Suchergebnisse

The goal of this article is to analyse women's writing as immaterial labour, focusing on the case of contemporary Belarusian literature as the contribution to the de-Westernizing of creative labour studies. First, the paper focuses on language choice specific for contemporary Belarusian literature and educational opportunities as the prerequisites to begin a writing career set in the 1990–2000s. Second, the paper outlines the environment providing publishing and showcase opportunities, emphasising the mid-2010s as the period of increased diversity. And third, the paper assesses the conditions that influence creative expression sustaining the labour of creating writing in 2020–2023. Within this argumentation, the paper investigates the state of specifically women's writing in Belarus, considering the problematics of equal opportunities. Thus, in the 1990– 2000s women's writing wasn't on the agenda aimed at the preservation of the field and relating it to the Belarusian language. In the 2010s educative and showcase opportunities supporting the efforts of young writers provided an equally beneficial environment for men and women writing in Belarusian or Russian. The representation of women writers increased, including more women writers awarded with book prizes by both state and independent organizations although still not equal with men writers. During 2020–2023 it is mostly recognized women writers over 40 years old, especially currently in emigration, who produce literary works that are successfully published in Belarusian or Russian. Younger women writers have less opportunities for publication and showcase, switching to autofiction of shorter formats barely sustaining their efforts as labour. Interestingly, in both cases the most common themes are ancestry and corporality, making women representation in contemporary Belarusian literature less diverse. This affects the demand in literary works by women writers among diverse groups of women as the reading audience, making the labour of women writers in Belarus more precarious.

This article investigates the significance of personifications depicted on national currencies of Eastern Europe in the 19th – 21st cent. Eastern Europe is considered as a region of high research potential due to its status of borderland space with active symbolic struggle on political, socioeconomic and cultural levels. Currency design is an ideological tool that defines collective cultural tradition and historical memory, while national narratives vary in their response to the conditions of their formation. Basing on the visual analysis of money that circulated on the territories of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, the author outlines main categories of human depictions used in the currency design of the states that emerged in the region during the mentioned period. In the 19th cent., most widespread were money of the Russian Empire featuring the emperors and state representation Mother Russia. After the October Revolution in 1917, new states emerged in the region, but no personifications were used in their currency design. Human depictions of that time featured either ordinary people correlating with socialist movements or notable persons denoting political and cultural authenticity of certain state. Another category of human depictions was allegorical feminine figures representing patriarchal values and reproductive resources. Most remarkable examples of this type are Polish coins depicting state representation Polonia (or queen Jadwiga) as well as Polish banknotes with Mother Poland and national heroine Emilia Plater, both issued during the dictatorship of Jósef Piłsudski. Contemporary issues of money use no state representations, preferring instead either notable people, mostly men among them, or introducing other means of cultural representations not related to human depictions. Thus state representations used in the designs of national currencies become less popular in the 21st cent. due to globalisation and de-materialisation of money.

This article investigates the significance of personifications depicted on national currencies of Eastern Europe in the 19th – 21st cent. Eastern Europe is considered as a region of high research potential due to its status of borderland space with active symbolic struggle on political, socioeconomic and cultural levels. Currency design is an ideological tool that defines collective cultural tradition and historical memory, while national narratives vary in their response to the conditions of their formation. Basing on the visual analysis of money that circulated on the territories of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, the author outlines main categories of human depictions used in the currency design of the states that emerged in the region during the mentioned period. In the 19th cent., most widespread were money of the Russian Empire featuring the emperors and state representation Mother Russia. After the October Revolution in 1917, new states emerged in the region, but no personifications were used in their currency design. Human depictions of that time featured either ordinary people correlating with socialist movements or notable persons denoting political and cultural authenticity of certain state. Another category of human depictions was allegorical feminine figures representing patriarchal values and reproductive resources. Most remarkable examples of this type are Polish coins depicting state representation Polonia (or queen Jadwiga) as well as Polish banknotes with Mother Poland and national heroine Emilia Plater, both issued during the dictatorship of Jósef Piłsudski. Contemporary issues of money use no state representations, preferring instead either notable people, mostly men among them, or introducing other means of cultural representations not related to human depictions. Thus state representations used in the designs of national currencies become less popular in the 21st cent. due to globalisation and de-materialisation of money.