Author Archives: Svetlana Borodina

Currently, Svetlana Borodina is a senior UX researcher at US Bank where she uses qualitative research methods to generate insights that inform product and strategy development. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Her academic research focused on cultures and politics of disability inclusion in Russia. Her ethnographic work explores the technologies through which bodily and mental differences become folded into the production of postsocialist forms of citizenship and relationality for abled and disabled individuals alike.

ssborodina@gmail.com | Assemblage Profile

Technologies of Equal Participation: Formats, Designs, Practices. Introduction.

 Svetlana Borodina  May 17, 2022

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Listen to an audio recording of this piece read by Svetlana Borodina Only today, an unremarkable Friday morning in March 2022 (the day when I was writing this text), my participation has been requested at least eight times. On my way to work, as I was running down the stairs to catch a train, through the sound of music coming from my headphones I caught, “Please make sure to vote!” This was followed by a faint addition: “if you are a voter.” As I purchased coffee in a corner shop right outside the subway, the screen solicited my participation in their customer satisfaction survey: “What can we improve?” At work, as I sat down and opened my email, I saw that the NYC Parks and Rec Department had sent out a new batch of volunteering opportunities; a colleague had sent an invitation to participate in a round table next month; and a friend working on their UX portfolio had sent a link to a survey for an app they’d been working on (“What kind of problems do I run into in my commute?”). Meanwhile, my family’s WhatsApp chat was filling up with the regular, “Sveta, are you even here?” messages, complaining about my lack of participation in conversations. A gofundme campaign to crowdfund struggling refugees and a friend’s paper silently awaited their time, too. (read more...)

Platypus in 2022

 Svetlana Borodina  January 25, 2022

 Listen to a reading of this post.

As the new year and the new semester have been off to (hopefully) a good start, Platypus is coming back to work too. Building on a decade of work (this year Platypus turns 10!), in 2022, we will continue our commitment to providing a platform for diverse voices and critical scholarship at the intersection of anthropology and STS. We have a new team, new projects, and a great deal of enthusiasm, as always. We can’t wait to offer our readers more experimental and multimodal content (powered by Platypus’s biggest team of talented multimodal contributing editors to date!), increase the linguistic accessibility of Platypus’s materials (possible with the support of invaluable multilingual volunteers!), and widen the spectrum of genres and means of academic expression (supported by our brilliant web producer and contributing editors). Stay tuned! (read more...)

2021 at Platypus

 Svetlana Borodina  January 12, 2021

The first weeks of 2021 brought no relief, even though so many hoped otherwise. Instead, the first twelve days clearly demonstrated that exclusion, inequity, violence, and multiply intersecting systems of oppression didn’t magically disappear into the thin air as the clock struck midnight on January 1. Neither in the US nor in other parts of the world. (read more...)

International Day of Persons with Disabilities: What Happens the Day After?

 Svetlana Borodina  December 3, 2020

Тази статия също е налична на български.

Twenty-eight years ago, in 1992, the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3 proclaimed December 3 as International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Immediately following the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery and followed by the International Day of Banks (yes), the International Day of Persons with Disabilities was and still is charged with the impulse “to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development, and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.” Each year, a specific theme is chosen to direct public attention toward a specific issue. In 2018, it was “Empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality.” In 2019, “Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking action on the 2030 Development Agenda.” In 2020, “Not all disabilities are visible.” A product of a policy-oriented reformist environment, International Day of Persons with Disabilities helps to direct attention, mobilize action, and bring about material changes in the lives of people with disabilities. But what happens to these impulses on December 4th (besides the International Day of Banks)? (read more...)

Elements of disability inclusion in Soviet disability pedagogy

 Svetlana Borodina  October 26, 2020

For someone interested in the genealogy of disability inclusion in Russia, Soviet disability pedagogy, known at the time under the name of defektologia, may seem to be a somewhat unexpected place to turn to. On the one hand, the Soviet system of korrektsionnoye education for children with disabilities embodied isolationism and paternalism, the features which characterized Soviet disability governance more broadly (Shek 2005): schools for students with disabilities were built at a significant distance from the heart of urban life; they functioned predominantly as boarding schools, de facto exerting control over children’s mobility and public appearance; they often had little contact or interaction with mainstream schools and communities. On the other hand, Soviet disability pedagogy also produced moments when disability exclusion, otherwise naturalized across various domains of life, had been problematized and questioned. To them, I turn in this post. (read more...)

Does ‘Going Sighted’ Make Life Better? Undoing the Desire to Cure Blindness in Russia

 Svetlana Borodina  March 27, 2018

In 2017, two Russian deafblind patients—Grigoriy Ulianov and Antonina Zakharchenko—received retinal implants, or so-called “bionic eyes.” Both patients were selected from a pool of applicants, having met the criteria of acquired blindness through retinitis pigmentosa and a capacity to perceive light but not contours of objects. Immediately after, the country’s major media outlets burst with numerous media reports. The titles ranged from the celebratory, such as Breakthrough in Russian Medicine: First Patient Got Bionic Eyes; Magician? Just a Doctor; The Miracle of the Bionic Eye; to the more restrained, with Second Russian Patient Will Receive a Cybereye This Fall; I See But Not Like You Do: On How The First Russian Patient with the Bionic Eye Lives. The overall tone of the reports was marked by magic, wonder, gratitude for the doctors, and profound satisfaction with the procedures. They were mostly celebratory and hopeful about the new possibility of converting up to (approximately) 50,000 blind Russian individuals to sight. In the context of a new federal policy orientation aimed at making Russia inclusive of different abilities, these reports emerged as a token of a hopeful future, in which problems with the well-being of blind individuals would be solved not through systemic measures, but instead, through eradicating blindness. I follow Alison Kafer (2013) in understanding this fantasy of desired technological enhancement as part of the normative curative public imagination. (read more...)