Sextures Vol. 2

Special Issue Parades of Pride or Shame: Documenting LGBTQ Visibility in Central and Eastern Europe

Volume 2 Issue 2 June 2012 ISSN 2071-6834

Copyright © 2012 Sextures, Alexander Lambevski. All pages, documents, text, applications, graphics, audio and video that appear in this journal are protected by copyright law or by trademarking. The copyright is, and remains at all times, the property of the authors, or of the publisher of Sextures, Alexander Lambevski. The material may be viewed onscreen by means of a web browser or reproduced in hard copy for personal reference only.

Editorial team Alexander Lambevski, chief editor, independent researcher, Sydney, Australia; Robert Kulpa, Birkbeck College, London, UK; Shannon Woodcock, independent researcher, Melbourne, Australia.

International advisory board John Ballard, Australian National University, Australia; Zvonimir Dobrović, Queer Zagreb, Croatia; Gary Dowsett, La Trobe University, Australia; David Halperin, University of Michigan, USA; Nick Mai, London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom; David McInerney, University of South Australia, Australia; Suzana Milevska, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, R. Macedonia; Kevin Moss, Middlebury College, USA; Enquiries in the first instance should be Mirjana Najčevska, Ss Cyrill and made to: Methodius University, R. Macedonia; Mima Simić, independent writer, Croatia; Alexander Lambevski Žarko Trajanoski, human rights activist, R. Publisher Macedonia; Sextures–E-journal for Sexualities, Cultures Mark Walbank, Mandrake.ATM, Australia. and Politics Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under all applicable international copyright laws, the material may not be: • reproduced by any other process; or • distributed or transmitted electronically to any other person; or • incorporated by any means into another document or material (including other websites), without the prior written permission from SEXTURES , and/or the author, depending upon who holds the copyright.

Email: [email protected] PO Box 545 Darlinghurst NSW 1300 Australia Layout, typest and design: Alexander Lambevski

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Volume 2 Issue 2 June 2012 Special Issue Parades of Pride or Shame: Documenting LGBTQ Visibility in Central and Eastern Europe Editor of this special issue: Anna Gruszczynska

Editorial Anna Gruszczynska “Parades of Pride or Shame: Documenting LGBTQ Visibility in Central and Eastern Europe” 1 PEER REVIEWED ESSAYS Dana N. Johnson “We are Waiting for You: the Discursive (De)construction of Belgrade Pride 2009” 6 Darja Davydova “Baltic Pride 2010: Articulating Sexual Difference and Heteronormative Nationalism in Contemporary Lithuania” 32 Dorottya Rédai “Un/Queering the Nation?: Gender, Sexuality, Nationality and Homophobia in the Media Discourse on the Violence against the 2008 Gay Pride in Budapest” 47 BOOK REVIEW ARTICLES Stanimir Panayotov “The Queer Therapist Unbound”, a book review of Counselling Ideologies: Queer Challenges to Heteronormativity, edited by Lyndsey Moon 65 Alexander Lambevski A book review of Deleuze and Queer Theory, edited by Chrisanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr 77

Sextures 2 (2) ANNA GRUSZCZYNSKA [email protected]

Parades of Pride or Shame?: Documenting LGBTQ Visibility in Central and Eastern Europe EDITORIAL

The authors of the papers in this special issue have chosen to focus on meanings of LGBT prides and marches in Central and Eastern Europe and to reflect on these often highly charged performances which have become significant in the contemporary imaginings of non-heterosexual lives. In all of the chosen locations–Serbia, Hungary, and Lithuania–these public events are sites where sexual identities are acted out, re-configured and re-evaluated in performances which involve the organisers, participants, counter-demonstrators, the media, police, local and national politicians as well as international activists present at the events. The marches act as a lens which brings into sharp focus the interplay between sexual and national identities, where organisers and participants position themselves strategically to challenge the boundaries of who is considered as worthy of belonging to the national community. This is not to say that the marches are uncritically embraced by the activists as a strategy and so the papers also address issues of intra-movement tensions and ways in which these play out in the context of prides and marches. The papers add to the growing body of work on sexualities in Central and Eastern Europe (for a comprehensive overview, see Kulpa and Mizielinska 2011), offering a counter-balance to the abundance of academic and research work for which the main reference point is the Western, particularly AngloAmerican context. While the authors are certainly aware of that context, they engage with it quite critically, and bring in an additional dimension where not only the West/Eastern Europe dynamic is explored but also the tensions embedded within the “new Europe”/”old Europe” (represented by the European Union) are analysed in detail. Overall, the articles reflect the controversies that the events have attracted over the past decade, where in a number of Central and Eastern European countries the marches have been banned or attacked, generating heated debate about the right of sexual minorities to public protest. It is not surprising then, that the issue of violence and its implications for the marches is a recurrent thread throughout the papers. For instance, both the articles by Johnson, focusing on Belgrade Pride and the paper by Davydova, focusing on Baltic 1

Copyright © 2012 Sextures, Volume 2, Issue 2

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Pride explore the ways in which violence shaped the discourse on sexual minorities in each of the cases. They also examine ways in which the threat of violence was used by the local authorities and opponents to regulate the presence of sexual minorities in the public sphere, either by canceling the event and citing the inability to offer adequate protection to participants or by moving the participants to a “safe” space away from the city centre and containing them within a fenced area, at a “safe” distance from culturally significant urban spaces. On a related note, Reddai examines ways in which actual violence at the Budapest Pride coloured the coverage of the event and shifted the emphasis from issues related to sexual identity to those of national identities and belonging, where paradoxically issues of sexuality have become silenced. The above discussions also tie in with an exploration of means by which public space is constructed and regulated and accordingly, all papers engage with the ways in which organisers and the counter-protesters negotiated and challenged the meanings assigned to spaces of cultural and national significance. After all, the space of the centre/public square is constructed as predominantly heterosexual, and so marches and prides create a performance which subverts the taken-for-granted heteronormative nature of that space. The authors study ways in which pride events and marches create a temporary presence of sexual otherness, focusing on ways in which representations of sexual minorities are formed but also contested both within and outside the movement. Johnson’s article focuses on the interplay between issues of national and sexual identities, where she analyses multiple sites through which Pride-related discourses were produced and disseminated. Her analysis focuses on ways in which the state and the media colluded in their opposition to the pride and acted as a key player in producing pride-related discourses and regulating access to public space. She brings in a fascinating discussion of artifacts produced by the opponents, such as the posters and stencil graffiti produced by the right-wing organisation Obraz to communicate their construction of the parade as an “anti-Serbian” event. Similarly, her close reading of the media coverage of the politicians opposed to the event offers a very nuanced, rich discussion of the ways in which pride discourses were articulated by actors involved in the event. Importantly, she also looks at ways in which the threat of violence was deployed strategically by the opponents to the pride, examining the multiple sites where the debate was taking place in the week leading up to the 2009 event which was eventually cancelled. This discussion is then followed up in the post-script which focuses on the successful 2010 Belgrade Pride event, with Johnson showcasing the reliance of the organisers on the framing of the event as a symbol of Serbia’s “Europeanness” and the struggle to get their voices and their message heard. Davydova explores the struggles of the organisers of Baltic Pride 2010, the first 2

Gruszczynska Editorial gay pride in Lithuania to re-define the boundaries of public space, treating the event as a site in which sexual and national identities are forged, negotiated and contested. As mentioned earlier, the threat of violence meant that the organisers had to relocate to a “safe” and highly regulated space, where the interactions with the counter-demonstrators as well as the general public were kept to a minimum. The authors views the event as a highly staged performance, with the activists recognising the irony of marching in an isolated space but nevertheless strategically relying on the media to challenge the mainstream representations of homosexuality. Thus, her discussion exposes the ritual nature of LGBT prides and events and their role in constructing representations of sexual identities and shifting the boundaries of public space. Davydova’s article also engages with the ways in which the pride organisers relied on the notions of “Europeanness” both when it came to justifying their right to public space as well as in terms of the construction of the event, which featured international activists quite prominently. Overall, the support of international networks has been a key element of LGBT public events taking place within the last decade in Central Eastern Europe, and so Davydova’s article is a timely contribution to literature examining the dynamics of interactions between the Central Eastern European organisers and the international (mostly EU/Western) activists (see for instance Binnie and Klesse 2011). Finally, Reddai focuses primarily on media coverage of the Budapest Gay Pride March, and the impact of violence on the construction of sexual identities as well as ways in which these identities become gendered. One of the key questions posed in the article is that of factors precipitating violence and patterns responsible for its escalation. Reddai takes her discussion of the multi-faceted and complex construction of violence in the context of public LGBT events by examining ways in which it was gendered in the discourses produced both by the opponents and supporters of the event. Furthermore, she focuses on the interplay between visibility and violence, arguing that paradoxically, the violence directed at the participants of the Budapest Pride led to increase in media coverage and hence increased visibility, at the same time, the coverage seemed to de-emphasise the sexual identity of the marchers, which for the organisers would have been one of the key reason why they appeared in the public space. On the one hand, while visibility is a problematic concept, Reddai’s article points to ways in which the organisers of the pride are channeling the event to construct and control the frame of representation of sexual minorities and produce alternative, potentially more inclusive languages of description.

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Sextures 2 (2) References J. Binnie and C. Klesse (2011) “‘Because It Was a Bit Like Going to an Adventure Park’: The Politics of Hospitality in Transnational Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Activist Networks”, Tourist Studies, 11: 157-174 R. Kulpa and J. Mizielińska (eds) (2011) De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate.

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Gruszczynska Editorial

PEER REVIEWED ESSAYS

About the guest editor Anna Gruszczynska is currently based at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she is involved in research exploring Open Educational Resources and digital literacies. She is also involved in a number of e-learning projects focusing on issues related to accessibility and academic practice. Her doctoral research (at Aston University, Birmingham, UK) focused on LGBT marches and pride parades in Poland and built on her involvement witthethePolish with PolishLGBT LGBTand andfeminist feministmovement. movement.She Shecan canbebecontacted contactedatatA.Gruszczynska@ shu.ac.uk.

DANA N. JOHNSON [email protected]

We are Waiting for You: The Discursive (De)construction of Belgrade Pride 2009 Abstract

Drawing on both semiotic theory and critical discourse analysis, this paper will analyze three sites of the discursive construction of Belgrade Pride 2009. Through the close examination of disparate media that mesh images, text, and spoken word genres, I will identify the features of five separate discourses of Pride, showing how they were taken up (and legitimated or not), by whom, and how the identities of these participants are constructed vis-à-vis one another in relations of power. I argue that such an investigation can contribute to understanding how a result was achieved (the cancelation of Pride) that perpetuates the marginalization of Serbia’s LGBT population. In the wake of the first successful Belgrade Pride in October 2010, close analysis of such discursive sites remains critical to understanding (and affecting) the continuing struggle for LGBT rights in Serbia. Keywords: LGBT, human rights, discourse, Pride, Serbia

On 19 September 2009, representatives of the Organizing Board of Belgrade Pride were called to a meeting with Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković.1 Cvetković presented the activists with a letter from the police director stating that the event, scheduled to begin at 11:00am the next day, was extremely high-risk and that state organs were not capable of guaranteeing its security. The letter recommended that organizers relocate Pride from the center of Belgrade to the outskirts of the city. This option was rejected. As organizer Majda Puača put it at a press conference later that afternoon: “We don’t want to walk in some field by the river; that wouldn’t be a procession of pride2” (B92 2009a). With organizers considering that the state had “de facto” banned the event, capitulating to threats of violence from the extreme right, Pride was canceled. What can be considered the “discursive production” of Belgrade Pride 2009 began with a declaration in favor of organizing the event that circulated in the spring and gathered the supporting signatures of over 40 Serbian human rights organizations. In press releases and media appearances, on Facebook and through an advertising campaign, LGBT activists disseminated their message (in the words of organizer Dragana Vučković) that “the Pride procession is something founded on human rights...it is a political protest, a political march, a procession with which one very marginalized group in society...becomes visible and contributes to respect for human rights” (B92 2009b). Yet this rights-based discourse was only one of several that constructed the event. Public statements both in 5

