L*st, after all: Margins and excesses of post soviet (and) leftist desire

Lust is one of the seven deadly sins because it overwhelms rationality and re-productivity with desire, and it thus represents a threat to the social order. Yet, lust is also tied to one’s power position and can be a driving force behind the oppressive tendencies as well as powering the emancipatory utopia. After all, the very first testimony in Dante´s Inferno V is provided by a lustful woman who is thus allowed to speak out for herself. It is this desire to be recognized as a speaking subject that will interest us. A fragile and always-to-be negotiated interstice between policing and politics, law and love. An interface between what’s lost and what’s here to last that our shared afternoon and evening will be dealing with.

Within the context of a post-socialist country, being both lost and experiencing a lust for Europe is a lasting condition. Still, after being accepted without truly becoming equal, it is very rare to question the principles upon which Europe builds its legitimacy as a continent where democracy was born. The exclusive access to fortress Europe is conditioned by violent military operations on its borders and rests upon a selective solidarity. How should the contemporary Left in the Former East approach such hypocrisy? Have we lost the lust for the internationalist utopia for good? How was lust mobilized within the capitalist and neoliberal economic transformations of Eastern Europe, when their markets were being opened to the world? What lessons can we learn today from the historical experiences of the Black Communist women, Roma female activists and other marginalized fighters?

Speakers: Boris Buden, Jodi Dean, Agnes Gagyi, Marina Gržinić

Curated by Ivana Rumanová and Ondřej Trhoň