2pm to 3pm (New York Time)
On Zoom
Anna Ratecka
on
At Home with Feminism: Sex Workers’ Politics of Belonging in the Feminist Movement in Poland
Dr. Anna Ratecka is a postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden, where she works on the SUSTAINACTION project on civil society resilience in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on sex workers’ mobilizations, governance, anti-trafficking, and feminist organizing. She earned her PhD at Jagiellonian University (2022) and has held positions or fellowships at the University of Oslo, Oxford, and Vienna.
About the presentation: The presentation will discuss the alternative feminist contemporalities and spatialities of feminist movement by providing insight into the feminist debates over sex work in Poland. It will focus on the strategies and emotional labour that sex workers rights collective Sex Work Polska enacted to achieve belonging in the feminist movement in Poland. To claim belonging and to embrace belonging sex workers right activist used affective strategies presenting their definition and vocabulary to discuss sex work, politicize their situation, create emotional community around their claims pointing which feminist standpoint on sex work is correct and aligning with feminist frames and claims. The aim is to identify the affective strategies sex workers activist used to find resonance among feminist publics. This locates the debates in reflection on the role of emotions in social movements but also presents the local trajectories of feminist stories that differ significantly from Western European and US.
About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Anna Ratecka will have a brief presentation. Following Dr. Ratecka’s presentation, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.
