Trots allt

Abstract

The article is based on a commitment and a desire to, in various ways, activistic, artististic and scientific, engage in political and social change that reach across and between borders. And, at the same time, try to understand something more about how boundaries are made and transformed. The format for the article is a dialogue between Annica Karlsson Rixon, artistic researcher with a focus on photography and gender studies, and Lena Martinsson, researcher in gender studies and ethnology. They are both involved in transnational projects, Karlsson Rixon in Russia and Martinsson in Pakistan. The state of normative positions at the time of the postcolonial critique stands as the starting point for the conversation. This critique has problematized Eurocentrism and the self-image and subjectivity of the Western researcher. Being an ethnographer and a photographer the postcolonial discourse is essential for further processes of knowledge. Yet, there is a conviction that its critique also points to the importance to continue working transnationally – in spite of all. In the article positions of defiance as well as issues of multiple translations are challenged through discussions on photography, cameras, looking, writing, motif, queer, Women’s Rights and community, or standing ”near by”. Of particular importance is the filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha, who writes about translations, but also exceeds the boundaries between academic and literary writing, and between filmmaking and theory. The many disruptions that follow conversation as a method dismantle linear arguments, which also reveals something about the conditions of the traditional form of knowledge production.