Rethinking the (Post-)Socialist Body: Art, Theory, and Politics

The body has long served as a central site of struggle in Eastern European politics and aesthetics. Shifting socio-political conditions – including the advent of neoliberalism and the resurgence of the masculine, militarised body – bring this focus into a contemporary perspective that demands renewed scrutiny and theorisation. Drawing on a cross-geographical examination of recent developments in visual, public, and popular culture, the project highlights diverse frameworks that render the body legible, illuminating what it means both to ‘see’ and to be ‘seen’ under intensifying regimes of political control and self-regulation. Departing from dominant scholarship that has often centred on Russian cultural production, the project turns its attention instead to the Baltics, former Yugoslavia, and Central Europe. In doing so, it brings to light artists and aesthetic strategies, as well as theoretical conceptualisations, that broaden and complicate widely-accepted narratives.