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Johnson We Are Waiting for You support and against holding Pride were made by various state officials and politicians. The Serbian Orthodox Church weighed in. And violent right-wing extremist groups organized a campaign that included covering the city with graffiti such as “death to faggots!” and culminated in the widespread appearance of the menacing warning “čekamo vas!” (we are waiting for you!). The analysis to follow will focus on three sites of the discursive construction of Belgrade Pride: the “čekamo vas” poster and graffiti campaign that appeared across the city, the nightly newscast of Dnevnik 2 (Second Daily), and articles that appeared in the daily newspaper Večernje Novosti (Evening News). Večernje Novosti is the daily newspaper with the highest circulation rate in the country, Dnevnik 2 is the most-watched informational program in Serbia, and along with other urban centers, Belgrade has a rich tradition of politically charged graffiti and street art. I thus chose these sites because they arguably represent three of the most public forms of the discursive construction of Pride. I argue that close analysis of such sites of the circulation of discourse is critical to understanding (and affecting) the continuing struggle for LGBT rights in Serbia. Within the three sites under investigation, I identify the salient features of five distinct discourses of Pride that I name as follows: “rights-based”, “public security risk”, “mayhem”, “anti-Serb provocation” and “demonstration of Europeanness”. The enactment of these five discourses is by no means mutually exclusive and as will become apparent from the analysis below, in September 2009 they were often articulated together. However, as Foucault emphasizes, such a “multiplication of discourses” occurs in a field of power in which the interests of some are hierarchized over the interests of others (1978: 18). To unveil this hierarchy across disparate media that mesh images, text, and spoken word genres, I will draw on both semiotic theory and methods from the field of critical discourse analysis (CDA). While the analysis to follow will hone in on only a few of many interesting discursive features, I hope that even this cursory treatment will demonstrate the utility of such an approach in uncovering “the ideological significance of the choices speakers and writers make, and [the] significant patterns in the distribution of their choices” (Cameron 2001: 51). In unpacking the issues of access to and control over public discourse, I argue that investigating how the five discourses identified above were enacted in the public sphere in 2009 can contribute to understanding how a result was achieved that perpetuates the marginalization of Serbia’s LGBT population. This analysis should be considered preliminary for several reasons. For one, my investigation is limited temporally, as in the case of the two sites of mass-mediated discourse I consider only one week prior to when Pride was scheduled to take place, namely, 1319 September 2009. In order to focus in on this one intense week, I necessarily bracket important shifts in the discursive construction of Pride that occurred since the intention to 7

organize the event was first announced in the spring. Another drawback to my selection of sites is that it precludes analysis of some of the most interesting discourse that surrounded Pride 2009, including some important examples of resistance. Yet the backgrounding of resistant or oppositional discourses is a key feature of the discursive construction of Pride that will be attended to below. Finally, my investigation largely excludes consideration of public interaction with the discursive sites to be discussed. This analysis could therefore inform a future ethnographic study that focuses on how such mediated and unmediated discourse is taken up by the Serbian public in the formation of “interpretive frameworks” or “mental models” (van Dijk 1993: 242) that influence attitudes and behavior towards the LGBT population. Writing on the Wall: The graffiti and posters of Obraz I begin with the unmediated site of discourse constituted by the physical structure of Belgrade itself, which in the weeks before Pride became covered with all nature of antigay graffiti. My focus here is on one part of that campaign: the posters and stencil graffiti of Obraz. Obraz is the largest and most active of what are characterized by the state as “clero-fascistic” organizations (B92 2005).3 The Obraz flag features a Chi Rho4 flanked by the Greek letters alpha and omega in white, on a background of red and blue with a stylized rendering of “Obraz” in Cyrillic script (figure 1). In the weeks leading up to Pride, members of Obraz plastered posters across the city whose background featured an image of a rally with the familiar Obraz color scheme and block stencil letters in Cyrillic script that spelled out the message: ČEKAMO VAS! (WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU!) (figure 2). Obraz repeated this threatening slogan in stencil graffiti that drove the message home. In this second iteration, the Obraz logo features prominently, under which is stenciled a crossed-out gay symbol and the slogan ČEKAMO VAS! (figure 3). Both the posters and graffiti were ubiquitous in Belgrade in the weeks before the cancelation of Pride, with the posters often layered side-by-side. Figure 1: Obraz logo/flag (see www.obraz.rs).

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Figure 2: Obraz poster Čekamo vas! (We are Waiting for you!) (see www.obraz.rs).

Some semiotic concepts can be usefully employed here to make sense of the ways in which the words and images interact within, and the meanings produced by, the Obraz posters and graffiti. In the analysis to follow, I will draw in particular on the model introduced by Roland Barthes in his seminal essay “Rhetoric of the Image”, in which he asks if images, as “direct analogical representations”, can produce systems of signs that convey meaning (1977: 269). To answer this question in the affirmative, Barthes classifies the various messages he finds in an Italian pasta advertisement, firstly identifying two aspects– denotational and connotational–of what he calls the linguistic message. The denotational aspect is represented by the product labels and the advertisement’s caption, while the connotational aspect is fulfilled by the brand name “Panzani” which in this case signifies, or connotes, “Italianicity” (Barthes 1977: 270). Such a dual linguistic message can function in two possible ways in relation to the total image: either “anchoring” the image to steer the viewer in the direction of one particular meaning, or serving a “complementary” function of relaying the message of the image (Barthes 1977: 274-275). Separated from the linguistic message, the image itself contains multiple discontinuous signs that comprise a second, iconic message (Barthes 1977: 271-272). Because these signs rely on the cultural knowledge of the viewer, Barthes terms this type of message “coded”; distinct yet often difficult to separate from the third type of message that he identifies, that of the “real” objects in the image which form a “non-coded iconic 9

Sextures 2 (2) message”. The only knowledge necessary for interpretation of this third message is “the knowledge bound up in our perception” (Barthes 1977: 272). Like Barthes’ advertisement for Italian pasta, the Obraz poster can be viewed as a system of signification containing multiple messages. The denotational aspect of the linguistic message of the poster in figure 2 is transmitted through the large slogan “ČEKAMO VAS!” as well as the Obraz insignia visible on the rally flags and the barelydiscernible message on the poster held by rally participants that reads “for an army with honor”. If, following Vološinov, we consider “the word as the ideological phenomenon par excellence” then the form in which language occurs carries meaning, though we must always attend to the context of that meaning creation (1973: 157). The use of the Cyrillic script in these slogans is therefore significant, transmitting the connotational aspect of the linguistic message that is here not just “Serbness” but a “Serbness” of a particular kind. A result of the historical development of the Croatian variant of the language written in Latin script and its unification with the historically Cyrillic Serbian variant in the language of Serbo-Croatian, the breakup of Yugoslavia has left Serbs with two alphabets.5 Since 1991, linguists in both countries have diligently worked to differentiate the Croatian and Serbian languages that had been “more or less unified for 140 years” (Greenberg 2000: 625). In Serbia, this effort has included an extreme nationalist faction in favor of an “Orthodox Serbian” to be written exclusively in a slightly reformed Cyrillic script (Greenberg 2000: 629). While it is important to caution that not every use of Cyrillic is ideologically patterned in the same way, there does seem to be some evidence that the use of Cyrillic in defense of a “Serbian Serbia” is growing, and that orthographic choices are becoming more frequently ideologically marked6. In this case, Obraz explicitly and conscientiously operates exclusively in Cyrillic, as an alphabet linked to Orthodox tradition, an imagined Serbian past untainted by foreign influence, and placed in opposition to the Latin-based Croatian variant of a common language.7 Following Barthes, we can thus read the connotational linguistic message of the Obraz poster as one of tradition, of nationalism, of “Serbdom”. Figure 3: Obraz graffiti. Photo: Orli Fridman, used with permission.

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Figure 4: Obraz at “Kosovo is Serbia” rally, February 2008. Photographer unknown.

Sextures 2 (2) the image, and the aesthetic of the forceful block lettering works with the Kosovo protest scene and waving flags to alert us that this tradition is endangered and must be protected. The poster and graffiti campaign of Obraz thus demonstrate the elements of one of the discourses of Pride that situates the event as an “anti-Serb provocation”. One final element of this discursive site must be mentioned, namely the “countergraffiti” that appeared as a direct response to that of Obraz. Unlike the work of Obraz, we do not know who is responsible for this tongue-in-cheek response. In figure 5, Batman and Robin have swooped down to inquire, “you’re waiting for us?” In figure 6, a mysterious cat-eyed woman asks, “you’re waiting for me?”

The Obraz poster shown in figure 2 contains several signs whose messages make both redundant and more complex the two-fold linguistic message discussed above. Firstly, the colors of the poster index the Serbian flag. For Obraz, these colors have an even deeper significance, as red and blue are the “foundational colors of Christianity and of Orthodox Serbia”, while white “carries the Christian symbolism of cleanliness, love and Godly wisdom” (www.obraz.rs). The background scene is a stylization of a photograph taken at the February 2008 government-sponsored rally “Kosovo is Serbia” organized in opposition to Kosovo’s declaration of independence (figure 4). In this original photograph, Obraz supporters are holding a banner that reads “You are still here, Lazar, the seed of my Belgrade children”.8 As with the composition of Barthes’ pasta advertisement, so too does this oblique mythological reference rely heavily on cultural knowledge for interpretation. Substituted with “WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU!”, the image of the rally featured on the anti-Pride poster can be considered a coded iconic message that reinforces the message of “Serbdom” and suggests that Pride not only violates this tradition but that it threatens to be a calamity related to and on the scale of the national “loss” of Kosovo. The text of the poster thus serves Barthes’ function of “anchorage”, as it “direct[s] the reader through the signifieds of the image...it remote-controls him towards a meaning chosen in advance” (1977: 275). The Cyrillic script points us towards the elements of Serbian tradition contained in 11



Figure 5: Counter-graffiti Nas Čekate? (You are waiting for us?). Photo: Orli Fridman, used with permission.

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during which he stated that Pride would not, under any circumstances, go forward, and repeated his organization’s veiled threats to attack would-be participants ( B92 2009c). Of course, Obradović was just one of many actors to weigh in on Pride in the mass media during the week preceding its cancelation. In the next part of this paper, I will attempt to sort through these voices and explore more generally what can be learned about the exercise of power through mass-mediated discourse. The Mass Mediation of Pride

Figure 6: Counter-graffiti Mene Čekate? (You are waiting for me?) Photographer unknown.

As can be seen in figure 6, the counter-graffiti appeared between Obraz posters or next to Obraz graffiti. The interpretation of its system of signs becomes clearer if we keep in mind that “the form and meaning of a sign are restricted by the other signs to which it is opposed” (Hanks 1996:50). In this case, the counter-graffiti signifies everything that Obraz’s does not. The characters are unmistakably modern, as is the informal style of the Latin script. Instead of Kosovo, the image in its totality–complete with conversational bubbles–is an iconic representation of fearless, invincible comic-book heroism. These elements of the counter-graffiti discursively construct Pride as a “demonstration of Europeanness”. By responding directly to Obraz’s threat, the counter-graffiti can be said to have turned “strategic weakness into tactical strength...deploy[ing] the force of the dominant against domination” (Shohat and Stam 1998: 31). At the last minute, the discourse of Pride as a “demonstration of Europeanness” thus entered the unmediated site of the streets of Belgrade as a counter-weight to the discourse of Pride as an “anti-Serb provocation”. While Obraz disseminated its message directly on the city walls, the organization’s leader and spokesman, Mladen Obradović, also made frequent appearances in the media 13

During the 1990s, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević consolidated control over most of the media, although a few independent and oppositional sources survived, bolstered by substantial aid from Western donors. While significant changes have occurred since the fall of the Milošević regime in October 2000, media reform remains incomplete (OSI 2005: 37). An OSCE report on media freedom in Serbia recently concluded that “the media system is characterised by a belated and incomplete process of transition, an accelerated pace of commercialisation in a cash-strapped and unregulated market, a drawn-out transformation of ownership...[and] weaknesses in legal regulations and lawenforcement institutions” (2009a: 5). A cluster of legislation governs Serbia’s mass media, and the Ministry of Culture’s Working Group for Media Legislation Reform has yet to harmonize the relevant laws to adhere to European Union standards (OSCE 2009b). As of April 2011, a long-term media strategy promised by the government and based on a study funded by the European Union had yet to materialize (Barlovać 2011). Delays in implementation of the Broadcasting Law have meant that the former state broadcaster, Radio Televizija Srbija (RTS), remains only partially privatized, with approximately 30 percent still under state ownership (Đoković 2004: 429). Producer of the nightly newscast Dnevnik 2, in 2005 RTS was characterized as still “operating in a legal limbo” (OSI 2005:154). Novosti, the parent company of the popular newspaper Večernje Novosti, is similarly partially privatized, with 70 percent owned by former and current employees, while the state owns 30 percent of its stock. State representation is therefore still required for the appointment of managerial positions and the taking of strategic decisions (Đoković, 2004: 431-432). While RTS and Novosti’s legacy of authoritarian state ownership and continued links to the state indicate important directions in the investigation of power, the “power of control” is not only about the influence afforded by direct ownership of the media or advertising contracts.9 Rather, we must examine the role of the media itself–including its journalists, editors and staff–in the reproduction of “social power structures” (van Dijk 2008: 55). If we accept that the media at least partially manage the symbolic dimension of power, then the “power of control” over what will be 14

Johnson We Are Waiting for You discussed, how, and by whom becomes critical in the reproduction of social inequality. In the next two sections I will employ some methods from the field of critical discourse analysis to two news stories from the coverage of Pride in the week before its cancelation. The topic of both stories is framed as the “riskiness” of the event. Below, I focus my attention firstly on word choice and secondly on intertextuality, or how the voices of participants are woven together and hierarchized in the production of a primary text (Fairclough 1995: 7585). While there are a number of relevant foci of inquiry, I choose these two as interwoven interests that bridge the gap between an analysis of content and form (Fairclough 1992: 233-236). As Jane Hill notes, drawing on Silverman and Torode, “word choice can commit one voice to participation in a premise established by another” (1995: 123), and as Vološinov observed, reported speech can be either clearly demarcated or incorporated (to a greater or lesser extent) and editorialized upon (1973: 115-125). Both features can therefore help to reveal not only how our five discourses of Pride are taken up–and legitimated or not–but by whom, and how the identities of these participants are constructed vis-à-vis one another in relations of power. In both examples below, I include only my English-language transcription for efficiency’s sake but draw attention to the original Serbian where particularly relevant. In both transcripts, I underline those phrases on which I will focus particular attention.

Sextures 2 (2) (A)



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LET BABBIES BE BORN IS THE MESSAGE FROM THE NORTH WE DON’T WANT SERBIA TO BE A COUNTRY OF FAGS

(B)

There are more and more announcements and information that on 20 September, for when it is scheduled on the streets of Belgrade, “Pride Parade” may cause unwanted and serious incidents and turn into a big clash of two sides!12

(C)

Several right-wing and anarchist organizations, fan groups and citizens, announce their attendance at a counter-meeting, as well as attacks not only on participants in the gay parade, but on the police as well.

