Our networks will be anti-racist and our pedagogy critical
Our networks will be anti-racist and our pedagogy critical
I write this in the time of historical repetitions: once more, the rise of ethno-nationalisms and racism in Central and Eastern Europe, coercive action against institutions with critical curricula and pedagogies, and a generalized gearing up towards heteronormative patriarchal futurity (see, most obviously, Romania’s attempts to include the definition of the “traditional family” in its constitution and recent threats against reproductive rights in Poland). In such a context, this intervention is minor. Its scale is determined by my personal experience as a queer white woman researcher raised in Eastern Europe, in a working-class background, but receiving all my postgraduate education and most of my critical and political education in the U.K. My account and experience as a researcher and as a teacher are shaped by the language I write in: the standard British English I started learning before being enrolled in any school, as it was my mother’s conviction that this language would be the driver for my class mobility. They are also shaped by the various English university contexts where I studied, and by the intersections of areas that I explore: film and screen studies, politics and aesthetics, cultural studies, digital cultures. My PhD research in Romanian moving image art and history has been an intrinsic part of my investigation into my identity and belonging in the spaces of academia (as a researcher and as a teacher from Eastern Europe). Moreover, the struggles that I have come to align myself with and offer my solidarity to continuously help me learn and further the investigation into my position in academia, my Eastern European whiteness, my gender, sexuality in and out of a given geographical context, or my privilege when coded as a “good immigrant” in opposition to, for one, the Romanian Roma who live and work in the UK. What follows is a speculative call for a new form of critical network, shaped by my position as I currently stand at the intersections of these geographies and spaces of identity and experience.
Brebenel, Mihaela
3578cace-a19b-4996-8c5b-f5dc7164da3f
1 August 2018
Brebenel, Mihaela
3578cace-a19b-4996-8c5b-f5dc7164da3f
Brebenel, Mihaela
(2018)
Our networks will be anti-racist and our pedagogy critical.
Cinema Journal, 5 (1).
Abstract
I write this in the time of historical repetitions: once more, the rise of ethno-nationalisms and racism in Central and Eastern Europe, coercive action against institutions with critical curricula and pedagogies, and a generalized gearing up towards heteronormative patriarchal futurity (see, most obviously, Romania’s attempts to include the definition of the “traditional family” in its constitution and recent threats against reproductive rights in Poland). In such a context, this intervention is minor. Its scale is determined by my personal experience as a queer white woman researcher raised in Eastern Europe, in a working-class background, but receiving all my postgraduate education and most of my critical and political education in the U.K. My account and experience as a researcher and as a teacher are shaped by the language I write in: the standard British English I started learning before being enrolled in any school, as it was my mother’s conviction that this language would be the driver for my class mobility. They are also shaped by the various English university contexts where I studied, and by the intersections of areas that I explore: film and screen studies, politics and aesthetics, cultural studies, digital cultures. My PhD research in Romanian moving image art and history has been an intrinsic part of my investigation into my identity and belonging in the spaces of academia (as a researcher and as a teacher from Eastern Europe). Moreover, the struggles that I have come to align myself with and offer my solidarity to continuously help me learn and further the investigation into my position in academia, my Eastern European whiteness, my gender, sexuality in and out of a given geographical context, or my privilege when coded as a “good immigrant” in opposition to, for one, the Romanian Roma who live and work in the UK. What follows is a speculative call for a new form of critical network, shaped by my position as I currently stand at the intersections of these geographies and spaces of identity and experience.
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Published date: 1 August 2018
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Local EPrints ID: 435465
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/435465
ISSN: 0009-7101
PURE UUID: e3154181-c6c5-4c65-9f1b-c35a490be83a
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Date deposited: 07 Nov 2019 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:58
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