Irina Anatoliyivna Zherebkina (born 1959) is a Ukrainian feminist academic. She is Professor of Theory of Culture and Philosophy of Science at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and the permanent director of the Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies (KhCGS), which she helped found in 1994.

Life

Zherebkina studied philosophy in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

and at the start of the 1990s worked at the

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences The Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( Russian: Институт философии РАН) is the central research institution of Russia which conducts scientific work in the main areas and topical issues of modern philos ...

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. She helped found the Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies in 1994. An anti-nationalist, Zherebkina sees nationalism as an

imagined community An imagined community is a concept developed by Benedict Anderson in his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'' to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves a ...

held together by imagined "loss" or "lack": a loss of territorial integrity encourages myths of national identity, which in transitional societies provide mystifying symbolic compensation for those disoriented by the passing of old social structures. In ''Women's political unconscious'', she distances herself from nationalist Ukrainian feminism, seeing romantic images of self-sacrificial "mothers of the nation" as trapping women in mystifying social roles akin to symbolic "rape". In March 2022, with

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

under siege by Russian forces after the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, Zherebkina wrote a 'Dispatch from Kharkiv National University' for the ''

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

'', in which she reflected on the importance of

women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...

across

post-Soviet The post-Soviet states, also referred to as the former Soviet Union or the former Soviet republics, are the independent sovereign states that emerged/re-emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to their independence, they ...

countries as a whole. She appealed for "a struggle of ''all of us'' against the warmongers", rather than some misconstrued "struggle between 'Russian truth' and 'European truth'". Zherebkina managed to leave Ukraine for London in March 2023 as she was offered a position by the

London School of economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

Works

* ''Женское политическое бессознательное'' omen's political unconscious Kharkiv, 1996. Republished in Saint Petersburg: Aleteia, 2002. * (ed.) ''Femina postsovietica: украинская женщина в переходный период: от социальных движений к политике'' emina postsovietica. Ukrainian woman in transition: from social movements to politics Kharkiv, 1999. * ''Страсть: женское тело и женская сексуальность в России'' assion: the female body and female sexuality in Russia Saint Petersburg: Aleteia, 2001. * ''Гендерные 90-е, или Фаллоса не существует'' ender 90s, or, the Phallus does not exist Saint Petersburg: Aleteia, 2003. * ''Феминистская интервенция в сталинизм, или, Сталина не существует'' eminist intervention in Stalinism, or, Stalin does not exist Saint Petersburg: Aleteia, 2006.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zherebkina, Irina 1959 births Living people Academic staff of the National University of Kharkiv Anti-nationalists Ukrainian feminists Gender studies academics Ukrainian philosophers