Olia Kazakevich is a PhD Candidate at the Central European University. The working title of her doctoral project is "On the politics of beauty and disability: Mothers of disabled children and the limits of (national) optimism." She explores the relations between (children) disability, beauty/femininity and care in contemporary Russia through focusing on charity beauty makeovers for mothers of disabled children organized by local charities or social care departments of local municipalities. In charity makeovers, the peculiar conjunction of (the proximity to) disability, beauty, and humanitarian intervention, unfolding in the lives of mothers of disabled children as they increasingly become a convenient object of surveillance and control, can be seen as a site through which to analyze cultural anxieties and tensions around disability and citizenship in postsocialist neoliberalism. This project aims to contribute to the study of post-Soviet Russia’s gender and disability politics through the analysis of the affective attachment to the fantasies of a good life recruited by and for those living through the historical present of the postsocialist space.
