Aleksandra Fila

Aleksandra Fila’s PhD research project explores the relationship between socio-economic transformation and the conservative backlash that Polish society underwent in the ‘long ‘90s’. Grounding her work in the theories of feminist historical materialism, she proposes a multi-dimensional explanation of the structural interconnections between the implementation of neoliberal capitalism, in its exceptionally predatory manifestation typical for the post-socialist Central Eastern European context and the accompanying intensification of patriarchal power relations. Through the lenses of everyday creativity scholarship, Aleksandra examines how the changing political economies were related to – profoundly gendered – material and discursive processes of the re-valuation of different kinds of labour. In her research, she deconstructs the hegemonic modes of masculinised, market-oriented creativity that gained prominence after 1989 and critically discusses the dispossession of communal forms of everyday creativity. They used to constitute vital commons for the working-class women but diminished – or ceased to exist – as they lost their material support base with the advent of privatisations and austerity politics. This research is guided by the questions of capital accumulation, exploitation, divisions of labour, fulfilment of and constraints to human creative potential, and attribution of value. Last but not least, it also seeks to determine how to reclaim creativity for emancipatory reasons.​

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