Established in 2022, the Feminist Forum is an initiative aimed at facilitating feminist reflections on social theory and practice by creating an interdisciplinary network that connects researchers, activists, students, queer-feminist community-based and artistic organizations, and formal and informal collectives. The purpose of the Feminist Forum is to promote intersectional and solidarity-based collaboration through discussion, crit ical analysis, and sharing of knowledge, experiences and ideas.

The goal of the 2024 Feminist Forum is to facilitate rethinking of the current po litical events with an intersectional feminist approach.

In the past years, the in-person format of the Feminist Forum has been of par t icular importance to us. This year too, we did not want to give up the sensitivity of a space more or less free from digital alienation and used for the exchange of opinions, nor the joy of seeing each other for several days during the forum. Unfortunately, in light of the current political crisis, intensified repression and violence, the Feminist Forum has been held in a hybrid format this year, with the majority of panels taking place online. Indeed, these threatening processes are the starting point of the con cept of this year's forum, as we consider it inevitable to contextualize them in terms of the country, regional and global processes.

This year’s forum is conceptualized around the themes of power and powerless ness. The current political crisis, flowing in tandem with a set of laws, both initiated and adopted, stands in relation to local, regional and global political and economic changes. Only an intersectional analysis of this crisis as a whole reveals the motives for centralizing power and sheds light on the techno-political project, which is nour ished by the laws introduced in 2024, turns the state into an asset of a ruling oligarch and his team, and transforms common environments into resources of prosperity for the capitalist class. In the existing geographical, political or economic dichotomies, an analysis of this set of laws is a prerequisite for going beyond these dualities and engaging with the concepts of neo-conservatism, populism, authoritarian rule and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the capitalist class, as well as for under standing what our futures can hold.

The forum is divided into three themes. The first theme relates the set of laws adopted and initiated in Georgia in 2024 to regional and global socio-political chang es. The second theme of the forum retrospectively examines the formation of civil society, forms of social protest and firing up of resistance in relation to spatial, geo graphical and political processes. And the third theme will be devoted to bodies and the reproduction of precarity. 

Delving into these topics involves both their conceptual analysis and a histori cization from the perspective of today’s entangled crisis; looking deeper into past civil processes prepares the ground not only so we can name the decentralization and the affects of the past six months of the protest, but also to see how the named processes, ideas or feelings can merge with invisible politics. Discussing these issues would be impossible without bringing forward the physical, social and economic lay ers of precarity. How are existing hierarchies reinforced by the reproduction of these layers?! At the end of the forum, we will try to delve into these questions together and recognize the paradigms of vulnerability in our everyday life.

Feminist Forum 2024 is supported by ILGA-Europe, UNDP, Kvinna till Kvinna, RFSL, RFSU

📌 To attend online discussions, please fill out the registration form:

https://forms.gle/6P8uZXmsvf1kbJXFA

Details about the physical meeting of the forum, which will be held in September, will be provided later.

The forum's online panel discussions will be held in the following order:

July 23 | 19:00

July 25 | 19:00