Raluca Bejan

The Muslim is the new Jew and we're not even 'moved' by it

Raluca Bejan — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 22:48:20 +0000

Thousands of women (13,000 in Toronto) went out last week, over "pussy" related issues, officially gathered under the Women's March on Washington label. The March had a global envergure: it took place in many cities around the world on January 21, the day after the inauguration of the new U.S. president, Donald Trump.

Women, abstracted: The political performativity of indignation

Raluca Bejan — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 01:51:46 +0000

The Women's March on Washington was scheduled well in advance, to take place on January 21, right after the inauguration of the new American president. The idea was for all women to rally in solidarity for health and safety rights, at a time when the overall society marginalizes women and discursively regularizes interpretations of sexual violence.

Several cities followed suit and a March in Toronto was also organized. According to the event's Facebook page, about 13,000 attended. People gathered at Queen's Park, marched towards the U.S. Consulate and later to the City Hall, at Nathan Philip Square.

Art and capitalism in Berlin

Raluca Bejan — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 02:17:34 +0000

It takes about 15 minutes to walk from Mori-Ôgai Memorial Humboldt University in Mitte, Berlin, to the Hamburger Bahnhof -- Museum für Gegenwart. On Luisenstraße for two minutes, turning left on Charitéstraße and passing through what looks like a green, open-gated community -- the Campus Charité Mitte. The Campus hosts the Charité -Universitätsmedizin Berlin -- the largest hospital in Europe, the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, and the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité. I walked this route at some point in July. After leaving the grounds of the Charité Campus, it takes about a minute to cross the river on Invalidenstraße and turn right towards Hamburger Bahnoff.

On Jordan Peterson's political correctness and the 'radical left'

Raluca Bejan — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 20:34:55 +0000

For a couple of weeks now, the University of Toronto (U of T) community has been debating, engaging with, and responding to the comments made publically by Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology, in criticizing Bill C-16 and the charged idea of "political correctness."

On Melania Trump, plagiarism and Eastern Europeaness

Raluca Bejan — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 18:34:29 +0000

As the news of Melania Trump's plagiarized speech came in on Monday night (parts of it sounded exactly like Michelle Obama's communiqué delivered at the 2008 Democratic National Convention), I was counting the days until the Eastern Bloc connection would somehow be made. Or, should I say, until the ready-made Eastern Bloc stereotypical rhetoric would tease out through the North American gaze. I was waiting for something "official," -- a newspaper article, an editorial or magazine commentary, and not just the random Facebook memes and posts that called Melania anywhere from a "Slovenian immigrant with a thick accent," to a "dumb bitch with big boobs" and "only good for blow jobs."

Brexit was not about the EU. It was about Britishness

Raluca Bejan — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 18:51:17 +0000

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Ideological arguments over Brexit, the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, which passed with 52 per cent of the vote on June 23, have been mainly at odds on the classical right/left political divide.

Documentary about Romanian obsession with 'Dallas' a mixed bowl

Raluca Bejan — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 20:17:15 +0000

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Hotel Dallas screened in Toronto at the HotDocs festival about a month ago. "Come," a good friend of mine asked the day before. "The trailer looks really good." I did not watch the trailer, but we got the tickets and decided to go.

Britain's timid university lecturer protest will change nothing in a rigged system

Raluca Bejan — Fri, 27 May 2016 10:36:49 +0000

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I arrived in United Kingdom about three weeks ago for a visiting position at Oxford University. Rumors of a strike have shortly settled in.

On women. And aggressiveness.

Raluca Bejan — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 18:05:31 +0000

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I was called aggressive the other day. It felt like a punch in my stomach. I did try to let it go. I really did. But couldn't stop myself from ruminating over it, again and again. I talked with a girlfriend. "That's bullshit," she said. "Its sexist. Someone also called me pushy. Just recently. It makes you feel less of a woman."

'Sommet citoyen pour le climat': The less-spoken response to COP21

Raluca Bejan — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:33:37 +0000

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The United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP21) started last week in Paris.

Supreme Court decision on Ecuador-Chevron case to set global precedent on corporate responsibility

Raluca Bejan — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 21:50:36 +0000

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The Supreme Court of Canada will decide today if Ecuadorian Indigenous communities have the right to pursue Chevron's assets under the Ontario's court, in order to enforce the $9.5 billion judgment for the destruction of Ecuador's Amazonian forest.

What's not so open about open relationships?

Raluca Bejan — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 12:14:20 +0000

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Open relationships are a hot topic these days -- along with monogamy, non-monogamy, monogamish, polyamory, and even half-poly-monogamy. I mean who didn't read the Ethical Slut? And who doesn't want to be an 'ethical slut'?

'Made in Roșia Montană': Local collective action takes on Canadian mining interests in Romania

Raluca Bejan — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 12:29:05 +0000

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On privilege

Raluca Bejan — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 12:43:25 +0000

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Privilege is quite a buzzword in academia today. If you dare to critique it, you might find yourself up against the wall (metaphorically speaking) and placed into a neo-Marxist passé box for shit-talking anti-oppressive language.

'Roșia Montană exists because of mining': Cyanide, gold and Canadian capital in cash-strapped Romania

Raluca Bejan — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:39:45 +0000

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How does it feel to land in Athens on the Greek default day?

Raluca Bejan — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:53:31 +0000

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It's official. Greece has become the first developed nation to default on its IMF imposed debt payments. It is a historical default, in terms of reshaping the Europe Union (EU) relations, the subsequent fate of the Union and overall its legitimacy as a political (and economical) project. It is also a historical moment as in showing that standing up against austerity is a real possibility within our current neoliberal contexts.

On whiteness, Rachel Dolezal and identity politics

Raluca Bejan — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:06:39 +0000

Questions about why Rachel Dolezal identified herself as a black woman have been flooding the internet for the past week. Interrogations seemed solely contrasted and compared with "blackness" as a concept and with our socially constructed understandings of blackness. We did not ask these questions from a place of querying whiteness. Yet how do we understand whiteness, and how our conceptualizations of whiteness manifest in relation to blackness, race and racialization, are also worthy of discussion.

When talking about women's underwear, why the hell would we include men?

Raluca Bejan — Fri, 29 May 2015 17:16:03 +0000

The New York Times has just recently published a piece in their Fashion and Style section, on the topic of thongs versus full-bottom lingerie (yes, it is women we're talking about). Thongs are deemed passé, so as the article says, with seven per cent sales' decreases within the past year, at the cost of boy shorts, high-waist briefs and overall everything that would go under the label of full-bottom bikinis.