Master of Philology Ugron Nóra

Transformative Imaginaries Across Queer-Feminist Literary and Liberating Activist Knowledge Production

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Nelivuotinen

This PhD examines contemporary queer-feminist, feminist posthumanist and decolonial literature and literary-activist practices from Romania, Finland and the US in order to find new ways of relatings to each other, humans and nonhumans, and to the world. I argue that these transformative imaginaries that are queer and multispecies can contribute to achieving broader societal change towards a more sustainable co-habitation of the planet. The Romanian practices, groups and authors I engage with in this research, haven’t been a topic of academic research and they are often invisibilized in a conservative literary mainstream. In the ethos of epistemological decolonization, this dissertation thrives to contribute to bringing knowledge produced in the semiperipheral geopolitical space of Central-Eastern Europe namely Romania into the forefront and into discussion with US-based liberatory practices and Finnish feminist posthumanist writings, as well as to emphasize the possibilities that lie within queer-feminist storytelling in all three contexts for creating new epistemologies and new sustainable ways to inhabit the world. There are two types of materials examined: 1. nonfiction and fiction, both prose and poetry, 2. articles written by the selected authors, paratexts of the publications and interviews done for this research. A challenge for this PhD is to combine articles about different geopolitical, social, historical and literary contexts, such as the Romanian queer-feminist literature, US-based Black queer-feminist thought and Finnish feminist posthumanist poetry. I apply a transnational perspective to look at the world to which all examined authors and works contribute to. Apart from taking into consideration local contexts, I will look at the points of convergence and tensions between the selected works and practices across borders and regions.