Legacies of Cultural Resistance in Post-Communist Central & Eastern Europe

The aim of the conference is to explore the legacy of cultural forms of resistance, opposition and dissent in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in 1989/91. It aims to investigate the extent to which modes, patterns and strategies of cultural resistance in the late-socialist period informed (or continue to inform) dissident visual art, literature or music in recent decades. What kind of continuities and discontinuities can be observed in cultural forms of protest across the 1989 divide? How did the consolidation of democratic regimes in the 1990s affect critical forms of artistic expression? Did the authoritarian turn of the mid-2010s result in the revival (in a modified form) of practices that characterised the non-conformist cultural sphere of late socialism? What forms of cultural innovation can be identified in contemporary oppositionist art and what are its main sources of inspiration? What role do horizontal, cross-border, and transnational entanglements and connections play in the development of cultural forms of resistance? How did the hierarchy of the modes of self-expression change (the decreasing significance of literature and the rise of social media) in the past three decades? How has the role of gender as a constitutive element of identity changed in protests happening over that period?

The conference is organised jointly the Trinity Centre for Resistance Studies, the Trinity Long Room Hub and the Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies. Registration is through eventbrite or by email to aporb@tcd.ie.

Conference program

Monday, 10 June 2024

10:30-10:45 Opening remarks

10:45-12:15 Keynote lecture

Professor Karen Leeder (University of Oxford), Spectres of 89': Forms of Resistance and the Haunting of the Berlin Republic

Chair: Mary Cosgrove (TCD)

12:15-1:00 Lunch break

1:00-2:30 Panel 1: Frameworks: samizdat, dissidence, environment

Barbara J. Falk (Royal Military College of Canada / University of Toronto) and Piotr Wciślik (Polish Academy of Sciences), Ramka, Resistance, and Resilience: Contrasting Dissident and Contemporary Networked Cultures of Protest

Conor Daly (TCD), Cultural opposition in Russia and the image of the dissident – continuities and discontinuities from the 1920s to 2020s

Olesia Zhytkova (Dublin City University), Environmental issues in Ukraine: Soviet damage, state policy since 1991, and civil society response

2:30-3:00 Coffee break

3:00-4:50 Panel 2: Transitions: media, entertainment, ideologies

Rebecca Carr (TCD), Replaying Communism with Kleo

Victor Morozov (TCD), Beyond Trademark Images: Reassessing the Role of Television in the Romanian Revolution

Lili Zách (Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest), Jokes as a form of cultural resistance during the Hungarian regime change

Johanna Kluit (Loughborough University), The Revival of Russian Anarchism: Post-Soviet Anarchism and the Struggle with the National Question (1985-1999)

Tuesday, 11 June 2024

9:30-11:00 Panel 3: Music and resistance studies

Balázs Apor (TCD), “Counterculture has become the new norm”: Music and cultural opposition in Hungary (2015-2024)

Miroslav Michela (Charles University, Prague), Czechoslovak cultural opposition in motion: genealogy of the punk fanzines in the post-socialist transition

Marco Biasioli (University of Manchester), Patrioprotest: The ambiguous resistance of independent music in Russia (2014-2022)

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-12:45 Special event by visiting professor

Sandra Russell (Mount Holyoke College), Embodying Futurity: Queer and Feminist Legacies of Ukrainian Women’s Cultural Productions during Perestroika

Discussant: Aleksandra Gajowy (UCD)

12:45-1:30 Lunch break

1:30-3:00 Panel 4 Gender: music, literature, performance

Aneta Stępień (Maynooth University), “My Body, my Choice”: intersectionality, creativity and solidarity in the abortion protest song

Jan Matonoha (Czech Academy of Sciences), Absence of feminist voices in the 1970s and 1980s Czech dissent, underground and exile literature: injurious attachments and discursive emergence of silence

Krzysztof Rowiński (TCD), Performance of Non-Belonging: Feminist Performance of Protest from Ewa Partum to Liliana Zeic

3:00-3:15 Coffee break

3:15-5:00 Panel 5 Language: literature and translation

Matylda Strand (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Whodunit? The subversive dimension of the detective genre in Czech post-communist

Dalibor Dobiáš (Czech Academy of Sciences), Jiří Gruša: Translation and the Language of (Post-)Communist Power

5.00-6.00 IARCEES AGM