Professor Alexander Kondakov will discuss his recently published book, Violent Affections: Queer sexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia. This presentation will explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence in Russia evidenced in 314 court cases under analysis. It expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature – queer theory and affect theory – in order to conceptualise what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. Taking empirical observations from Russia as a starting point, Kondakov develops an original explanation of how contemporary power relations are changing from those of late modernity as envisioned by Foucault’s Panopticon to neo-disciplinary power relations of a much more fragmented, fluid and unstructured kind – the Memeticon.
Watch the event recording on YouTube here.
Alexander "Sasha" Kondakov, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Ireland. His truly international experience includes holding positions in the University of Helsinki’s major research centre in Russian and Eurasian studies, Aleksanteri Institute, as well as research jobs at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. Alexander studied sociology of law at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain. He pioneered a course on queer theory in the European University at St. Petersburg in Russia. Kondakov’s latest research on violence against LGBT people in Russia has gotten attention in the international and Russian media. His studies were published in such journals as Sexualities, Social & Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Studies, and European Journal of Criminology. The research on anti-queer violence concluded with an open-access book Violent Affections.
