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Queering Development in Homotransnationalist Times: A Postcolonial Reading of LGBTIQ Inclusive Development Agendas
Abstract
This article is concerned with the growing attention for LGBTIQ rights in the so called “development industry,” particularly focusing on the strong role EUropean LGBTIQ organizations and LGBTIQ identified development practitioners have been and are playing in aiming to “queer” development cooperation and development policies. By critically interlinking insights from the field of postcolonial and “radical” development studies (Baaz 2005; Kothari 2005; Kothari ed. 2005; Kapoor 2008) with queer discussions on “imperial” and “neocolonial” implications of transnational LGBTIQ politics (Puar 2007; Haritaworn et al. 2008; Rao 2015) this articles explores how and in which ways “queer agendas” become entangled with the “project” of development, particularly its racialized manifestations. By examining the wider political context of queer development agendas this paper analyzes how new versions of an EUropean sexual exceptionalism are promoted and interact with homotransnationalist policies and LGBTIQ development strategies. It will be demonstrated that LGBTIQ-inclusive development strategies are therefore not only at risk of participating in the production of a new temporal-spatial divide between a “sexually developed” EUrope/West, which has to carry the “burden” to “develop” and “modernize” the sexually “backward,” and the “homophobic” rest but also how “queer” desires for development are often shaped by “homonostalgic” postures and narratives. However, by interpreting development as a highly paradoxical process that is imbued with hegemonic as well as oppositional and subversive practices, spaces of failure and “slippages” (Bhabha 1994) I conclude this article by shedding light on how (LGBTIQ inclusive) development agendas can and are also being utilized for decolonial and counter-hegemonies purposes.
... As Laura Eigenmann (2022, p. 96) explains, "LGBTI rights now often figure as a symbol for states and societies that wish to portray themselves as modern and progressive". This is often the result of state efforts and national politics: Nationalist political forces portray "others" as "backward" and as carriers of monocultures that are incompatible with the "European/western" value of sexual and gender diversity, to keep them outside the borders of "civilized" "Europe/west" (Ammaturo 2014(Ammaturo , 2015(Ammaturo , 2017Klapeer 2017;Kulpa 2014;Puar 2007Puar , 2013. In this way, LGBTIQ rights become part of the EU's identity construction against both external and internal enemies and challengers-including nationalists and Eurosceptics who oppose LGBTIQ rights-and a self-affirmation instrument (Eigenmann 2022;Slootmaeckers 2019). ...
... As participants' understandings and negotiations of transnational LGBTIQ discourses and politics show, "coming out" and the public affirmation of a non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender identity is not uniformly seen as self-constituting or as a political act. This necessitates critically examining how discourses and practices that relate to mainstream transnational LGBTIQ politics stand in relation to the operations not only of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, but also of homonormativity and transnormativity (Ammaturo 2014(Ammaturo , 2015(Ammaturo , 2017Klapeer 2017;Kulpa 2014;Mole 2017). However, it also necessitates examining the processes through which national LGBTIQ movements frame their claims and identities over time, within non-static and complex sociopolitical environments, and amidst multi-level discursive opportunities. ...
... The interview schedules used in the three sets of interviews were designed based on reviews of previous empirical and theoretical work mentioned in this article on the dynamics between national and transnational LGBTIQ politics, and on LGBTIQ activists' engagement with, and approaches toward national and transnational LGBTIQ politics (e.g., Altman 1996aAltman , 1996bAmmaturo 2014Ammaturo , 2015Ammaturo , 2017Ayoub 2013Ayoub , 2016Ayoub and Paternotte 2014;Bernstein 1997;Bilić 2016;Binnie 2015Binnie , 2016Binnie and Klesse 2013;Blackwood 2008;Boellstorff 2007;Bracke 2012;Chiang and Wong 2016;Currier 2010;Drucker 2015;Duggan 2002;Gamson 1997;Hagland 1997;Klapeer 2017;Klapeer and Laskar 2018;Kollman and Waites 2009;Kulpa 2014;Kulpa and Mizielińska 2016;Manalansan 1995Manalansan , 2018Paternotte and Seckinelgin 2015;Pereira 2019;Povinelli and Chauncey 1999;Rahman 2013Rahman , 2014Rao 2014;Slootmaeckers et al. 2016;Swimelar 2017). Based on these reviews, the remaining problems/issues identified, in which interviews aimed to collect information based on participants' perspectives, concerned participants' paths to LGBTIQ activism; experiences of LGBTIQ activism; and attitudes toward national and transnational LGBTIQ politics and activism. ...
The literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) politics has established the interplay between domestic and transnational norms and political tactics. However, knowledge about how local LGBTIQ activists understand, negotiate, and employ transnational LGBTIQ campaigns and tactics over time remains limited. This article builds on literature on the dynamics between national and transnational LGBTIQ politics. Based on interviews with Cypriot LGBTIQ activists, it examines how they adapt their perceptions and employments of LGBTIQ activism and politics when the transnational LGBTIQ movement interacts with local norms around gender and sexuality, and what the impact of this interaction is on the boundaries of LGBTIQ in-group exclusion and inclusion. The analysis of the interview material identifies three approaches toward transnational LGBTIQ politics that participants express over time: Ambivalence toward, acclamation of, and resistance toward transnational LGBTIQ politics. I argue that these different approaches show that the dynamics between national and transnational LGBTIQ activism and politics are not static and that the relationship between “norm” and “queer” is both messy and productive. I further argue that activists’ understandings, negotiations, and employments of transnational LGBTIQ campaigns and tactics in contentious contexts may reinforce and/or challenge national LGBTIQ politics’ normativization and queer emancipatory politics. Therefore, beyond contributing to discussions about the national–transnational relationship in LGBTIQ politics, the article demonstrates the importance of studying LGBTIQ activists’ views for gaining a well-rounded understanding of this issue.
... At first, the idea of "leading by example" seems to be an illustration par excellence of the EU's desire to be a "normative power" (Manners 2002) and of the construction of a European "sexual exceptionalism" (Klapeer 2017;Puar 2007). For example, MEP Anna Maria Corazza Bildt (EPP) stated in a 2019 debate on the rights of LGBTI people: "The European Union must stand up for open societies and take the lead in respecting fundamental rights globally, living up to our core values of tolerance, equality and diversity" (EP debate 12.2.2019). ...
Since the early 1990s, the EU has increasingly institutionalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights and more recently started to use them as a symbol for its modern and progressive identity. This article investigates this development, focusing on EU actors and institutions. Combining a genealogical analysis with the analysis of current discursive struggles around LGBTI rights within EU institutions, it shows that the rise of LGBTI rights is closely intertwined with the search for a common European identity, shared values, and attempts to strengthen solidarity in times when right-wing, nationalist, and Eurosceptic movements are increasingly challenging the EU’s legitimacy.
... In meinem Beitrag habe ich gezeigt, wie eine Einschreibung und Einpassung von LGBTIQ*-Rechten in etablierte Entwicklungsnarrative und Entwicklungsagenden -zum Teil durch LGBTIQ*-Organisationen selbst -Gefahr laufen, rassialisierende Konstruktionen von (sexueller) Rückständigkeit und Unterentwicklung zu stabilisieren; und zwar gerade durch Artikulationen einer transnationalen queeren Solidarität, da diese vor dem Hintergrund homodevelopmentalistischer Annahmen von LGBTQ*-Emanzipation als Verantwortung ‚der Entwickelten', als "burden of the fittest" (Spivak 2007(Spivak , 2004, erscheint. In diesem Kontext wurde nicht nur die Problematik einer selbstaffirmativen okzidentalistischen Selbstvergewisserung des eigenen sexuellen Exzeptionalismus durch LGBTIQ*-inklusive und SOGI-sensible Entwicklungszusammenarbeit identifiziert, sondern auch diskutiert, inwieweit Viktimisierung, Passivierung und eine Spektakulisierung (Mwikya 2013) Klapeer 2017Klapeer , 2018aKlapeer , 2018b. 6 Die Queer-Theoretikerin Lisa Duggan (2002) prägte den Begriff der Homonormativität, um eine spezifische neoliberale Politik der normalisierenden Inklusion und Assimilation von LGBTIQ*s zu beschreiben. ...
Auf der Basis einer produktiven Zusammenführung von Erkenntnissen aus dem Bereich der postkolonialen und ‚radikalen‘ Entwicklungsforschung und queeren Auseinandersetzungen mit homonationalistischen Implikationen globaler LGBTIQ*-Politiken diskutiert dieser Beitrag das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und transnationaler queerer Solidarität. Es wird gezeigt, inwiefern Solidarität vor dem Hintergrund einer problematischen Aktualisierung modernisierungstheoretischer und developmentalistischer Annahmen im Zuge LGBTIQ*-inklusiver bzw. SOGI-sensibler Entwicklungsagenden vor allem als eine Verantwortung ‚der Entwickelten‘ bzw. mit Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gesprochen, als „burden of the fittest“, geframt wird. In diesem Zusammenhang nimmt der Beitrag auf der Basis postkolonialer Entwicklungskritiken die selbstaffirmativen Implikationen von entwicklungspolitischen Artikulationen transnationaler queerer Solidarität in den Blick und untersucht, inwieweit diese als eine Form der okzidentalistischen Selbstvergewisserung interpretiert werden können. In einem letzten Teil wird problematisiert, inwiefern eine Viktimisierung von LGBTIQ*s im Globalen Süden bzw. insgesamt eine sogenannte Spektakularisierung von Gewalt gegen LGBTIQ*s in den sogenannten Partnerländern als zentraler diskursiver Bedingungsrahmen für transnationale queere Solidarität fungiert.
... Queer theory has been used to good effect to critique gender, sexuality and human rights in the institutions, policies and practices of international development (e.g. Cornwall et al. 2009;Jolly 2000;Klapeer 2018;Nasser-Eddin et al. 2018), although almost invariably in relation to a "North-South" axis. Queer International Relations is prospering (e.g. ...
