Siročić, Zorica

This presentation is thought as an impulse for a rethinking of the conventional understanding of what it is means to practice and think “politics”. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2003) challenged the hegemony of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” and “paranoid style” as inherent features of the philosophical and/or political critique. Since then, efforts to practice “reparative reading” appeared, among others, in literary criticism, education, queer theory and cultural studies. While the “reparative turn” in these disciplines demonstrates that it is possible to read and interpret in an ameliorate manner that acknowledges, among others, motives of aesthetic pleasure, utopian longing, joy and passion, does the same logic apply to political action? In other words, is it possible to practice reparative politics? I will use the example of feminist and queer festivals to propose a positive answer to this question. The argument suggests that the creative dissent, communal attachment and positive affect of the festivals could be seen as key characteristics of the reparative political style.

Zorica Siročić is a post-doctoral fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2020/21. She holds a PhD in sociology (University of Graz, 2019, with distinction), MA in political science (Central European University, 2010, with distinction) and a diploma in political science (University of Zagreb, 2009). She is a recipient of Gabriele Possanner Award (Austrian Ministry of Science, Education and Research, 2019), SOWI In Dialog Award (Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, 2019) and the Johanna Dohnal Scholarship (2015), among other recognitions. Her teaching and research foci include political sociology, sociology of social movements, contentious politics of gender, and sociology of gender. Her monograph, tentatively titled Festivals as Reparative Politics, should be published with Routledge as part of the series Gender and Comparative Politics by the end of 2021.