(D)

- Not by any means will we allow the holding of the parade of shame - says Mladen Obradović, General Secretary of the Fatherland Movement “Obraz”. - It is well-known to everyone what will happen, in the event that the parade is held. Responsibility for everything that happens will rest on the organizers, because they can’t “poke a finger in the eye” of the Serbian nation. “Obraz” sends them word: “We are waiting for you”...

A Big Clash of Two Sides! On Sunday, 13 September 2009, Pride, scheduled for the following Sunday, was not mentioned in either the daily Večernje Novosti or on the nightly news program Dnevnik 2. The next day, while there was again no mention on the evening news, an article appeared in the Chronicle section of Večernje Novosti under the headline “Parade Full of Risk”.10 Accompanying the text was a photograph of Belgrade’s Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) football stadium, with the caption “Star fans at a match on Saturday with Metalworker”.11 The photograph shows the stands packed with fans, holding up cards with capital Cyrillic letters to spell out the message (see Figure 8 below, a photograph published in the mentioned online edition of Večernje Novosti, 14 Septetember 2009): Figure 8.



(E)

Members of MUP (Ministarstvo za unutrašnje poslove)13, who will be responsible for public order and peace, may find themselves targeted not only because of securing the “Pride parade”, but also in retaliation for the recent arrest of activists from one anarchistic organization. Fans from some Belgrade clubs announce that on Sunday they will “finally settle the score with the police”. “Delije” and Rad’s fans “United Force”14 in particular are preparing.

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Johnson We Are Waiting for You (F)

(G)

(H)

Sextures 2 (2) According to the facts, as Novosti learns, certain fan groups will provoke incidents across the center of the city so that the police will concentrate on those events. Other groups of fans will then, with everything at their disposal, attack participants of the gay parade. State institutions, as our sources inform us, have knowledge that at the “counter-meeting” a large number of parents will also be found who will protest this manner of displaying sexual preference. In addition to fan groups and groups of rightorientation and like-minded persons from across Serbia and Republika Srpska,15 participation in the “counter-meeting” was also announced by students at some high schools. The number of SMS messages and emails which call on citizens to prevent the gay parade is growing. Participants in the counter-meeting will gather, according to reports, in front of the Faculty of Philosophy. The youth of the patriotic political parties have announced their attendance at the countermeeting, the first time that they participate together. As members of “Obraz”, “SNP 1389”, “Naši16”..., have announced, they will settle accounts exclusively with parade participants and won’t attack the police. “ARSENAL”

(I)

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Participants in the counter-meeting announce that they will carry rocks, torches, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, firecrackers... Right-wing organizations hold that they won’t be able to control their extreme part. Not only parade participants and police officers will find themselves targeted, but also -- shops.

Know thy Enemy? Naming the antagonists In the preceding news story, several instances of word choice conspire to reinforce the framework of risk and contribute ambiguity to the origin and exact nature of that risk. A primary means by which this is accomplished is through the various ways that the extreme-right groups threatening to disrupt the event are named. In section C, the threat of violence is said to come from unspecified “right-wing and anarchist organizations, fan groups and citizens”. In section G, this becomes “fan groups and groups of right-orientation and their like-minded persons from across Serbia and Republika Srpska” as well as highschool students and their parents. The only extremist groups specifically named are Obraz, SNP 1389, and Naši in section H, but the use of an ellipsis after this short list gives the impression that it is potentially endless. It is certainly true that the Organizing Board of Pride as well as the police catalogued credible threats of violence from various organizations and informal groups in the weeks and months before 19 September, and that each of these groups has a different official designation. Taken together with the various football fan groups, reference to this cluster of actors often appears in the media under the umbrella term “ultra-right”. The absence of the designation “ultra” in the above article is therefore significant, as “rightwing organizations” and “groups of right-orientation” could also refer to a number of nonviolent, mainstream political parties and groups. Moreover, the overall effect of the word choice in characterizing the actors responsible for these threats is that responsibility becomes impossible to locate. This lack of clarity leads to an apparent contradiction in the reporting in sections C and H, making it impossible to discern who, if anyone, had actually threatened to attack the police. The article further suggests that responsibility lies with the event itself, conveyed by the formulation in section B that “‘Pride Parade’ may cause unwanted and serious incidents”. Intertextuality and a Paucity of Voices There are two clear examples of embedded text in the news story above. The first occurs with the picture featured of fans at a football match. The placard text in section A can be considered the collective “voice” of the Red Star’s Delije (Heros) fan group, with the “message from the north” coming from the north-side stadium stands, where the Delije have a special section. In the original Serbian the message has the rhythm of a chant. The genre of football fan songs, chants, and signage of which this is a part has a long pedigree in the former Yugoslavia, as elsewhere, with the Delije particularly infamous 18

Johnson We Are Waiting for You for turning football matches into opportunities for the dissemination of nationalistic political messages and hate speech (Čolović 2004). In the context of the news story, this can be considered an instance of direct speech, whose boundaries remain well-defined by the text’s containment within the photograph. The phrase “we don’t want Serbia to be a country of fags” appears in the original Serbian as “nećemo da Srbija bude zemlja pedera”. As “nećemo” has an element of intent with no direct equivalent in English, translatable as both “we don’t want” and “we won’t (allow/permit)”, the image reinforces the tone of ambiguous threat conveyed by the story as a whole. Interestingly, although state officials had been emphasizing the “riskiness” of Pride for some time, no official quotes appear in the article to support this framework. Instead, the only direct quote is attributed to Obraz’s Mladen Obradović, at the top of the article in section D.Obradović takes this opportunity to air a soundbite containing several themes that he will repeat again, most notably two days later in a televised interview with B92 (B92 2009c). By referring to the event as the “parade of shame”, Obradović aligns himself with the official position of the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose acting head, Bishop Amfilohije Radović, will echo these words in an official statement several days later. The threat of violence in the quote remains implicit, in “everyone knows what will happen” and “we are waiting for you”. Finally, Obradović positions himself on the side of the insulted Serbian nation, and pushes responsibility for (whatever) consequences may come to pass onto the organizers of Pride. It is impossible to discern whether the original source of the Obradović quote is a press release, an exclusive interview with Večernje Novosti, or speech reported from another media source. This ambiguity is compounded by the confusing combination of hyphens and quotation marks used to set off the remark. Quotation marks in Serbian texts conventionally appear as follows, with a lower opening and upper closing mark: „example”. The appearance in this article of conventional English-language punctuation, i.e. “example”, can most likely be attributed to the article’s online reproduction. At the same time, some print media forgo quotation marks altogether and indicate the start of a quote with the use of a hyphen (-). When such punctuation is used however, the quote is to be set off from the rest of the paragraph; hyphens are therefore conventionally used to reproduce a dialogue. However, in section D this rule is violated, with the effect of melding Obradović’s represented voice with that of the article’s author. The authorial voice continues into the final formulation: “Obraz” sends them word: “We are waiting for you”.... Instead of directly quoting what Obradović actually said, most likely: “we are waiting for them”, the author turns the phrase into a statement directed at an unspecified “them” and repeats the now ubiquitous slogan also found on the streets of the city: “we are waiting for you”. Set off with quotation marks, the phrase thus becomes structurally comparable to the 19

Sextures 2 (2) preceding colloquialism “poke a finger in the eye”, and the addition of an ellipsis after the phrase has the evaluative effect of suggesting that readers need only let their imaginations run wild. While the football fan placards and the Obradović quote are the only two instances of directly reported speech to be found in this story, the collective voice to which they both belong, formulated as “participants in the counter-meeting” (section I) or “fan-groups...” (section G) is repeatedly foregrounded throughout the story. The voices of members of Pride’s Organizing Board, police and state officials, and potential participants in Pride are notably absent, although all of these actors are of direct relevance to the topic. The cumulative effect of word choice and the intertextuality of voices found in this story is to thus foreground the discourses of “mayhem”, “public security risk” and “anti-Serb provocation” and to hierarchize them in that order. The article ends with a final evaluative prediction in section I that reinforces the expectation of mayhem: “Not only parade participants and police officers will find themselves targeted, but also–shops”. Televised Risk: the following day on Dnevnik 2

Figure 9. Edited video clip of the analysed edition of RTS’ Dnevnik 2. Click on the play button to activate the video (only available in the interactive PDF version).

The next day on RTS’s evening news program, Dnevnik 2 (see figure 9 above), Pride was the third headline story, after an announcement that Serbia had fulfilled its obligations to join the Schengen visa-free travel zone and a report that Biljana Plavšić, former president of Republika Srpska, would be released early from prison in Sweden. The lead on Pride was: “Pride parade a great risk security-wise; the police will do everything to secure order, says Dačić”. As the anchor read this line, the image featured on the screen was a shot of a computer on which a YouTube video clip was playing, under the visible title “Defeat of Gay Parade in Belgrade!!” The video showed a woman on the ground being kicked and beaten in the midst of a crowd. The subsequent news story is transcribed in its entirety below. To the left of each narrative segment I include a description of the accompanying video footage, using Fairclough’s system for representing visual images: CU=close up, MS=medium shot, WS=wide shot, MSC=medium close up (Fairclough 1995:111). 20

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Sextures 2 (2)

Figure 10: It’s time for equality. Designer: Nikola

(L)

Lehocki. © Belgrade Pride 2009 Organizational Board, used with permission.

[MCU interview clip with Marija Savić, member of the Organizing Board, in front of some greenery with the sound of running water audible] Savić: What is important to us is to somehow explain, that the Pride procession, and that is just why I avoid that word, parade, it’s not parading, it’s not something with which we wish to march our sexual orientation or to carry our bedrooms through the streets, rather this is about a protest because of the discrimination and violence that lesbians and gays have been enduring for years.

(M)

[WS Belgrade traffic scene, then MS of families strolling by the river]

Narrator: There hasn’t been a riskier gathering in Serbia for a long time, warned the police minister, and announced that the state organs will take all measures so that the Pride procession is secure.

(N)

Dačić [visibly exacerbated]: What’s that that someone cares how...who has a political or personal position towards that? Of course that doesn’t interest the police. The police are interested that on that day there is public order and peace. Meaning, the police don’t determine [rolls eyes dramatically] whether something will be held or not...but we must worry about security, from that aspect there exists a security risk...which is a risk that...of attack, of violence...a great security risk exists.

Here is the full transcript of the Dnevnik 2 news story regarding Pride:

(J)

[Male anchor sits next to screen with the official Pride 2009 logo (figures 9 and 10)]

Anchor: The Pride procession, to be held September 20th, is a high risk event, and state organs will do everything to prevent whatever kind of violence, says police minister Ivica Dačić. Several right-wing and anarchist organizations, and fan groups, announce their attendance at a counter-meeting. From the Organizing Board of the Pride Procession it is stressed that in question is the right to gather freely, as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, which is in line with European legislation.

(K)

[WS scene of Belgrade traffic, then various shots of graffiti on city walls, with the graffiti of Obraz dominating]

[MCU footage of Ivica Dačić at a press conference]

(O)

[MS footage of seated crowd at meeting of Pride’s Organizing Board, then cut to MS of seated Board members] Narrator: Organization of the manifestation has been accompanied by the public quarrel of representatives of lesbian and gay associations. Some of them withdrew from the Organizing Board of the Pride procession because they consider that it isn’t yet time for it to be held.

Female narrator: As the Pride procession draws near, appearing across the city is graffiti, SMS messages and comments on some [web]sites which call on citizens to prevent the gay gathering. Some texts also call for a violent confrontation with members of this population, and the police who will secure the gathering.

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Sextures 2 (2) Parade vs. Procession

(P)

[MCU interview footage of Predrag Azdejković in front of same greenery as Savić above]Azdejković:

The organization to which I belong, Gay and Lesbian Info Center, already in the month of May sent a public announcement where organizers were invited to set the whole story aside, as I don’t think that a few months are sufficient for an event like this to be organized, and for there to be any kind of positive message in the public that something is changed.

(Q)

[MS scene of several police officers on walkietalkies, then WS of large crowd gathered in front of Parliament]

Narrator: Right-wing organizations announce a counter-meeting. From the organization Obraz they send word that by no means will they allow the holding of the parade of shame, as they call it.

(R)

[MS scene of a couple, man with mohawk and woman with bleached blond hair, walking together and then physically attacked; the shot widens to capture police joining the scene and members of Obraz and others chanting “kill fags” (30 secs)] Activists of SNP 1389 informed the police that on Saturday at 11pm to 10:30am in front of the Faculty of Philosophy they will organize an action entitled “Absolutely nonviolent all-national Serbian party of sexual non-deviants”. They maintain that the party

(S)

[MA of NUNS journalists entering their office]

From the other side, NUNS [Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia] and the Independent Association of Journalists from Vojvodina support the Pride parade and call on the media to report on the gathering in a professional manner.

(T)

[WS scene of Belgrade’s pedestrian zone, with people walking slowly by and a heterosexual couple embracing and eating ice cream]

Support for the parade has so far been extended by Dragan Bjelogrlić, Nikola Đuričko, Velimir Bata Živojinović, Mirjana Karanović, director Milutin Petrović, Srđan Dragojević, singer Bebi Dol, and others.

