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On our right to walk free: A comment on the intervention in the student parade on October 28, 2019

On our right to walk free: A comment on the intervention in the student parade on October 28, 2019

 

Aliki Theodosiou and Melina Kalfanti

 


 

Abstract

Using the antimilitarist intervention of ten female subjects in the student parade on 28th October 2019 as a starting point, in this text we discuss walking as a political practice. Our interest focuses on the way in which a mundane, everyday act can create detours, depending on the (gender) position that the performing subject inhabits and on the space where this act happens. Attempting to draw a connection with Lenio Kaklea’s work Practical Encyclopedia. Detours, as well as using José Esteban Muñoz’s study of disidentifications, Athena Athanasiou’s analysis of antimilitarist feminist performances and Judith Butler’s notes on the politics of the street as a theoretical background, we explore the breaches created by the short walk of a few subjects in the national(ist) normativity of that day, and generally of the public sphere in Greece. As we argue in our text, this intervention offers a chance to reflect on our right, as gendered bodies, to exist and state our demands in the public space.

Aliki Theodosiou, Melina Kalfanti

Aliki Theodosiou is a doctoral student at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Philology, University of Athens, and holds Master’s Degrees in Linguistics (University of Edinburgh) and Gender Studies (Panteion University). She currently works as a translator. Her research interests include feminist and queer theory, as well as issues of subjectivity, discourse, writing and silence.

Melina Kalfanti is a doctoral student at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly. She is a graduate of the Department of Communication, Media and Culture and holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies, both from Panteion University. She currently works in non-formal education. Her research interests focus on the fields of feminist and queer theory and digital anthropology, and include topics of subjectivation, trauma and politics.