ABSTRACT
Tiina Rosenberg is Professor in Gender Studies and theatre scholar at Lund University, Sweden. During the spring of 2007 when this interview took place, Tiina Rosenberg worked as a guest professor in Berlin. She has written extensively on the performing arts, queer theory and feminism. Her monographs include Byxbegär (Desiring Pants, 2000) and Queerfeministisk Agenda (Queer Feminist Agenda, 2002) which deal with cross-gender performances, queer theory and feminism. She has published a study of Swedish feminist theatre, Besvärliga människor: Teatersamtal med Suzanne Osten (Troublesome People: Theatre Talks with Suzanne Osten, 2004), and Könet brinner! Judith Butler’s texter i urval (Gender is Burning! A Collection of Judith Butler’s Text, 2005). She is also the editor of the Swedish translation of Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender, for which she wrote a preface (Ogjort genus, 2006). Her most recent work includes L-ordet: vart tog alla lesbiska vägen? (The L-Word: Where Have All the Lesbians Gone? 2006), and a book on singer Zarah Leander as queer diva: Bögarnas Zarah: diva, ikon, kult (The Zarah of the Queers: diva, icon, cult, 2009). In 2005 Tiina Rosenberg was one of the co-founders of the political party Feminist Initiative (FI, www.feministisktinitiativ.se/engelska.php). She left the board of the party after half a year of heated public debate on the role of feminism in politics among both actors inside and outside of the party. The process of starting FI brought out into the open differences between, on the one hand, mainstream feminists who wanted to focus on women’s bodies, and on the other hand post-structural, queer and post-colonial feminists who wanted to start the struggle out of a reconsideration of the notion of gender which uses an intersectional analysis. Rosenberg belonged to this second group. Together with others in FI she argued that the analysis of mainstream feminists misses important issues, notably as these are related to sexuality, ‘race’, ethnicity and class. The attempt to broaden the debate on gender in the public debate, however, met with ire and attacks from both mainstream feminists as well as broader segments of Swedish society. Rosenberg came to bear much of the brunt of these fears and attacks. In an article in the national newspaper Dagens Nyheter (13 October 2005), she wrote that the public debate made it impossible for her to combine academic work
with political activism. At a point in time when gender studies were threatened, she considered it to be her duty to concentrate her struggle in the academic arena. Despite earlier poll results indicating high support for the party, in the general elections of 2006 FI only received 0.7 per cent of the votes. It then decided to stop working as a political party and revert to being an organization focusing on education and gender issues. In 2009 FI returned to party politics in a failed attempt to get spokesperson and former party leader of the Left Party Gudrun Schyman and her colleagues elected in the European Parliament. This interview took place at Tiina Rosenberg’s office at the Centre for Gender Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, on 12 April 2007. It starts with Tiina painting a picture of the changing context of the political landscapes of Europe and Sweden, as well as of the positioning of social movements and of herself in these landscapes. Recurring themes throughout the interview are a transformation of welfare states due to neo-liberal globalization processes; the relationships between social movements, parties and states; and the responses of these actors upon the mentioned transformations. Her own political and academic engagements over time are central in this interview.