Of a total of nine direct references, the newscast refers to the upcoming event as the Pride “parade” four times: in the lead and in the last three sections R, S and T. Considering that the piece includes an interview with a member of the Organizing Board (section L), in which she explains the organizers’ preference for the term “procession” (povorka) over “parade” (parada), this ambivalence becomes all the more remarkable. On a whole, however, there seems to be a much greater degree of attendance to using the preferred term by Dnevnik 2’s team than over at Večernje Novosti, where in the above 14 September article, “Pride Parade” was used in section B and “gay parade” in sections C, F and G, but never “Pride procession”. In fact, during the entire week of coverage in Večernje Novosti, “Pride procession” was used only twice, both times in an 18 September article. Interestingly, the newspaper’s 19 September article on the cancelation of the event included a direct quote from a member of the Organizing Board in which her usage of “procession” was changed and reported as “parade”. Regardless of whether or not we interpret this terminological confusion as a deliberate snub directed at the organizers of the event, it has the effect of delegitimizing the rights-based discourse of which the event name is a central part, an issue to which I will return in the discussion of intertextuality below. Several more instances of word choice in the newscast make for interesting comparison with the newspaper story analyzed above. The following televised sentence: “Several right-wing and anarchist organizations, and fan groups, announce their attendance at a counter-meeting” (section J) is almost identical to that which appeared in print: “Several right-wing and anarchist organizations, fan groups and citizens, announce their attendance at a counter-meeting” (section C). After this formulation, Dnevnik 2 uses only the more general phrase “right-wing organizations” once more in section P. The overall effect of these word choices is to lend at least a slightly greater degree of specificity to the identity of threatening actors than is apparent in the print story. This is achieved by leaving out “and citizens” from section J, and attributing specific actions to specific groups in sections Q and R (Obraz and SNP 1389, respectively). The announcement from Obraz that was reported in print in section D also appears in the newscast, but in much different form in section Q. Dnevnik 2 only reports a short summation of what appears in Večernje Novosti, with the narrator clearly distancing herself from the phrase “parade of shame” by adding the qualifier “as they call it”. Intertextual Webbing Section J summarizes the premise of the story to follow and sets up the triangulation

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Johnson We Are Waiting for You of voices to be featured in the newscast, which can be characterized as: state/right-wing actors/Pride organizers. Priority is given to Minister of Interior Ivica Dačić to speak to the topic of risk, and whose press conference has presumably prompted the story as a whole. The connection of the next sentence to the first (“Several right-wing and anarchist organizations, and fan groups, announce their attendance at a counter-meeting”) is not immediately apparent, leaving the listener/viewer to infer that the announcement is connected to the risk referred to by Dačić. Finally, the Organizing Board of Pride appears as a main actor, whose rights-based discourse seems to be treated as an equal one. Because the message from the Organizing Board is reported indirectly (section J), the authorship of the final clause “which is in line with European legislation” remains somewhat ambiguous. While this is the only instance of the discourse of Pride as a “demonstration of Europeanness” that appears in these two examples, this discourse will take on a more prominent role in the following days, as Dnevnik 2’s coverage begins to stress the extent of the international gaze trained on the event. Both the “rights-based” discourse and that of Pride as a “demonstration of Europeanness” receive some legitimation from the fact that the anchor introduces the story while sitting in front of the bright, minimalistic and modern Pride 2009 logo (figure 10). The first direct quote of the newscast comes from an interview clip with Pride organizer Marija Savić, who establishes the importance of the choice of how to name the event and links it to a public reassurance about the human rights-based purpose of the gathering. While we don’t know what Savić was asked, her comment appears as a direct response to the discourse of “anti-Serb provocation” that puts the Organizing Board in a position of defending the legitimacy of the event and the rights-based discourse promoted by the Board. The next voice to appear in the newscast is that of Interior Minister Dačić, first in the indirect summation of the narrator, and then directly at a press conference (sections M and N). In this comment, Dačić emphasizes the risk of “attack” and “violence” without specifying the source of the expected risk. He also refuses to answer what was likely a question from a reporter asking him to comment on his own personal support or nonsupport for the event. As the one most directly responsible for preventing bloodshed, if Dačić had publicly equivocated–as did other state representatives including President Tadić and Belgrade Major Dragan Đilas–his commitment to effectively leading the police would have been called into question. However, his attempt at appearing neutral and professional comes off as ludicrous with the statement that “the police don’t determine whether something will be held or not” (section N). Whether or not the right to gather peacefully is exercised or not is absolutely the prerogative of the police, from whom a permit must be requested and who have the right to refuse or revoke that permit with due 25

Sextures 2 (2) cause. With this comment, Dačić presents himself as a helpless pawn of forces beyond his control and distances himself from the support that the Ministry of Interior had assured Pride, simultaneously invoking the discourses of “public security risk” and “mayhem”. The commitment and ability of the police to prevent violence is further called into question by the video footage shown in sections Q and R, as well as at the top of the newscast as the Pride headline is read. All of this footage is from 2001, when the first attempt to hold Belgrade Pride was broken up by members of Obraz and other extremists. The footage is damning, showing a scene of chaos and confusion, with Pride participants attacked and beaten while police officers stand idly by or in some cases, drive away. This footage as well as photographs from the 2001 debacle were repeated continuously in the media in the months preceding Pride 2009. During this newscast, the footage was run for a particularly long time (a full 30 seconds), with the evaluative effect of making clear that the narrator doubted the veracity of the claim by SNP 1389 (reported simultaneously) that the group’s “absolutely nonviolent all-national Serbian party of sexual non-deviants”– scheduled as an all-night affair to end 30 minutes before the start of Pride at the same location–had nothing to do with Pride. Serving the function of a narrative complication, section O introduces a new voice into the story, namely, that of LGBT activists who do not agree that the time is right to hold Pride. While there is a legitimate debate here that is being reported on, I argue that sections O and P nevertheless serve the metadiscursive function of calling into question the rights-based discourse promoted in sections J and L Azdejković’s prediction that no “positive message” will be sent by the event serves to again foreground the discourse of “mayhem”. The voice of the independent journalists referred to in section S also has an evaluative function as a kind of metadiscourse on what RTS no doubt considers a balanced and neutral newscast. By way of a coda we are offered a list of prominent Serbs who publicly support Pride. While the diversity of voices included in this story initially gives the impression of fairness, a clear hierarchy of discourses nevertheless emerges in the following order: “public security risk”, “mayhem” and “rights-based”, with “anti-Serb provocation” and “demonstration of Europeanness” backgrounded with approximate equal weight. Conclusion The investigation above only begins to introduce the range of discourses through which Pride was constructed in the spring and summer of 2009. A full treatment would not only cover a longer timeframe and more sites of production, but would be necessarily broadened to include important contextual considerations (such as the passage of anti-discrimination 26

Johnson We Are Waiting for You legislation in spring 2009) that were beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, through an analysis of three very public sites of discursive production, I have aimed to demonstrate how the “rights-based” discourse promoted by the organizers of Pride was consistently backgrounded. Instead, the discourses of “public security risk” and “mayhem”–the main concerns of the state–were consistently foregrounded in the media, made evident through the analysis above of the word choice and intertextual patterns found in news stories about the event. Those actors most interested in promoting a discourse of “anti-Serb provocation” succeeded in part by exercising their control over the unmediated site of the streets, but also found their message willingly received and passed along by some media outlets. The discourse of “demonstration of Europeanness” is to be found in these examples only at the margins and in a position of resistance. With the cancelation of Pride 2009 on 19 September, the hierarchy of discourses established above did not undergo a major shift. Instead, cancelation of the event and the escalation in extremist violence that mapped it prompted an even more myopic focus on the issue of public security. One year later, on 10 October 2010, Serbia’s LGBT community held the first-ever successful Belgrade Pride. The circumstances of the 2009 cancelation likely contributed a great deal to make this possible, as the focus on public security revealed the inadequacies and apparent powerlessness of the state. Eager to regain the public’s respect and assert their authority, many political figures seem to have estimated that supporting Pride 2010 would be less damaging to their reputations than again being perceived as unable to secure the event. As Zoran Dragišić, professor at the Faculty of Security Studies explained, there was no significant difference between the threats received in 2009 and 2010, but by 2010 the political elite had a “different understanding of their interests” (Oko 2010). There was thus official support for the event of a much more visible kind than the previous year. One month before Pride 2010, Boban Stojanović, one of the organizers of the event, named this as a main difference between the previous two (unsuccessful) attempts to organize Pride in 2001 and 2009, and the current (ultimately successful) attempt (Oko 2010). This official support was bolstered by the endorsement of and pressure from nongovernmental and international organizations, cultural institutions, and public figures. There also seems to be some evidence that the role of the media underwent a shift before Pride 2010. A cursory analysis suggests that the discourse of Pride as a “demonstration of Europeanness” occupied a much more prominent place in the run-up to Pride 2010, and yet in the aftermath of the event, public attention again shifted to the so-called “hooligans” that attempted to disrupt Pride 2010 and the damage they caused. This episode highlights the schism to be found in the broader issue of the adoption of progressive and anti-discriminatory legislation (as mandated by the EU accession process) 27

Sextures 2 (2) and the actual implementation of such regulations and their acceptance by the Serbian public (see Dioli 2011). It can thus be interpreted as demonstrating the resilience of xenophobia in Serbian society, and the wide reach of a “general lack of tolerance towards all ‘otherness’” (Blagojević 2011). This is something that the Serbian LGBT community has long recognized, and has led to innovative local strategies such as the adoption of a human-rights- (versus civil rights-) based approach to activism and the development of local forms of queer theory and identity (Dioli 2009). The preceding discourse analysis must thus be viewed within this wider context, and it is hoped that further discourse analyses will contribute to understanding not just how marginalization of the LGBT community is maintained, but how it might be finally overcome. Notes 1. I would like to thank Jacqueline Urla and Orli Fridman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Any errors remain my own. 2. In the original Serbian the official name of the event was “Povorka Ponosa”, which would conventionally be translated as “Pride parade”. However, “povorka” more precisely means “procession”, as “parada” is “parade”. Because this distinction was of significance to the organizers of the event (and will be discussed below), I use “procession” where “povorka” appears in the original Serbian and “parade” for “parada” to avoid confusion. All translations are my own. 3. Obraz literally means “cheek” but figuratively signifies “honor” or “dignity”. The full name of the organization is Otačastveni Pokret Obraz (Fatherland Honor Movement). Established in 1997, Obraz is an explicitly Orthodox youth-led group whose founding principles are: love of God and patriotism, a Serbian Serbia, household order, and chivalrous armed forces (www.obraz.rs). 4. An early Christian cruciform symbol formed by superimposing the first two letters of the word “Christ” in Greek (chi and rho). 5. While there are several similar historical and contemporary cases, Matthew White argues that Serbian “diagraphia” is unique, and better described by the Serbian “dvoazbučnost”, or two-alphabetness (2006: 98). 6. With the passage of a new constitution in November 2006, this position was officially sanctioned, as Cyrillic became the official script of the Republic of Serbia (see Article 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia). See also Matthew White’s 2006 study for an analysis of the everyday mixed usage of Cyrillic and Latin scripts in Belgrade (White 2006). 7. Evidence of this position can be found on the Obraz website under “program of national education” (www.obraz.rs) and in various interviews with Obraz leader Mladen Obradović (see 23 February 2008, B92 TV program Dvougao (Two Corners)). 8. “Lazar” refers to Prince Lazar, who fought the Ottoman Empire and died for Serbia in the 1389 battle of Kosovo, becoming a key figure in Serbian mythology. The slogan reiterates the theme of the day, namely that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia. 9. The increasing reliance of commercial and newly-privatized media on revenue generated from advertising prompted the general manager of independent media outlet B92 to attest that “it’s not political tyranny that endangers broadcasting liberty in Serbia these days but a sinister combination of political and business influences” (Matić 2008). 10. Unfortunately, because I am relying on newspaper articles as published online and not in their original print form, I necessarily disregard most compositional elements that would be required for a fuller analysis. 11. Red Star (Crvena Zvezda) is one of Belgrade’s two main football clubs. In this case, a game was played against football club Metalworker (Metalac) that competes in the same top-tier league. 12. This sounds more awkward in English than it does in Serbian. In the transcriptions to follow, I sometimes opt for a less elegant translation in order to preserve linguistically salient features of the original Serbian such as clause order and passive or active voice. 13. Ministry of Interior.

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Johnson We Are Waiting for You 14. Two of Serbia’s numerous football fan groups. 15. The ethnically Serb-controlled entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 16. Srpski Narodni Pokret 1389 (Serbian National Movement 1389) or “SNP 1389” is an extremist group that appeared on the scene in 2004 and has quickly established a visible presence in Belgrade. According to the group’s website, their founding principles include patriotism, the Orthodox faith, preserving the purity and richness of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script, and family values (www.snp1389.rs). “Naši” is a lesser-known youth-led group whose name means “Ours”, based in Aranđelovac, a town near Belgrade. The two groups have since merged, and as of publication are know as “Naši 1389”.

References B92 (2005) “Prvi Zvanican Spisak Neonacista” (First Official List of Neo-Nazis), 10 December, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.phpyyyy=2005&mm=12&dd=10&nav_id=182260, accessed on 20 December 2009. B92 (2009a) “‘Povorka ponosa’ se neće održati” (‘Pride Procession’ Won’t be Held), 19 September, http://www.b92.net/info/komentari.php?nav_id=382249, accessed on 10 May 2010. B92 (2009b) “‘Parada Ponosa’ u Beogradu na leto” (‘Pride Parade’ in Belgrade in the Summer), 28 April, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2009&mm=04&dd=28&nav_ category=12&nav_id=357862, accessed on 10 May 2010. B92 (2009c) “Pretnje ultradesnice uoči povorke” (Ultra-right Threats on the Eve of Pride), 16 September, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2009&mm=09&dd=16&nav_ category=12&nav_id=381665, accessed on 20 December 2009. Barlovać, Bojana (2011) “Serbian Journalists Seek Action on Media ‘Strategy’”, Balkan Insight, 8 April, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbian-media-strategy-still-stuck-in-limbo, accessed 2 May 2011. Barthes, Roland (1977) “Rhetoric of the Image”, in Stephen Heath (ed) Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 32-51. Blagojević, Jelisaveta (2011) “Between Walls: Provincialisms, Human Rights, Sexualities and Serbian Public Discourses on EU Integration,” in Robert Kulpa and Joanna Mizielinska (eds) DeCentring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives. London: Ashgate, pp. 27-42.

