Papers by Eirini Avramopoulou
Routledge eBooks, Jul 3, 2013
Critical Discourse Studies, 2013
Political Geography, 2023
This article employs the notion of embodied geopolitics in order to re-ground geopolitical relati... more This article employs the notion of embodied geopolitics in order to re-ground geopolitical relations at the scale of everyday life. Specifically, it explores how geopolitical relations between Greece and Turkey that historically oscillate between enmity and friendship, mediate the everyday lives of Turkish citizens who moved to Athens after 2016, in a context of intertwined crises (i.e. the refugee, socio-economic and pandemic-related health crisis). Drawing on in-depth interviews with Turkish citizens, we seek to understand how their diverse posi- tionalities defined by gender, class, ethnicity and religion, become reconfigured as they negotiate their be- longings in Athens. We are interested, in particular, in how this negotiation is shaped by the ever-present geopolitical past, as well as the experiences of displacement and precarity. Through an engagement with critical and feminist geopolitics, we argue that the historical and political relations between Greece and Turkey ‘haunt’ the lives of Turkish citizens, (re)producing stereotypes and othering processes. At the same time, we propose that their everyday relational geographies are constituted by ‘sheltered’ spaces, which enable them to reconfigure their positionalities as well as boundaries, constraints, and haunting histories. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential the negotiations of belonging that ensue by the haunting geopolitical relations and the everyday sheltered spaces have, to challenge and/or reproduce geopolitical relations on the ground.
De/Constituting Wholes
I will focus on the story of Ali, a transgender activist friend, who was fighting against transph... more I will focus on the story of Ali, a transgender activist friend, who was fighting against transphobia, his illness, and eventual death — during the 2013 public uprisings in Istanbul. Focusing on both the historic moment and this personal story, I ask: what happens when bodies assemble to protest, resist, and lay claim to an-other vision of liveable death, as well as life?
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
This article focuses on the temporal and spatial proximity mediating the lives of those who have ... more This article focuses on the temporal and spatial proximity mediating the lives of those who have been institutionalized in distinctive (albeit similar) ways on the Greek island of Leros, like asylum seekers and the mentally ill—and those working in asylum institutions—who appear co-implicated in the circuit of crisis capitalism and the biopolitical/necropolitical effects of managing populations deemed disposable in the name of care and protection. Drawing closely on the double meaning of the term asylum, this article explores the gendered and racialized biopolitical apparatus of vulnerability management in asylum contexts, especially the deadness and livingness they produce. It argues that complicity arises within the dense atmosphere of the surplus of death and the unattainable accumulation produced by multiple crises. It approaches the associated “surplus of death” as essential to the political economy of asylum management, which operates on a logic of “slow death” and the wearing...
Europe seems beset by the prospect of crisis. And yet its institutions continue to function. The ... more Europe seems beset by the prospect of crisis. And yet its institutions continue to function. The continent remains a zone of economic privilege, a status that exacts other kinds of cost, humanitarian and social. Established political processes continue to operate as usual. At the same time, we witness the rise of protest reactionary and progressive. Our speakers asked what ideals ought to claim the commitment of Europeans today, in a situation combining cynicism and struggle, threat and stability.<br> Programme Thursday, 27 March 18:30 Introduction: What Europe? Ideals to Fight for Today<br> Roger Berkowitz (Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College New York) 18:45 Keynote Introduction<br> Dr. Gabriele Freitag, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde 19:00: Opening Keynote: Ukraine: Soviet Past, European Future?<br> Timothy Snyder (Yale University) Friday, 28 March 10:30-12:00 Opening Panel<br> Where is democracy to be found in Europe today?<br> Speaker...
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 2022
Pornography is representing an explicit sexual act. However, it's not my job to produce it, o... more Pornography is representing an explicit sexual act. However, it's not my job to produce it, others do it very well, on a large scale and in a stylish way, like Shine Louise Houston or Courtney Trou-ble. Each artist has her own way of working and her own aesthet-ics. There are movements and currents of thought, which evolve in time and sometimes contradict each other. Personally, I don't really like the term "post" (post-porn, post-feminism...), nor do I feel represented by the term "queer artist."
The point of departure of this edited volume was experimental, and so too is its result. The idea... more The point of departure of this edited volume was experimental, and so too is its result. The idea for this collection initially sprung from a need, not to mention desire, to open up, relate to and test the limits of certain avenues of thought and their material impli-cations. These were part of our intellectual horizons and everyday experiences when we were living in the UK, but were also shaped by our moving in and out of the country, and through friends, or friends of friends, families of all kinds, comrades, books, objects, concepts etc. from all over the world. The idea came from a need to experiment with (familiar or unfamiliar) others, so as to create a platform of engagement while "sweating" with certain concepts, as Sarah Ahmed so beautifully put it.1 But such need to experi-ment derived from the fact that we had already found ourselves "sweating" with desire in our everyday lives, in relationships that were confronting us with our own failed attempts to ...
