Magdalena Zolkos

My research concentrates in the area of contemporary political thought and psychoanalytic, postcolonial and feminist theory.  I am interested in the intersections of politics and culture (in particular images and literature), and have published on politics of memory and counter-memory; post-colonial restitution; affect,  emotions, trauma and the body; witnessing and testimony; theories of violence and non-violent resistance; human rights. 

My current book project is titled Georges Didi-Huberman’s Political Philosophy of Visuality: Between Desire and Symptom-Formation and it is under contract in the Psychoanalytic Political Theory series (Routledge). The book delves into Didi-Huberman's philosophy of visuality to investigate the relationship between images, politics, power and resistance. The key prism of the inquiry is Didi-Huberman’s interpretations and ‘uses’ of psychoanalytic theoretical concepts, which the book places alongside analyses of visual and artistic material documenting war atrocity, female hysteria, trauma memory and dream-lives in relation to political violence. 

I am also a principat investigator in the Academy Project funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024-2028) 'Reframing Restitution: Postcolonial Object Movement, Transnational Memory and Social Repair', which investigates te political, theoretical and cultural dynamics of postcolonial restitution in the Nordic contexts (and beyond). It develops the concept of 'restitutive culture' so as to address and move beyond the shortcomings  of the current law- and state-centric focus of repatriation research, and focuses on the emerging practices of reclaiming, restoring, repairing and re-semanticizing objects by activists, artists and representatives of custodian communities as forms of counter-action, resistance to power and resurgence.