Sextures 2 (2) Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. Foucault, Michel (1978) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. New York, NY: Random House. Greenberg, Robert D. (2000) “Language Politics in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: The Crisis Over the Future of Serbian”, Slavic Review, 59(3): 625-640. Hanks, William F. (1996) Language and Communicative Practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hill, Jane (1995) “The Voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and Self in a Modern Mexicano Narrative”, in Tedlock and Mannheim (eds) The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 97-146. Matić, Veran (2008) “The Silent Threats to Serbia’s Media Freedom”, Balkan Insight, http://www. balkaninsight.com/en/main/comment/11423, accessed on 10 May 2010. Oko (2010) “Parada ponosa–pokušaj treći” (“Pride Parade–the Third Try”), aired September 13, 2010, http://www.rts.rs/page/tv/sr/story/20/RTS+1/763952/Parada+ponosa+-+pokušaj+treći. html, accessed on 5 May 2011. Open Society Institute (2005) Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy and Independence, Volume 2, Budapest: OSI, http://www.soros.org/initiatives/media/articles_publications/ publications/eurotv_20051011/voltwo_20051011.pdf, accessed on 20 October 2010. Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (2009a) Media Freedom in Serbia in 2008, OSCE: Belgrade, http://www.osce.org/publications/srb/2009/06/37924_1300_en.pdf, accessed on 30 October 2010. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2009b) Media Department: Key Projects 2009, http://www.osce.org/documents/srb/2007/06/25013_en.pdf, accessed on 30 October 2010. Otačastveni Pokret Obraz (Fatherland Honor Movement), www.obraz.rs, accessed on 10 May 2010.

Cameron, Deborah (2001) Working with Spoken Discourse. London: Sage.

Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam (1998) “Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a Polycentric Aesthetics”, in Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed) The Visual Culture Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 27-49.

Čolović, Ivan (2004) “Football, Hooligans, and the War in Ex-Yugoslavia”, in Angelica Fenner and Eric D. Weitz (eds) Fascism and Neofascism: Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 189-206.

Srpski Narodni Pokret 1389 (Serbian National Movement 1389), www.snp1389.rs, accessed on 15 December 2009.

Dioli, Irene (2009) “Back to a Nostalgic Future: The Queeroslav Utopia”, Sextures, 1(1): 1-21. Dioli, Irene (2011) “Belgrade, Queeroslavia”, Osservatorio Balcani I Caucaso, 3 May, http://www. balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Regions-and-countries/Serbia/Belgrade-Queeroslavia-92030, accessed on 5 May 2011. Đoković, Dragan (2004) “Serbia” in Media Ownership and its Impact on Media Independence and Pluralism, Ljubljana, Slovenia: SEENP Peace Institute, pp. 426-445, http://www2.mirovni-institut. si/media_ownership/pdf/preface.pdf. Dnevnik 2 (2009) Nightly news program, aired 15 September, http://www.rts.rs/page/tv/sr/ story/20/RTS+1/162861/Dnevnik+2.html, accessed on 10 May 10 2010.

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van Dijk, Teun A. (1993) Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage. van Dijk, Teun A. (2008) Discourse and Power. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Večernje Novosti (2009) “Parada puna rizika” (“Parade Full of Risk”), 14 September, http://www. novosti.rs/code/navigate.php?Id=9&status=jedna&vest=156821&title_add=Parada%20puna%20 rizika&kword_add=parada%20ponosa&search=ponos, accessed on 10 May 2010. Vološinov, Valentin (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. White, Matthew (2006) “A City with Two Alphabets–Cyrillic and Latin Scripts in Belgrade”, Slovo, 18(1): 79-103.

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Johnson We Are Waiting for You About the author Dana N. Johnson is a graduate student in the department of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Her research interests include memory, human rights and civil society in the former Yugoslavia. She recently completed fieldwork in Serbia and Greece that explored the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to produce alternative history education materials. She can be contacted at [email protected].

DARJA DAVYDOVA [email protected]

Baltic Pride 2010: Articulating Sexual Difference and Heteronormative Nationalism in Contemporary Lithuania Abstract This article explores the relation between sexuality and national belonging in the context of the Baltic Pride 2010, the first gay pride in Lithuania. It looks at this event as an encounter of heteronormative nation with its sexual minorities, in which the boundaries of national belonging are contested and redefined. Drawing on the author’s participation in the event and interviews with organisers of both the pride march and the counter-demonstration it investigates the symbols, rhetoric and selfrepresentation of the participants. It identifies the underlying mechanisms of antigay discourse in the context of the gay pride, and proposes that the opposition used the Baltic Pride as an opportunity to bolster the imaginary boundaries between the Lithuanian nation and its others. Finally, the article asks to what extent the Baltic Pride counteracted the exclusionary heteronormative nationalism and whether it proposed an alternative to the dominant image of “traditional” Lithuania. Keywords: Gay Pride, Lithuania, heteronormative nationalism, the politics of belonging

Introduction The first successful Gay Pride celebration in Lithuania happened in May 2010 despite the unfavourable political climate in the country. Just two years earlier, Lithuanian Parliament approved the State Family Policy Concept, a document officially defining family as an opposite-sex marriage. In 2009, Lithuania adopted the Law on the Protection of Minors from Detrimental Effect of Public Information prohibiting information on homosexuality, bisexuality and polygamy. This document was amended in December of the same year, and the mentioning of homosexuality was omitted. Still, its final version prohibited the information promoting non-traditional forms of family. In 2009 and 2010 the conservative political leaders introduced projects to outlaw what they called the “promotion of homosexuality” under the Civil and Penal Codes of Lithuania. These projects are still debated in the parliament. These political battles over gay rights drove international attention and sympathy to the Lithuanian LGBT community, which put pressure on the Lithuanian government to demonstrate tolerance towards Lithuanian LGBT citizens by granting permission to organise the March for Equality during the Baltic Pride days in Vilnius. Therefore, this event created a unique momentum for exercising freedom of speech and sexual rights by the Lithuanian LGBT community. 31

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Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 Undoubtedly, the Baltic Pride 2010 was a significant step towards LGBT visibility and social inclusion, however, in this essay I argue that the way in which the Gay Pride march was geographically situated in the city, the way it was portrayed by the media, as well as the way the LGBT community was symbolically represented by the marchers and by the protesters against the march only further invigorated the cultural and political gap between the presumably heterosexual Lithuanian nation and the LGBT community. The cross-cultural comparison of pride events shows that the Baltic Pride scenario is to some extent typical of contemporary Eastern Europe. Unlike the disturbingly carnivalesque and clamorous gay pride festivities of Western European and North American cities, Eastern European LGBT marches are very moderate in challenging gender and sexuality norms. They are often situated on the margins of the city space and resemble a political demonstration rather than a celebration of diversity (see Gruszczynska 2009; Renkin 2009; Woodcock 2009; Graff 2006; Kubica 2006; Schwartz 2005). Furthermore, the organisers of the prides in Eastern Europe rely strongly on their Western allies and international networks, which push national governments toward favourable political decisions, provide information and resources for campaigns and for raising awareness (Holzhacker 2010: 6). Finally, Eastern European prides are usually outnumbered by nationalist and religious counter-demonstrations and frequently result in violence. As O’Dwyer and Schwartz suggest (2007: 118), unlike in the liberal democracies of Western Europe, where national extremists are usually not organised and lack public legitimacy, in many Eastern European countries radical nationalist movements have parliamentary representation, access to government, media and grassroots support. These movements capitalise on popular homophobic sentiments and use anti-gay demonstrations as an arena for anti-European activism. As a result, human rights movements that organise prides inevitably engage in questioning and reshaping national identities and compete with nationalist movements for dominant interpretation of pride marches and national values. In this article, the Baltic Pride 2010 serves as a case-study for exploring the intersections between heteronormativity and nationalism in contemporary Lithuania. The goal is to analyse how sexual difference and national belonging were articulated during the March for Equality, and what implications these articulations have for inclusion of LGBT people in the imagined national community (Anderson 1983: 6). I primarily build this analysis on my personal experience as a volunteer and a participant in the Baltic Pride 2010. I hope that through this autoethnographic approach of a politicised, practical and cultural story-telling (Adams and Jones 2011: 111), I will be able to share the anxieties of the Lithuanian LGBT movement and familiarise the reader with the complexity of Lithuanian-European queer identity. I also drive on media coverage of the event to 33

Sextures 2 (2) describe the protests against the Pride march, which I have not witnessed myself. The analysis is further supported by interviews which I conducted with prominent leaders of anti-gay campaigns in fall 2009 (that is before the Baltic Pride). These interviews were a part of my master’s research project focusing on nationalism and anti-gay legislation in Lithuania. I also quote organisers of the Baltic Pride, whom I interviewed in summer 2010 for the purposes of this essay. The March for Equality In May 2010 I came to Vilnius from Amsterdam where I was completing my master’s programme at that time. The Baltic Pride was the only purpose of my visit, as I strongly identified with the Lithuanian LGBT movement and wanted to support the Baltic Pride as much as possible. On May 7 I planned to attend the international Baltic Pride conference hosted at one of the hotels in the old towns of Vilnius, but after I discovered that there was a shortage of helping hands at the event, I decided to change my plans and spent all day in the lobby together with other volunteers assisting international guests and registering those willing to attend the March for Equality the next day. This work kept me busy all day, but I was happy to meet those who would come the next day to the march. To register march attendants I wrote their name and ID number in the list and provided them with the participant card, which gave access to the secured marching area. The registration and assignment of the cards was a safety measure in order to ensure that the March would be attended only by those sympathetic with the LGBT people. By 4 pm all cards were distributed, but people kept coming. The organisers did not expect so many participants and the Vilnius municipality gave permit only for 400 marchers. Moreover, half of the participant cards were reserved for international guests–representatives from Latvian, Estonian and international LGBT and human rights organisations, foreign ambassadors, members of the EU parliament–leaving Lithuanian attendants with only about 200 places. This situation left many potential marchers upset and dissatisfied with the organisation of the Pride march. We advised them to come to the hotel next morning and promised to try to get them in. The next day at 11 am we gathered at the hotel in the old town situated in the other part of the city where the March was to happen. The organisers were doing their best to accommodate so many people in a small lobby of the hotel, but the organisation was chaotic and people were frustrated. Many came without the participation cards, and each one of them should be identified either by me (I was assigned a task of a gatekeeper at the hotel), or by one of the organisers in order to avoid letting potential trouble-makers in. All in all it took us two hours to relocate all the participants to the area of the March by hired 34

Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 buses. As I was busy helping to coordinate the relocation of the marchers, I arrived to the March with the last bus. The buses took the indirect route in order to avoid the violent mob of protesters who gathered around the area of the March. The marching territory of one square kilometre was surrounded by an electric fence and secured by 800 heavily equipped police including riot prevention troops, helicopters, police dogs and mounted officers. As the bus approached the enclosed area, the police officers opened the gate in the fence and let us into the empty territory. I could not help but compare this March with the Gay Pride that I experienced in Amsterdam just several months prior. Relocating from the crowded space of the old town to the empty field with about 400 marchers and some journalists did not feel celebratory and liberating for me. I rather felt isolated and well-protected. The spectators and protesters were so far from us that we could not hear the insults they shouted or see the bottles they threw across the fence, nor they could see our banners or hear our slogans. We were cut off from society and in reality observed only by police and journalists. In this way, the Baltic Pride 2010 did not emerge as a moment of live encounter between Lithuanian society and its sexual minorities, but instead was a remotely staged and mediated performance. After we unwrapped our rainbow flags and banners we began to march slowly along the river. The banner of the Pride as well as the flag of the European Union were carried in front of the procession by the leaders of the two main LGBT organisations in the country–the Lithuanian Gay League and the Tolerant Youth Association, as well as by representatives of international human rights organisations and foreign ambassadors supporting the March. There was an awkward silence at first; somehow, in the heat of preparations, no one thought about the music to accompany marching. A strange feeling of shared solitude embraced us as we were walking through the empty space with no spectators physically close enough to see us and read our posters. After several moments of awkwardness, feeling the attention of the media on us we began to shout slogans, and somebody started playing drums. The crowd of marchers was strikingly different from the crowd one can usually observe in Western Gay Prides. There was no loud music, moving platforms, theatrical performances or cross-dressing. Except for several rainbow flags and LGBT symbols, the marchers did not attempt to visually disturb gender and sexuality norms. The banners we carried said “Different Families – Same Love”, “My Rights are Your Rights”, “Be Open” and so on. In order to counteract popular portraying of the Pride as an immoral and degrading festivity, the organisers made a conscious decision to only moderately question heteronormativity. Prior to the event, political and religious opposition to the Pride frequently used verbal and visual depictions of sexually explicit Western Gay Prides 35