India; currently lives in Goa, India) graduated with a BA in photography from rmit, Melbourne, sp... more India; currently lives in Goa, India) graduated with a BA in photography from rmit, Melbourne, spent a year as an exchange student at The Art Institute of Chicago and another summer trying to get an MFA from Bard College in upstate New York. Their* practice incorporates everything and anything, including video, photography, performance, food, drawing, sound, installation, and modes of sustainable living. Queerying everything, they often unselfconsciously manifest "the inappropriate/d other"-one whom you cannot appropriate and one who is inappropriate. Experiencing their works entails entering alter-curious worlds riddled with fact, fiction, poetry, and mythology, that compel
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2020
Abstract This article is based on ethnographic research on the island of Leros at the peak of the... more Abstract This article is based on ethnographic research on the island of Leros at the peak of the so-called refugee crisis. The analytical trope of the palimpsest is employed to unravel the traumatic experiences of war, asylum, and exile that haunt the past and present of this place, thus questioning the notion of crisis, as well as the false understandings of identity manifested in the duality of victim/perpetrator and the idea of waiting as passivity/resistance. The article addresses the epistemic violence done by what I define as living on through identities infused by trauma, and being-in-waiting. It argues that an affective and performative reading of history and space, through the employment of palimpsestous writing, help us to relate and understand the meaning of “finding refuge” as a complicated process tightly related to the experience of uprootedness, confinement, disassociation, and solidarity, as well as to the desire to make life sustainable. Moreover, this process entails moving away from acts of philanthropy and neocolonial ideologies still present in any encounter with suffering and alterity.
European Feminist Platform, 2021
What does care mean in a Covid-19 pandemic context? Why does care fail and gender-based violence ... more What does care mean in a Covid-19 pandemic context? Why does care fail and gender-based violence becomes even more resilient in itself, despite being conceptualised as a "pandemic within a pandemic" in a context of intensifying sexism, culturalist stereotypes and xenophobia, not to mention social policing and the intensive securitization of borders and mobility?
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2022
This article focuses on the temporal and spatial proximity mediating the lives of those who have ... more This article focuses on the temporal and spatial proximity mediating the lives of those who have been institutionalized in distinctive (albeit similar) ways on the Greek island of Leros, like asylum seekers and the mentally ill—and those working in asylum institutions—who appear co-implicated in the circuit of crisis capitalism and the biopolitical/necropolitical effects of managing populations deemed disposable in the name of care and protection. Drawing closely on the double meaning of the term asylum, this article explores the gendered and racialized biopolitical apparatus of vulnerability management in asylum contexts, especially the deadness and livingness they produce. It argues that complicity arises within the dense atmosphere of the surplus of death and the unattainable accumulation produced by multiple crises. It approaches the associated “surplus of death” as essential to the political economy of asylum management, which operates on a logic of “slow death” and the wearing out of populations struggling to endure its unbearable affects. This affective atmosphere is imbued with ethico-political questions that are neither owned by particular subjects nor disavowed in their universal reach but sustained (in their unsustainability) through norms and morals reiterated in their articulation, sense-making trouble, and measurement of worth.
Subjectivity, 2017
Exploring the limits of language when one needs to translate hope between the local and the trans... more Exploring the limits of language when one needs to translate hope between the local and the transnational, this paper focuses on a silent feminist protest that took place in memory of an Italian performance artist who was found raped and dead in Istanbul, Turkey in 2008. My analysis stems from research material collected during eighteen months of fieldwork and engages with post-structuralist theories and feminist and queer studies in order to argue against recent theories that locate affect outside language, representation and discourse. By highlighting the performative components of political language in its tight relation to affective dispositions, I argue that the activist women’s silent protest was not speechless, but instead echoed the long history of the feminist movement fighting against male violence and sexual harassment, as well as the feminists’ (lost) hopes for changes and social transformation.
Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, Dec 31, 2013
This paper focuses on the unexpected female coalition created in 2008 between feminist, LBT (lesb... more This paper focuses on the unexpected female coalition created in 2008 between feminist, LBT (lesbian, bisexual, transsexual) and religious activists in Turkey, and asks how women come to signify-and possibly challenge-the pre-established demarcations of politics framing gendered precariousness. How do women claim to sign differently the contract of the political? By referring to the neoliberal and conservative values of the current government's agenda and underlying the importance of newly formed alliances between activist women, it explores the complex ways in which these three groups struggle to be heard within public debate in Turkish society and how they try to form alliances despite their differences.
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Papers by Eirini Avramopoulou
International Open Gathering
UNICONFLICTS in spaces of crisis
Critical approaches in, against and beyond the University
11-14th June 2015
at the Department of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
Τα Αντι-κείµενα σεξουαλικότητας –12 δοκίµια διεθνών θεωρητικών– θέτουν υπό νέα διαπραγµάτευση επιστηµολογικά και µεθοδολογικά ερωτήµατα για τη συνοµιλία κριτικής θεωρίας και σπουδών σεξουαλικότητας. Τα δοκίµια του τόµου στρέφουν την προσοχή µας στα «υλικά» που παράγει και από τα οποία παράγεται η ίδια η σεξουαλικότητα, ανοίγοντας δηµιουργικά ερωτήµατα συσχέτισης ύλης, γνώσης, συν-αισθήµατος και σάρκας. Ταυτόχρονα, µας προ(σ)καλούν σε ενδελεχή επανεξέταση των επιστηµολογικών και µεθοδολογικών παραδόσεων που διατρέχουν τις ερευνητικές πρακτικές και διαποτίζουν τις θεωρίες που έχουν στοιχειώσει όχι µόνο την εµπειρία του σεξ, αλλά και την επιστηµονική παραγωγή γνώσης γι’ αυτό.