dichotomy when talking about body modifications. My aim is to critically think about the intersection of bodies and technologies when it comes to questioning the limits of a “normal”, “healthy” and “productive” body (Hogle, 2005). I will focus on how trans (“travesti”) women modify their bodies to challenge the bases of a heteronormative society like ours. The use of hormones, silicone injections or cosmetic surgeries become practices that not only define the particularities of the travesti subculture in a given context, but also acquire a special meaning by giving the participants their place in the world. At the same time, travestis’ survival in a heteronormative context that dehumanises diverse genders and bodies, shows up how certain biopolitical technologies (Foucault, 2008) have failed when producing “undisciplined” bodies and beautiful citizens who – ultimately – “deserved to die” (Haritaworn et al., 2014).

In other words, this paper aims to analyse how travestis’ gendered bodies generate uncertainties in people with a dualistic thinking who believe travestis make an “inadequate” appropriation of some techniques and practices of body modification. However, the place of beauty in the construction of feminine and desirable bodies is of great importance to enable the travestis to become intelligible subjects and admired by their peers, ciswomen and men.