Sextures 2 (2) in press releases and public statements to scandalise the LGBT community and evoke negative public reactions. In response to this, on February 2nd 2010, during a popular TV talk show programme entitled “The Gay March: Will We Tolerate or Not?” the leader of the Lithuanian Gay League Vladimir Simonko said: “This will be a peaceful march of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual citizens, their families and friends, and I can guarantee that you will not see any nudity during the march.” (“Be Grimo”, 2 February 2010) Even though, as far as I know, the marchers were never directly asked by the organisers to refrain from expressing non-heteronormative sexuality in their dress or behaviour during the March, it seemed that the silent agreement was reached about acceptable dress-code. As a result, the March for Equality conveyed only moderate disturbance of gender and sexuality norms and was primarily perceived as a political demonstration focused on enacting civil rights of sexual minorities. The March went on for no more than one hour and ended in front of a little stage erected in the middle of an empty field. Organisers and international guests held short speeches congratulating the marchers on the first Lithuanian Gay Pride. We released colourful balloons in the air, and after this, were picked up by buses and safely brought back to another part of the city avoiding encounter with protesters. Protesting against the March I learnt about counter-demonstrations prior and during the March of Equality through media coverage of the event and from those supporters of the LGBT community, who did not manage or did not want to enter the enclosed territory of the March. There were even several distinct demonstrations and protests organised in several cities preceding and coinciding with the March for Equality, but here I focus on the most significant ones organised in Vilnius. The individuals and movements opposing the Baltic Pride included members of the parliament, religious leaders, organised civil networks such as “The National Alliance of Families and Parents”, “The Gathering For Nation and Morality” and “The Lithuanian Patriotic Youth” association. Ten days before the March an anti-gay demonstration was held next to the Vilnius City Hall. This demonstration was organised with a permission from the Vilnius Municipality, and gathered no more than 50 protesters. The protest addressed the Mayor of Vilnius Andrius Navickas, who was held responsible for permitting the March for Equality. The protesters carried banners with slogans “NO to Homopropaganda”, “EU Wants – We Don’t”, “I Am for Healthy Lithuania”, “85 % of Voters Say NO!”, and alike. The speakers criticised the March employing harsh derogatory rhetoric. A member of Kaunas city council, Stanislovas Buskevicius, announced that “paedophilia is the younger brother 36

Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 of homosexuality” (quoted in Kauno Diena, 29 March 2010). Another speaker, a Catholic priest Alfonsas Svarinskas, stated that homosexuality, Nazism and communism have a lot in common, and invited people to unite against the enemy. He said that “those who are with homosexuals are against the nation!” (Kauno Diena, 29 March 2010) The banners carried by protesters, the slogans they shouted, as well as the messages they communicated through the media suggested that the March was promoting anti-Lithuanian values and was forced on Lithuania by the international community. Three days before the March, Vilnius City Administrative Court withheld the permit for the event based on the request of Buskevicius and the interim Attorney General Raimondas Petrauskas. They claimed to have received information from an anonymous group of people that violent actions were being planned against the March for Equality. Instead of identifying this anonymous group of people and preventing possible violence in advance, the permit was suspended. Following the appeal to the Supreme Court by the Lithuanian Gay League and Tolerant Youth Organisation, the ban was overturned late on Friday evening, one night before the March. Coinciding with the March for Equality there were several unsanctioned protests held in different city spaces. Alfonsas Svarinskas, the above mentioned priest, organised a public prayer in the Cathedral square to pray for Lithuania and to protest against homosexuality. Previously, at a press conference, he claimed that “homosexuals plan to invade Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, to occupy us once again”. He also said: “In the name of struggle for freedom I announce that we will fight unafraid to sacrifice anything, even lives.” (Kauno Diena, 4 May 2010) Several dozens of citizens gathered at the public prayer carrying a large crucifix. Two wooden crosses were also erected on the other side of the river from where we marched. The biggest crowd of protesters (about 1500 people according to the media) gathered around the fence, equipped with crucifixes, national flags, red and black nationalist symbols and posters with slogans “Gays Killed My Friend”, “Animals Behind The Fence”, “Stop Homo-Nazi”, “Fags Go Home”, “Hands Off Our Children”, “Gays Today – Paedophiles Tomorrow”, “Shame!” and alike. The crowd consisted predominantly of young men, many of whom were wearing hoods and covered their faces. They could not see the marchers but focused their anger on journalists and police officers. The crowd shouted insults, threw bottles, eggs, rocks and road signs across the fence, and attempted to break through the police barriers. Members of Parliament Petras Grazulis and Kazimieras Uoka, the two most prominent leaders of anti-gay campaign in the country, led the verbal assault announcing through their loudspeakers that the March signifies that Lithuania is not a free country and is governed by the European Union. When the March was almost over, they both jumped over the fence, thus defying police orders and, along with some followers, 37

Sextures 2 (2) approached the place the marchers had just left. Uoka was halted by police officers and led back behind the fence screaming “I want to walk the free land of Lithuania! This is how free our Lithuania is!” Grazulis, however, was not stopped. He came to the place from where the last bus was leaving and announced that the place needed to be “consecrated”. In order to do this he and a dozen of his followers ostentatiously sang the national anthem in front of the journalists’ cameras and, only then, left. The crowd of protesters attempted to follow the parliament members, but was thwarted by police, and later slowly dispersed. “EU Wants – We Don’t”: Nationalist interpretation of sexual difference The contrast between the Lithuanian March for Equality and the counter-demonstrations reveals how gender and sexual categories inevitably complicate the boundaries of national belonging, dividing the nation into good and bad citizens. As M. Jacqui Alexander writes on the limits of citizenship in terms of sexuality: The state has always conceived of the nation as heterosexual in that it places reproduction at the heart of its impulse. The citizenship machinery is also located here, for the prerequisites of good citizenship and loyalty to the nation are simultaneously housed within the state apparatus. They are sexualized and ranked into a class of good, loyal, reproductive, heterosexual citizens, and a subordinated, marginalized class of non-citizens who, by virtue of choice and perversion, choose not to do so (Alexander 2005: 46).

The Baltic Pride 2010 and the protests against it became the exercise in good citizenship and loyalty for the Lithuanian nation. For the Lithuanian participants of the March for Equality it was an exercise in protecting sexual rights and freedom of speech. For the international guests it was an exercise in loyalty to the European Union and its ideals of human rights and equality. For the protesters, the numerous counter-demonstrations became an exercise in patriotism and loyalty to the heterosexual nation. For some of them, this was also an exercise in the contemporary nationalist Lithuanian Catholicism. Proposing the definition of a nation as an imagined political community Benedict Anderson (1983: 6) identifies three main characteristics of modern nationhood, which might help to understand the (re)imagining of the Lithuanian nation through the practise of anti-gay protesting. Firstly, Anderson says, nations are limited, “because even the largest of them [...] has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.” (Anderson 1983: 7) Secondly, the nation is imagined as sovereign, because “nations dream of being free”, and “the gauge and emblem of this freedom is a sovereign state.” (Anderson 1983: 7) And finally, the nation is imagined as a community, because “the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (Anderson 1983: 7). The counter-demonstration during the March for Equality built momentum for bolstering all of these characteristics. Installation of an electric fence between the 38

Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 marchers and the opposition redefined and sharpened the limits of the Lithuanian nation. The rhetoric of the protesters reassured that the marchers are not legitimate members of the Lithuanian nation, but rather “animals behind the fence”, as one of the banners declared. The acts of opposing the March, such as insulting the police and attempting to break through the fence were explained by the protesters as a means to protect the sovereignty of Lithuania. They interpreted the March for Equality as a cultural and political oppression coming from the European Union and as a threat to the Lithuanian freedom. Ostentatious protection of this freedom allowed to reinforce the popular notion of the nation’s sovereignty. Finally, by way of shouting, singing and synchronising their actions, protesters acquired the sense of community essential for imagining the nation. Shouting insulting slogans towards the marchers they were united in their anger and strengthened the deep comradeship described by Anderson. At one moment the crowd held hands and jumped rhythmically singing: “The one who will not jump, the one who will not jump, is a faggot”. This seemingly silly action was laughed at by the marchers when they saw it in the news later in the evening. However, despite its seeming foolishness, this jumping and singing was a ritual through which the protesters exacerbated their collective anger towards sexual minorities and bolstered their sense of heteronormative national community. The connection between sexuality and national belonging is nothing new in itself. The pioneering study of intersection between sexuality and nationalism by George Mosse (1985) explicitly demonstrates that sexual behaviour was an issue for nationalism since the emergence of European nation-states at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He notes (Mosse 1985: 16): “nationalism and respectability assigned everyone his place in life, man and woman, normal and abnormal, native and foreigner; any confusion between these categories threatened chaos and loss of control.” Today sexuality continues to constitute the foundation for respectability, a system of decent and correct manners and morals, which provide the nation with essential cohesion, a system of control in a bewildering world. According to Nira Yuval-Davis, “belonging tends to be naturalised, and becomes articulated and politicised only when it is threatened in some way” (Yuval-Davis 2006: 197). The heteronoromativity of the Lithuanian nation was absent from the political nationalist discourse and taken for granted until recently. The mobilisation of nationalist movements in opposition to the Baltic Pride and intensification of the discourse defining the Lithuanian nation along the boundaries of heteronormativity over the past several years can be understood as a response to challenging the boundaries of national belonging. These challenges are not only related to sexuality, but also to a wider geopolitical context of the country. In contemporary Lithuania, the anti-LGBT discourse is closely intertwined with nationalist anti-European rhetoric. The slogans and banners of protesters against 39

Sextures 2 (2) the Baltic Pride were targeting not only sexual orientation of those marching but, more importantly, their affiliation with the European Union and their non-compliance with the perceived Lithuanian values. The protesters carried national flags and symbols, sang the national anthem and folk songs, while their speeches and slogans emphasised the opposition between heteronormative Lithuania and sexually diverse Europe. As a result, the March for Equality was defined as anti-Lithuanian and non-Christian, which deepened the sexual difference of those marching by expanding it to national and cultural difference. With the slogan “EU Wants–We Don’t” (as expressed on the banner during the protest next to the Vilnius City Hall) the opposition legitimised the protest as a means of protecting the nation from homosexuality forced on Lithuania by the European Union. This official state rhetoric also follows this aggressive anti-European argumentation in order to secure justification of practices of oppression. The aforementioned speaker of the counter-demonstration, a member of parliament Petras Grazulis explained to me several months before the March took place, that his opposition to it was motivated primarily by a wish to prevent the kind of moral degradation that had already corrupted Europe and might potentially damage Lithuania. He said: When we entered the European Union, we had to meet certain criteria. Now we see what was really happening. Some ‘experts’ came from Europe to check if we were taking good care of all those alcoholics and criminals. They went to prisons to check. They also went to see if we protect animal rights, how is their life in their stables. Did anyone go to an impoverished family, where children live without food, without water?[...] [The European Union] only cares about the rights of those faggots. We are a Christian land and we have to take care of morality because otherwise we, as a nation, will face extinction (September, 2009, translated from Lithuanian by me).

Transposing the logic of Darwinian natural selection onto nations, the proponents of such a discourse draw apocalyptic pictures of Europe, presenting it as an example of what happens if the nation does not protect its heteronormative families from what they are not. The political priorities of the European Union, including the importance it places on human rights and its financial and symbolic support to Baltic Pride, are presented as evidence of its moral corruption, whereas the aggression of protesters is legitimised as a natural reaction of true patriots defending their country. For instance, in reply to my question why the attitudes of Lithuania towards homosexuality are different in Lithuania than in many European countries the former Minister of Social Security and Labour and currently a member of parliament Rimantas Dagys, who is an active opponent of gay rights, said: We’ve got deep roots. And in fact, we’ve learnt from history: if it wasn’t for our family institution, we would have hardly survived under Russian rule for two centuries. We probably would have disappeared as a nation. Everybody probably understands that intuitively. So that‘s why our understanding goes much deeper here. Christian traditions are also much deeper here than in other countries. This also has some influence. It‘s like the practical experience [that we have had]. Because we know what

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Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 are our origins (October, 2009, translated from Lithuanian by me).

Drawing on historical narrative describing the genuineness of Lithuanian heteronormativity and thus, presenting the emotions and actions of Lithuanians as authentic to Lithuanian nature, Dagys naturalises the opposition to the gay pride. Sexual diversity, in this context, is presented as an inauthentic phenomenon enforced on Lithuania by the European Union. Similarly, when the protesters equip themselves with national symbols and pose as patriots defending their country, the sexual orientation, as an “axis of difference” (Yuval-Davis 2006: 200) that defines the “Other” behind the fence, becomes multiplied by other differences–non-national identity, non-Christianity and inauthenticity–and is thus juxtaposed with the heteronormative nation. “We suddenly fell from the sky”: Perplexed national belonging of Lithuanian queers The uneasiness in finding space for queer subjects within the nation can be seen in difficulties that the Vilnius municipality had in finding the “appropriate” location for the March. Relying on the unsuccessful experience of preceding years, when the permit for the Pride march was denied by municipality reasoning that another event was already planned in the same location, the organisers of the Baltic Pride proposed several possible routes for marching. Without providing any official reasons the municipality deemed the main streets of old Vilnius inappropriate for such an event and instead proposed an empty square next to the presently closed and abandoned Concert and Sports Hall. The Ministry of Culture opposed this decision referring to the debate about a possible fourteenth century Jewish cemetery located there. The Ministry claimed that since this space is culturally significant, the public event celebrating sexual diversity might be disrespectful to the Jewish community and should be moved to the car park nearby. This decision was opposed by the Head of Police, Kestutis Lancinskas, who said that the proposed territory was too small and that the safety of the marchers could not be guaranteed. Finally, it was decided that the March would take place in a large undeveloped area that was on the other side of the river from the political and economic city centre. Unlike the route originally planned by organisers, the spaces proposed by the municipality are void of national and cultural significance. A ponderous grey building of the Concert and Sports Hall was built in 1971, its Constructivist style representing the Soviet era in Lithuania. Due to its historic and symbolical associations the building does not evoke any patriotic sentiments, while the square nearby is almost never used by Vilnius residents. The same is true of the car park and the large empty field, where the March finally took place. It is obvious that the choice of the urban space for the March was determined by its cultural and historic insignificance, whereas LGBT people are cast as 41

Sextures 2 (2) foreigners. Gayatri Gopinath analysing the Indian immigrant bourgeoisie in America writes: Within patriarchal diasporic and nationalist logic, the “lesbian” can only exist outside the “home” as household, community, and nation of origin, whereas the “woman” can only exist within it. Indeed the “lesbian” is seen as “foreign,” as a product of being too long in the West, and therefore is annexed to the “host” nation (Gopinath 2005: 18-19).

