Politics of resignification

Abstract

Societies of central and eastern Europe are increasingly described as the hub of broader ‘antigender’ mobilisations, which has made them a locus of interest in political science and gender studies, yet they curiously remain among the least represented in gender and language scholarship to date. Recent developments in the region tap into some urgent foci for the sociolinguistic study of gender and sexuality, encompassing not only growing frames of right-wing nationalism and antigenderism, but also burgeoning forms of feminist and queer resistance, whose intricacies and paradoxes complicate dominant perspectives in the field. Following a brief overview of the region's developments and contributions to the field, the present article uses this backdrop for an outline of several linguistic semiotic processes pertinent for tracing the dynamics of ‘gender ideology’ in discourse. More broadly, based on the complexities observed, the article emphasises the value of insights from postsocialist societies for rethinking the possibilities of true gender equality, within the wider struggles against the exploitation, marginalisation and dehumanisation pervasive in our current social reality. O drustvima centralne i istocne Evrope cesto se govori kao o zaristu 'antirodnih' mobilizacija, zbog cega privlace sve vise interesovanja u oblasti politickih nauka i rodnih studija, te iznenaduje da ova drustva spadaju medu najslabije zastupljene u oblasti jezika i roda. Skorasnja dogadanja u ovom regionu ukazuju na vazna pitanja za sociolingvisticko izucavanje roda i seksualnosti, unutar danas rasprostranjenih okvira desnicarskog nacionalizma i anti-rodnih pokreta, ali i novih oblika feministickog i kvir otpora, cije nijanse i paradoksi komplikuju neke ustaljene perspektive u ovoj naucnoj oblasti. Nakon kratkog pregleda postojecih tendencija u izucavanjima jezika i roda u regionu, te teorijske diskusije o lingvistickim semiotickim procesima koji su u osnovi dinamika rodnih ideologija u javnom diskursu, u radu se istice znacaj nalaza iz postsocijalistickih drustava za promisljanje mogucnosti stvarne rodne emancipacije u sklopu sirih borbi protiv eksploatacije, marginalizacije i dehumanizacije kakve odlikuju nasu sadasnju drustvenu realnost.