LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space

Europe and the European Union are unavoidable, if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yugoslav space. This volume interrogates the forms and implications of the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s) and Europeanisation(s) in all of the Yugoslav successor states.

Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality. This creates a linkage between Europeanness and gay emancipation which elevates certain forms of gay activist engagement and perhaps also non-heterosexuality, more generally, to a measure of democracy, progress and modernity. At the same time, it relegates practices of intolerance to the LGBT community to the status of non-European primitivist Other who is inevitably positioned in the patriarchal past that should be left behind.

Autorentext

Bojan Bili is Marie Curie Fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is the author of We Were Gasping for Air: (Post-)Yugoslav Anti-War Activism and Its Legacy (2012) and co-editor of Resisting the Evil: (Post-)Yugoslav Anti-War Contention (2012) and Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia (2016).

Klappentext

Europe and the European Union are unavoidable, if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yugoslav space. This volume interrogates the forms and implications of the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s) and Europeanisation(s) in all of the Yugoslav successor states. Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality. This creates a linkage between "Europeanness" and "gay emancipation" which elevates certain forms of gay activist engagement and perhaps also non-heterosexuality, more generally, to a measure of democracy, progress and modernity. At the same time, it relegates practices of intolerance to the LGBT community to the status of non-European primitivist Other who is inevitably positioned in the patriarchal past that should be left behind. >

Inhalt

1. Europeanisation, LGBT Activism, and Non-Heteronormativity in the Post-Yugoslav Space: An Introduction; Bojan Bili.- 2. Discontents of Professionalisation: Sexual Politics and Activism in Croatia in the Context of EU Accession; Nicole Butterfield.- 3. The First European Festival of Lesbian and Gay Film Was Yugoslav: Dismantling the Geotemporality of Europeanisation in Slovenia; Sanja Kajini.- 4. Growing Oppression, Growing Resistance: LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in Macedonia; Ana Mikovska Kajevska.- 5. Europe © Gays?:Europeanisation and Pride Parades in Serbia; Bojan Bili.- 6. Queering as Europeanisation, Europeanisation as Queering: Challenging Homophobia in Everyday Life in Montenegro; Danijel Kalezi and arna Brkovi.- 7. From Orientalism to Homonationalism: Queer Politics, Islamophobia and Europeanisation in Kosovo.- 8. From Orientalism to Homonationalism: Queer Politics, Islamophobia and Europeanisation in Kosovo; Piro Rexhepi.- 9. On the Other Side of anEthnocratic State?: LGBT Activism in Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina; Adelita Selmi.- 10. Beyond EUtopian Promises and Disillusions: A Conclusion; Bojan Bili and Paul Stubbs.