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Recognizing Female Voices in Dissent: The Macho Ethos of the Opposition and Its Post-1989 Legacies

The emergence of authoritarianism all over Eastern Europe and beyond greatly contributed to a recurrent interest in dissident cultures. In particular, the liberal democratic opposition is increasingly considered to have an ethos which might inspire contemporary attempts to resist a state that imposes illiberal norms on the entire society. The perceived liberalism of the democratic opposition, however, might need further reflection for female voices and figures are disturbingly missing from its memory. This talk reveals a largely hidden history of female dissent, and, on the other, presents an account of how the macho ethos of dissident circles from the 1980s has been reflected in historical scholarship until today. I claim that, in political terms, it is not only recent authoritarian trends allow a contemporary offensive against “gender ideology”, as illiberal politics calls a reflective approach to gendered representations and claims for gender equality. An insensibility towards such issues has been unanimously shared by virtually the entire opposition of the 1980s, and consequently, by mainstream politicians after the regime change up until today.
Tamás Scheibner is a currently a Fulbright Fellow at Stanford and is an Assistant Professor in Literary and Cultural Studies at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest (ELTE).  Also a Research Fellow at the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, his principal research interests lie in cultural and knowledge transfers across borders and regions. His current book project deals with the history of Comparative Literature in the context of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, and he has also been doing work on the culture of dissent and nonconformism in Eastern Europe.  He has a strong interest in digital humanities and has published a monograph on Hungarian socialist realism.