ABSTRACT
Feminist theorizing in the past decade has taken up the strenuous questioning of the usefulness of the theoretical concepts elaborated within postcolonial theory for the explanation of the postsocialist experience (Suchland 2011, Tlostanova 2010, 2012). The present chapter seeks to look at how feminists in both geopolitical locations have engaged with pervasive neoliberalism that threatens to coopt feminist resistance. Neoliberalism is important not just as a form of economic organization but as a rationality, especially in the context of contemporary communicative capitalism (Dean 2007, Brown 2015). The present chapter proceeds from an understanding that, among other things, neoliberalism relies on a transparency without a public (Queiros 2017), which has serious implications for political activism. Thus, the chapter asks whether the critical strategy of opacity, developed within postcolonial theory (Glissant 1990, Bhabha 1985) and now extended to the present economic and political reality, can be applied in feminist responses to neoliberalism in the postsocialist world. The strategies developed in the postsocialist context where neoliberal rationality has been a dominant public discourse in the past twenty years has the potential to re-invigorate the concept of opacity also for postcolonial activism.