This paper deploys queer theory as a way of approaching South–South Cooperation (SSC). It examines the ways in which Southern development partners are not simply up‐ending the long‐standing spatialities, imaginaries and identities (re)produced through the mainstream international development regime, but queering terminologies and definitions, while presenting themselves in fluid ways, enrolling different identities and attributes in different places and to different audiences. At the same time, a queer lens reveals the (re)inscription of gendered, sexualised and racialised identities and hierarchies through the relationships, intimacies and practices of SSC. The paper proposes that queer theory can offer productive insights into the complex and compelling phenomenon of SSC, and the transgressive challenges to the postcolonial hierarchies and binaries of “traditional” international development.
Im Rekurs auf Kimberlé Crenshaws Konzept einer „political intersectionality“ und Erkenntnissen aus den post-/dekolonialen Queer Studies diskutiert dieser Beitrag die komplexen Verstrickungen von Rassismus und Hetero-/Homonormativität. Ausgehend von dem ‚Phänomen‘ Alice Weidel und einer nur scheinbaren Widersprüchlichkeit zwischen Rassismus/rechter Politik und LGBTIQ*-Kämpfen wird gezeigt, in welcher Weise durch eine zunehmende Auslagerung von LGBTIQ*-Feindlichkeit auf (vermeintliche) fremde Körper, andere (Welt-)Regionen und Kulturen sowie in ein temporales Früher, rassistische Deutungsmuster und Grenzziehungen im Rahmen aktueller LGBTIQ*-Politiken (re-)produziert werden.
Trans liberation as a global movement began to be documented in public reports in the mid-2000s. Gathered together from their first decade (2008-2018), publications produced by three trans INGOs—Transgender Europe (TGEU), the Asia Pacific Trans Network (APTN), and Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE)—depict an evolving global trans imaginary and the construction of a rights deserving trans population in the development sector. The seeking of international action and resources beyond the local scale has compelled the unification of messaging through rhetoric and data aggregation across otherwise heterogenous circumstances of gender variant life in distinct sociopolitical contexts. This unification of messaging enables the trans movement to engage and become established within global development spaces while steeping the conceptualization of trans liberation within the ethos of development as it applies to the modernizing of populations’ conditions and capacities, framed by narratives of cumulative progress. By studying the living public archive of the global trans movement collected in its first decade, I explore the evolution of trans internationalism and the articulation of trans populations’ potentiality through the lens of Roderick Ferguson’s concept of the “will to institutionality.”
This article explores the discourses, actors, and cross-border exchanges that shape the broader landscape of contemporary transnational feminist and queer non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While several studies have pointed to the co-opted role of NGOs, fewer have explored the potential for NGOs to influence the conditions under which they operate. That is what this article sets out to do, with the goal of highlighting the potential for feminist and queer NGOs to engage in oppositional politics within contexts of neoliberalism. Based on material collected during ethnographic fieldwork with transnational feminist and queer NGOs, this article examines how NGOs position themselves in relation to the political and financial structures that condition their work; how and to what effect the emerging professional class of NGO activists navigate the contradictory landscapes within which they are located; and the ambiguities of cross-border exchanges among NGOs. The article shows examples of agency and small-scale resistance, but also illuminates the palpable risks of existing neoliberal tendencies among funders and NGOs. I conclude that transnational feminist and queer NGOs have much to gain from intervening more decisively in such ambiguities as those examined in this article.
This article discusses the ways in which different discourses construct a genuine LGBT refugee subject in Norway. In doing so, it problematizes the notion of a predetermined/ahistorical/context-free LGBT refugee subject who can be discovered at the national borders as the true claimant of the refugee status. Benefiting from queer theory, the discussion revolves around the performative aspects of refugeeness, arguing that refugeeness is discursively constructed in a particular legal, political, and cultural context and that there is no genuine refugee prior to its recognition. The article also draws on the notion of precarity as a constitutive of the so-called genuine refugee subject, and discusses how precarity for sexual minorities has been constituted within the contemporary cultural politics of immigration and sexual politics in Norway. It concludes by arguing for the need for increasing attentiveness to the reproduction and circulation of discourses around issues such as deserving immigrants, precarity, worthy asylum seekers, healthy sexualities, and good citizens within the field of refugee policies and practices.
In this article, we look at colonialities of gender and sexuality as concepts employed in international aid and development. These international arenas reveal not only strong reiterations of modernist linear thinking and colonial continuities but also provide insights into the complexities of the implementation and vernacularisation of gender and sexuality in practices of development. Using a critical anthropological perspective, we discuss case studies based on our own research in Egypt and Bangladesh to illustrate the importance of unpacking exclusionary mechanisms of gender and sexuality scripts in the promotion of women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights in postcolonial development contexts. We provide a conceptual analysis of decolonial feminist attempts at moving beyond the mere critique of development to enable a more inclusive conversation in the field of development. To work towards this goal, we argue, a critical anthropological approach proves promising in allowing a politically-sensitive, ethical, and critical engagement with the Other.
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