Tue22 Jul09:15am(15 mins)
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Where:
Room 11
Presenter:
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In 2024, the Ukrainian musicians Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil were selected to represent Ukraine at the annual Eurovision Song Contest with their song “Teresa & Maria,” a pop-rap anthem that emphasizes the everyday divinity of women. Since then, they have appeared--individually and together--in venues including CNN and the United Nations. Since beginning their musical collaboration in the aftermath of the Russian full-scale invasion, Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil have cultivated images of Ukrainian femininity in contradictory ways, and engaged with discourses of feminism with marked ambivalence. At times, both artists challenge stereotypical archetypes of Ukrainian womanhood; at others, they have embraced sentimental and domestic images of womanhood, reinforcing rigid gendered and sexual binaries. While “ambivalent feminism” has been theorized in terms of the neoliberal cooptation of emancipatory social movements (Fraser 2015), and “celebrity” or “pop” feminism has been criticized as opportunistic and superficial (McRobbie 2008), or potentially subversive (Halberstam 2013), this paper intervenes to explore how such ambivalent feminism is constructed and constrained in times of emergency, and more so when expressed by prominent culture workers from historically marginalized locations like Ukraine. Which genealogies of feminism are Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil delinking from, reifying, embracing, or rejecting, as they craft a musical message meant to appeal to the broadest possible audiences in diverse venues like Eurovision, American cable news, and the bureaucratic halls of international governance?