In Lithuania the LGBT people are perceived as those who left their “home” country– the traditional Catholic Lithuania–for Europe. Therefore Europe becomes their “host” nation, where they belong, and where they are able to claim space for the new identity. The difficulty in merging of national Lithuanian identity and non-heteronormative desires defines LGBT members of the nation as “impossible subjects” and creates obstacles for exercising national and queer identities at the same time. Responding to my question about the reasons that underlie the opposition to the Baltic Pride, the leader of the Lithuanian Gay League, Vladimir Simonko, stated: I think it relates to the need to find an enemy somewhere. I think it appears as a belief that [homosexuality] was never present in Lithuania. And even in general, here, on Earth. [According to politicians,] we suddenly fell from the sky, like aliens or something, and we absolutely didn’t adapt in Lithuania. And when [they proclaim that] the national identity needs protection, they need to name who is this enemy that they need to protect the country from–sure, [they say] it should be protected from us! (September, 2010, translated from Lithuanian by me)

As Simonko explains, the mainstream political and media discourse proposes that LGBT people in Lithuania have no history, nor any cultural roots, but are rather produced by something alien to the national community. The vast majority of parliament members, the Parliament Speaker and the Prime Minister repeatedly expressed their concerns about whether gay pride is compatible with Lithuanian values. For this reason, the heteronormative nationalist discourse should be perceived not just as some marginal conservative rhetoric, but rather as an official position of the state. This suggests that in contemporary Lithuania the heteronormative nationalist state is still always in an “epistemologically dominant position, having control over the conditions of production, circulation, and interpretation of anything that might be said about this or that gay person, about gay people in general” (Eribon 2004: 54), including the claims about national non-belonging of sexual minorities. The mainstream exclusionary rhetoric that casts Lithuanian queers as impossible subjects is also internalised by the Lithuanian LGBT people and even reinforced by the LGBT movement itself. When I asked one of the organisers of the Baltic Pride, Vytautas Valentinavicius , to comment on the absence of the national symbols of Lithuania in the March procession, he explained: The fact that there was no Lithuanian flag [carried at the March] only shows that the

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Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 LGBT community is disappointed with the Lithuanian state. Instead, the EU flag was there, and it was carried by Lithuanians. It showed that the citizens somehow trust the EU more [than they trust Lithuania]. They trust that it is able to ensure their rights better than the Lithuanian state (September, 2010, translated from Lithuanian by me).

This response, however, not only demonstrates the “feelings” of Lithuanian LGBT community, but rather points to the strategy that Lithuanian LGBT activists decided to follow. From the very beginning, the March for equality was organised not as a national event but as a joint event for the three Baltic countries: the symbol of the Baltic Pride depicts the national flags of three countries tied together. As Simonko explained, the LGBT organisations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia united in organising the event relying on their previous experience of cooperation; these organisations had already organised social and educational events together in the past. He emphasised that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are similar in their demography and the scope of problems that LGBT communities encounter, therefore, their cooperation is an effective way to solve the discrimination problems. Moreover, the Pride was not only presented as Baltic, but also as European. The cooperation with other countries of the European Union was used for accumulating financial, informational, political and human resources. The international media, the Human Rights Watch organisation, as well as Swedish, Dutch and British ambassadors in Lithuania put political pressure on Lithuanian authorities and served as catalysts for permitting and protecting the March for Equality. These international representatives marched in the front row of the procession carrying the flag of the European Union next to the banner with the symbol of the Baltic Pride. This symbolic association of the Lithuanian Gay Pride with the Baltic region and the European union is crucial in understanding how the meaning of the LGBT community within the national context is produced. Examining and comparing Eastern European pride marches the Hungarian scholar Hadley Renkin writes: It is not enough, I argue, to consider how certain people are situated in systems of symbolic meaning–national or transnational–by others; it is essential to consider how people act concretely in these contexts to position themselves, and so produce their own cultural and political meanings (Renkin 2009: 26).

The position that the LGBT community took during the Baltic Pride days was a conscious choice made within the limits of Lithuanian social and cultural reality. Within the current political climate in the country, it is incredibly hard to argue with the municipal and national authorities about location of the Pride march, security issues, or to demand more active support of the event by the political leaders. The international cooperation was a significant (if not the only) factor making organisation of the Baltic Pride 2010 possible, however, it should be emphasised that the dissociation of the Pride event from national belonging also complicates the possibility of the LGBT movement to construct themselves 43

Sextures 2 (2) as legitimate inhabitants of a national community and thus engage in an active process of producing cultural and national meanings of LGBT people (Renkin 2009: 28). Conclusion: Gay Pride as politics of belonging The March for Equality, as well as the counter-demonstrations, are examples of the politics of belonging that assign meanings and values to the concepts of nation, citizenship and sexuality. Following John Crowley (1999), Yuval-Davis defines the politics of belonging as “the dirty work of boundary maintenance” that consists of “potentially meeting other people and deciding whether they stand inside or outside the imaginary boundary line of the nation and/or other communities of belonging, whether they are ‘us’ or ‘them’” (2006: 204). I suggest to look at the Baltic Pride 2010 and the counter-demonstrations from this perspective and to understand these events as moments of encounter between “us” and “them”, through which sexual minorities laid claims to be recognised as rightful citizens while the protesters attempted to maintain the existing limits of the heteronormative nation. It should also be taken into account that the geopolitical context of Eastern Europe inevitably shapes the power dynamics between sexual minorities and anti-gay protesters. The image of liberal Europe is used by human rights activists as an ideal system of justice, which Lithuania is supposed to strive for. The financial, political and informational support of the international community provides necessary means to organise gay pride marches. However, this affiliation with Europe also allows nationalist opposition to widen the gap between national “us” and non-heteronormative “them”. It is obvious that this scenario repeats itself throughout Eastern Europe (see Renkin 2009, Graff 2006, Kubica 2006, Nachescu 2005, Waitt 2005). For example, Agniezska Graff notes that in Poland the anti-gay rhetoric portrays the Polish nation as “an island of ‘normalcy’ in the sea of Western European degeneracy” (Graff 2006: 447). Similarly, Gordon Waitt demonstrates that in Latvia the association with Europe strongly influences the visibility of sexual minorities. He writes: “Same-sex rights have been dismissed [in the Latvian parliament] when positioned as based on European rather than Latvian values that would eventually corrode the very central unit of the imagined nation, the heterosexual family” (Waitt 2005: 169). Taking into account these examples, it is clear that affiliation of LGBT activists with Europe is used by Eastern European nationalist movements in order to merge the anti-gay and anti-European rhetoric and to maintain the boundaries of national belonging. Keeping these similarities of how gay rights are opposed throughout Eastern Europe in mind, the question arises whether Eastern European gay prides are effective enough to rid sexual minorities of the image and status of the nation’s “Other”. As long as in some Eastern European countries sexual minorities are unable to efficiently present 44

Davydova Baltic Pride 2010 sexual diversity as intrinsic to the nation, the line between the nation and its “Other” is still being drawn by the dominant heteronormative nationalist discourse. References Adams, Tony E. & Jones, Stacy (2011) “Telling Stories: Reflexivity, Queer Theory, and Authoethnography”, Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 11 (108): 108-116. Alexander, M. Jacqui (2005) Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Perverse Modernities). Durham: Duke University Press. Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London & New York: Verso. “Be Grimo” (Without Make-Up) TV talk show, 2 February 2010. The archive last accessed on 7 July 2010 at http://www.tv3.lt/webtv. Crowley, John (1999) “The Politics of Belonging: Some Theoretical Considerations”, in Geddes, Andrew & Favess, Adrian (eds), The Politics of Belonging: Migrants and Minorities in Contemporary Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 15-41.

Sextures 2 (2) O’Dwyer, Conor & Schwartz, Katrina Z. S. (2009) “Return to (Illiberal) Diversity? Resisting Gay Rights in Poland and Latvia”, in Prugl, Elisabeth & Thiel, Markus (eds), Diversity and the European Union, New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, pp. 115-134. Renkin, Hadley Z. (2009) “Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary”, Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology, 53: 20-37. Schwartz, Katrina Z.S (2005) “Gay Rights: United in Hostility”, Transitions Online, 22 September, accessed on 23 September 2010, http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueID=aa00b6e3462b-4cb9-b384-d2cd8ac63df0&tabID=0. Waitt, Gordon (2005) “Sexual Citizenship in Latvia: Geographies of the Latvian Closet”, Social and Cultural Geography, 6 (2), 161-181. Woodcock, Shannon (2009) “Gay Pride as Violent Containment in Romania: A Brave New Europe”, Sextures, (1)1, accessed on 23 September 2010, http://sextures.net/woodcock-gay-pride-romania. Yuval-Davis, Nira (2006) “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging”, Patterns of Prejudice, 40 (3): 197-214.

Gopinath, Gayatri (2005) Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.

About the author

Delfi.lt (30 January 2010) “Vilniaus meras homoseksualus zada aptverti tvora” (The Mayor of Vilnius Has Promised to Put a Fence Around Homosexuals), accessed on 18 October 2010, http://www. delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/vilniaus-meras-homoseksualus-zada-aptverti-tvora.d?id=28427781.

Darja Davydova is currently a PhD student in Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto, Ontario. She has completed her MSc in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with the thesis on sexual nationalism in contemporary Lithuania. Her current research includes national identities, queer movements, homonationalism, queer sexualities and sex work. Darja is also a queer rights and feminist activist. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Eribon, Didier (2004) Insult and the Making of the Gay Self. Durham: Duke University Press. Graff, Agnieszka (2006) “We are (not all) homophobes: A report from Poland”, Feminist Studies, 32 (2): 434-51. Gruszczynska, Anna (2009) “Sowing the Seeds of Solidarity in Public Space: Case Study of the Poznan March of Equality”, Sexualities, 12: 312-334.



Holzhacker, Ronald (2010) “State-Sponsored Homophobia and the Denial of the Right of Assembly in Europe: The ‘Boomerang’ and the ‘Ricochet’ Between NGOs, European Institutions, and Governments to Uphold Human Rights”, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper, accessed on 14 October 2010, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1643314. Kauno diena (29 March 2010) “Proteste pries geju eitynes: radikalus sukiai” (Radical Slogans During the Protest Against Gay March), accessed on 15 October 2010, http://kauno.diena.lt/ naujienos/lietuva/proteste-pries-geju-eitynes-reklamuojasi-ir-radikalai-pildoma-270038. Kubica, Grazyna (2006) “Teczowa flaga przeciwko wawelskiemu smokowi. Kulturowa interpretacja konfliktu wokol krakowskiego Marszu dla Tolerancji”, Studia Socjologiczne, 4 (183): 69-106. Mosse, L. George (1985) Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: H. Fertig. Nachescu, Voichita (2005) “Hierarchies of Difference: National Identity, Gay and Lesbian rights, and the Church in Postcommunist Romania”, in Stulhofer, Aleksandar & Sandfort, Theo (eds) Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Easter Europe and Russia, New York: Haworth Press.

