Discussing Europeanization and East-West dynamics of race, gender and sexuality

Abstract

In the following dialogue, Anika Keinz, the invited discussant at the panel “Struggles over Europe” forming part of the “Troubling Gender” conference, and Paweł Lewicki talk about how race, gender, and sexuality are not only entangled in the East-West dynamic but co-constitute the East-West dichotomy too. They discuss racial relations and states of morality, in grappling with the question of what exactly race-critical studies can contribute to both the improved analysis of this dichotomy and to the examination of developments in Europe: What can we observe when looking, for example, at gender and sexual politics in Poland from a race-critical perspective and what can this tell us about nationalisms?

Doing so, they take up the discussion Lewicki started, together with Randi Elin Gressgård and Rafał Smoczyński, in the special issue of Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics “Struggles over Europe. Postcolonial East/West Dynamics of Race, Gender and Sexuality” (2020, 6/3). This special issue explores the dynamics pertaining to (racialized) gender and sexuality, as well as their local expressions, and asks how they are embedded in broader dynamics and discourses on Europe, Europeanization, and the transformation of (il)liberal states. Lewicki and Keinz then continue their conversation and pick up on certain aspects that came up during the panel discussion. They reflect on how categories such as “race,” “gender,” and “sexuality” contribute to the reproduction of various understandings of “Europe” and “European modernity” and to the (self-)produced notions of “East” and “West” respectively.