Veda Popovici

Feminist Studies, the History of Consciousness and Center for Cultural Studies present…

COMMON FRONT FOR THE RIGHT TO HOUSING & THE ANTI-EVICTION MAPPING PROJECT

Tuesday, APRIL 18   |   3:00-4:30   |   HUM 1-210; UCSC

Comparative urban studies are on the rise, raising new questions about translation, fungibility, and transit. How can we study the material effects of global capital in various urban spaces without conflating the spatial struggles and transformations of one space upon another? How can superimposing Western understandings of gentrification upon non- Western places impose onto- epistemological violence? This talk, moderated by Feminist Studies doctoral candidate and Anti- Eviction Mapping Project co-founder Erin McElroy, will feature Bucharest-based housing justice activist, artist, and scholar Veda Popovici. Veda will share more about the Bucharest’s direct action collective, the Common Front for the Right to Housing, as well as histories of postsocialist neoliberal housing restitution laws that have incited current Romanian spatial struggles. Erin and Veda will discuss a growing call to think both global capital formations and comparative urbanism in Romania through decolonial analytics.

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Veda Popovici: The Light Revolution and its Aftermaths

Wednesday, APRIL 19   |   8:00pm   |   SUB ROSA, 703 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz

Throughout all of February, tens of thousands took the streets in Romania to protest corruption of the political class. Far from being the first spontaneous mass protests in recent local history, they were the first of such magnitude to affirm a clear right-wing position. Corruption, an exclusively right-wing issue, works as a discursive mechanism portraying Romanian society as backward. Self-defined as messianic multitude, the aspirational middle-class that asserted itself through these events is on a mission to save us from backwardness and correctly implement the civilizational imperative of the Western world.

Western media embraced what turned out to be the confirmation of its post-Cold War narrative of the political coming of age of Romania through liberalism and capitalism. As local radicals, the Light Revolution meant the further demonization of the broad left and of direct action tactics. As international radicals, we expect solidarity not with the imperialist narrative of the “at last enlightened East” but with local resistance to the liberal paradigm of civic, peaceful protest.

About Veda Popovici

Veda Popovici is a Bucharest-based housing justice activist, artist, and scholar. She will talk about current political action and concerns in Romania, including recent mass protests.

 

 

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