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46

Sextures 2 (2) DOROTTYA RÉDAI [email protected]

Un/Queering the Nation?: Gender, Sexuality, Nationality and Homophobia in the Media Discourse on the Violence against the 2008 Gay Pride in Budapest Abstract In 2008 severe and unprecedented violence occurred at the 13th Gay Pride March in Budapest, Hungary. The event caused a huge wave of discussion on issues of human and citizenship rights, legislation, political responsibility, power, national identity and nationalism in the media, and provoked strong reactions from politicians, decisionmakers, intellectuals, legal experts, celebrities and journalists. Using articles published in the Hungarian online media shortly before and after the event, in major dailies and weeklies, left, liberal, right and extreme right-wing websites and blogs, I examine the media coverage and the debates around the Gay Pride, with the aim of answering the following questions: How are gay subjectivities constructed by the mainstream and alternative community media? How do journalists make LGBT people invisible in the discourse? How are discourses around homosexuality and heterosexuality gendered differently by journalists as opposed to self-identified LGBT individuals? How are LGBT people’s and violent perpetrators’ genders constituted by themselves and the media? How are “East-West” relations represented in the media discourse? How are concepts of “Hungarianness” and “Europeanness” constructed? In what ways are the representations of masculinity and femininity built into constructions of “nation” and “Hungarianness” in the media discourse? How are gay people constructed in relation to the nation by these media discourses? Keywords: gender, sexuality, nation, citizen, gay, Hungary

Introduction In 2008 severe and unprecedented violence occurred at the 13th Gay Pride March in Budapest, Hungary. The event caused a huge wave of discussion on issues of human and citizenship rights, legislation, political responsibility, power, national identity and nationalism in the media, involving reactions by politicians, decision-makers, intellectuals, legal experts, celebrities and journalists. Using articles published in the Hungarian online media shortly before and after the event, in major dailies and weeklies, left, liberal, right and extreme right wing websites and blogs, I examine the media coverage and the evolving debates around the Gay Pride, with the aim of answering the following questions: How are gay subjectivities constructed by 47

Copyright © 2012 Sextures, Volume 2, Issue 2

ISSN 2071-6834

the mainstream and alternative community media? How do journalists make LGBT people invisible in the discourse? How are discourses around homosexuality and heterosexuality gendered differently by journalists as opposed to self-identifying LGBT people? How are LGBT people’s and violent perpetrators’ genders constituted by themselves and the media? How are “East-West” relations represented in the media discourse? How are concepts of “Hungarianness” and “Europeanness” constructed? In what ways are the representations of masculinity and femininity built into constructions of “nation” and “Hungarianness” in the media discourse? How are gay people constructed in relation to the nation by these media discourses? I analyse articles published online shortly before and after the event, in major Hungarian dailies and weeklies, as well as in left, liberal, right and extreme right wing websites and blogs. The materials used for the analysis have been selected on the basis of containing key words related to the Gay Pride. As I directly quote from the materials, this paper contains offensive language, with which I do not identify in any way. Since I participated in the event, I will also use my personal observations. Rather than provide an in-depth analysis of selected few texts, I will offer instead an overview of a wide range of publications discussing the issue. I will focus on issues of gender, sexual orientation and national identity in separate sections, at the same time, I am aware of ways in which these issues intersect. The online media sources used in this paper are as follows: Népszabadság: The major left-wing daily paper, circulated both in print and online. Élet és Irodalom: Weekly paper on literature and politics, with a left-liberal inclination, circulated both in print and online. HVG (Heti Világgazdaság): Weekly paper on economics and politics, with a left-liberal inclination, circulated both in print and online. Magyar Nemzet: The major right-wing daily paper, circulated both in print and online. Hírszerző: Independent online news portal, with a left-liberal inclination. Origo: Independent news portal. Lehet Más a Világ: Grassroots alternative online community portal. Kuruc.info: Extreme-right online news portal, run from servers abroad. The portal gets regularly closed down because of complaints of human rights violations, but after a short pause the operators find another server. Irodalmi Centrifuga: Feminist-queer online journal, focusing on literature but also publishing texts about issues and events of relevance to women and LGBT people. Petition against Violence: An online petition published by DEMOS Hungary Foundation and Progressive Institute. Both are independent think tanks, defining themselves as “progressive”. 48

Rédai Un/Queering the Nation Nagylevin: Independent blogger, identifying himself as a “Hungarian Jewish intellectual”. My focus is not on the relationship between political affiliations and views about homosexuality, homophobia, violence and politics, therefore I will not discuss in detail what types of arguments are characteristic of sources affiliated with the political left/ liberal/right. In terms of the political context of the event, in 2008 the Socialist Party (MSZP) and the Liberal Party (SZDSZ) were in coalition government. Budapest had a liberal (SZDSZ) mayor. The parliamentary opposition consisted of three right-wing parties (Fidesz, KDNP, MDF) and while the far-right Jobbik was not in Parliament yet (the party won seats at the 2009 EP elections and the 2010 national elections), it was already a force with increasing public support. Their para-military organization, Magyar Gárda did not officially attend the so-called “counter-demonstrations” against 2008 Gay Pride, but their members, together with those of other extremist groups did. The two major daily papers, Népszabadság and Magyar Nemzet do not officially belong to the socialist party (MSZP) and the biggest right-wing party (Fidesz) respectively, but are associated with them and are supportive of their political beliefs. Kuruc.info is affiliated with and supportive of extremist groups. As for terms of reference, I will use “Pride March” and “Gay Pride / gay pride” through the article. In 2008, after an intensive debate within the LGBT community, the Hungarian Gay Pride March was renamed “Gay Dignity March”. The aim of that change was to demonstrate to the public that gay people value dignity more than the notion of pride in one’s sexual identity, especially when faced with discrimination and disrespect. I use “gay” and “LGBT person/people” when referring to non-heterosexual people in general. My aim here is not to discuss the specificities of sexual orientation, identity and self-identification in Hungary, therefore I prefer to use these general terms. I do not use the concept of “queer” given that it is unfamiliar for the majority of Hungarian LGBT people, furthermore, it is not used publicly and has no Hungarian translation. It is debatable which term should be used for the groups and individuals participating in the violent attacks against the gay pride. In the media and in public discourse these people are usually referred to as “extreme right”, “extreme nationalists”, “extremists”, “nazis” or “neonazis”. Renkin (2009) refuses to use these terms in his analysis, arguing that “this minimizes their presence, and obscures the perspectives they share with–and the tacit support they typically receive from–more established political groups” (Renkin 2009: 34). Instead, he uses the term “right” to refer to the continuum of groups operating with socially conservative values and the centrality of national identity. I accept his argument, because in some respects it is difficult to find a dividing line between the more politically legitimate right-wing parties and groups espousing violent nationalism, even though the latter came to openly separate itself from the 49

Sextures 2 (2) former. Furthermore, parliamentary right-wing parties cautiously renounced the street violence and hate crimes committed by the extremist groups. However, since this paper focuses on the discourse concerning the violent actions of these extremist groups, it seems appropriate for me to use differentiated terms. Accordingly, I will distinguish between “right/right-wing” as parliamentary political forces and “extreme right”/”extreme nationalists”/”extremists”1 to refer to the groups of people involved in the street violence and authoring media communications related to the event. How is gayness constructed in the discourse and where are the gay people themselves? The 2008 Budapest Pride has been both the most violent pride in Hungary and the most violent event among outbursts of extremist street violence since 2006. Which prompts the question of not only “why now”2 but also “why it is gay people who have been targeted”. Renkin (2009) also asks this question in his study. In his analysis he focuses on the concrete practices of LGBT rights activists, arguing that they should be seen as culturally embedded active agents whose social-cultural practices “serve to reshape the larger structures of personal, cultural and political meanings within which they exist” (Renkin 2009: 39). He argues that: by producing, in publicly meaningful ways, forms of identity that simultaneously claim national and transnational connections, LGBT activists propose their own competing vision for postsocialist Hungarian identity (Renkin, 2009: 27),

and thus fundamentally contest “right-wing notions of national identity and community”, which has been a contributing factor in the increasingly violent forms of public homophobia in recent years. I find this analysis valuable, because it does not position LGBT people as passive victims of violence but as active cultural-social agents. However, the way I see it as an LGBT activist myself, this is certainly not a unidirectional process where LGBT action leads to homophobic nationalist reaction. Increasing nationalist rage against homosexuality has also strengthened LGBT activists’ claims, including a demand for LGBT individuals to fully belong to the nation.3 In my view, this is a two-directional phenomenon with an intensification of homophobic violence on one side, and public demands for inclusion into the nation on the other side. In the examined texts there are various views on the question of who was the target of violence and why. A number of actors participating in that discourse believe that it was in fact not gay people who were the target. It is quite ironic, then, that while one of the aims of gay prides was to increase the visibility of gay people, in 2008, after probably the most visible and violent Hungarian Pride March ever, many actors in the media discourse, including some LGBT people, have attempted to make gay people invisible. The views on 50

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Rédai Un/Queering the Nation who was the target and why can be grouped into five main categories, which are listed below together with some representative quotes.4 (1) It was not the march of gay people but their mere existence: So the attacks were not incited by the provocative appearance of the marchers but their mere existence (Czene 2008, in Népszabadság Online). I was hit because I’m gay. Yes, who doesn’t know already? I was hit because I have a different conviction. Yes, I have a different conviction, as well. I was hit because I have a different opinion. Yes, my opinion is different, too. I was hit because I am a Jew. Yes, I am a Jew. I was hit because allegedly I am not Hungarian. I am Hungarian. I was hit simply because I exist, I am alive. I know because they shouted that in my ears [while hitting me]. (Anon 2008b, in Népszabadság Online).

(2) It was not the existence of gay people but their provocative behaviour: Their problem is not that these people are gay. Alright, let them be gay, says the Hungarian, but they shouldn’t be enjoying themselves and they especially shouldn’t want to be proud of it. (Matalin 2008, in Népszabadság Online).5 …gay people shouldn’t have marched because they provoked counter demonstrators with it. (From our correspondent 2008b, in Népszabadság Online). According to this view, Hungarian society has no problem at all with gay people; the problem is the “exhibitionist”, “provocative” march, the behaviour of the marchers (Niedermüller 2008, in Élet és Irodalom). (3) It was not really gay people who were targeted; any excuse is a “good” excuse; everybody

is a target: Of course this rage was targeted at gays but now there is nothing in the world that would stop these people from going out on the street (Matalin 2008, in Népszabadság Online). For the blockhead neonazis it doesn’t really matter whether it is the 23rd of October, the gay pride or some other event or celebration which they don’t like–what matters to them is violence, intimidation, the terrorization of everyday life (Niedermüller 2008, in Élet és Irodalom). Whether the increasingly brutal violence, or “neo-barbarism”–as Western European social scientists call the aggression of the extreme right–really targets gay people, or whether the pride was just another excuse for the insensate rampage, is almost irrelevant (Niedermüller 2008, in Élet és Irodalom). …what has happened has nothing to do with sexual orientation, gay people, expressing opinion, it only has to do with inarticulate right-radical hatred, vandalism, crime, the mob and those who play with it and remain unpunished. It has everything to do with this dissipating, self-abandoned society (Parti-Nagy 2008, in Népszabadság Online). The wave of hatred has reached everyone, regardless of what clothes they wear or which gender they are attracted to. The majority of gay people and straight people marching with them out of solidarity were wearing average casual clothes (Czene 2008, in Népszabadság Online).

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Although on the surface Saturday afternoon looked like an aggressive protest against the march of gay people, the majority of its organizers and participants consciously wanted to stand up against the order of the Hungarian Republic and its representatives. (Dobrovits 2008, in HVG Online).

(4) It was not a gay pride but a demonstration for rights and democracy–the violence was against all Hungarians: According to the prime minister, enough is enough; if it goes on like this, not just those of us who have been disturbed in the joy of freedom but all of us should be afraid and consider whether to go out on the street. This is not just an issue which matters to the police or those who are gay, Jewish or Roma; it matters to everyone (Anon 2008a, in Népszabadság Online). Participants demonstrated that the dignity march does not just concern the rights of LGBT people, in fact, it is relevant to discussions about the shape of the country we want to live in (Tracey, 2008, in Lehet Más a Világ community portal).6 Hungarian reports have all said it was a “homosexual march” on Saturday. They are wrong. Many other people participated as well, and they took part in the march out of solidarity; because they wanted to stand up for Hungarian democratic rights of freedom. Here two thousand policemen, a kilometer-long cordon and hundreds of police cars were necessary to protect the assembly right of heterosexuals, homosexuals, men and women, older and younger people (Anon 2008b, in Népszabadság Online).

(5) The government is responsible, it is a conspiracy against Hungarian people: The left-liberal–neoconservative governmental forces–who want to provoke Hungarian people ad infinitum–will even resort to using gay people to achieve their dark goals. (D. Horváth 2008, in Magyar Nemzet Online).

Discourse: under-gendered and over-sexualised In terms of gendered representation of LGBT people, the language seems to be “neutral” on the mainstream left-liberal and right side, with the LGBT people not very visible and their presence overshadowed by the description of police and rioters’ actions. However, while on the surface gay people are un-gendered, the event and the attackers are heavily sexualised both explicitly and implicitly and are gendered in an indirect, and a rather heteronormative manner, as can be seen from the quotes above. In general, the above texts scarcely mention the gender of the pride participants, contributing to the invisibility/”un-gendering” of gay people participating in the pride. In leftist and liberal media, besides gender-neutral terms such as “marchers”, “demonstrators”, “members of sexual minorities”, “participants”, usually the term “meleg” (equivalent of gay, in literal translation it means “warm”) is used. This term is more commonly used by gay men to refer to themselves; however, it is now increasingly being used by lesbians (as in “I’m a gay woman”), and as an umbrella term for LGBT people. In 52

Rédai Un/Queering the Nation the right-wing daily Magyar Nemzet the term “homosexuals” is most frequently used, and occasionally “meleg”. In the extreme right media the feminization of gay men occurs, for example in articles mentioning an incident in which a gay journalist was beaten up, he is referred to as “Jozefina” (Josephine) instead of “József ” (Joseph) Orosz (Anon. 2008h, in Kuruc.info.) When vulgar language is used, it is usually words referring to male homosexuals. The texts use most often words such as “buzi” or “köcsög” (fag), which are predominantly used when referring to gay men. Otherwise “deviant”–a gender-neutral– word is used frequently, and I did not find a single text among these extremist ones where gay women in particular were mentioned. Extreme-rightist media and public discourse tends to simultaneously feminise gay people, and masculinise the gay pride by making women invisible. As for the selfrepresentation of the attackers of the pride in terms of gender identity, they relied on highly masculinised terms to describe themselves and their actions. This is a language of nationalist, militaristic masculinity, where the men are “brave and dauntless sons of the nation, who confronted almost with bare hands…the army of six thousand, lined up with the most modern mass-dissolving weapons” (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info), who “did not go out on the street to have fun but to protect the majority of the society” (Anon. 2008d, in Népszabadság Online) and who “defended the honour of Hungary” (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info). Attackers are masculinised in all the texts, though. Women are invisible both among the participants of the march and the attackers; no news item mentions the fact observed by several participants of the Pride, that women were quite numerous among the organised extremist attackers. Concrete examples of extremist women’s behaviour are mentioned in two instances, when two marchers, independently from one another, tell very similar stories. A female heterosexual participant describes: A beautiful, youthful chick, dressed in black, who was shaking the cordon and shouted with enormous anger what we are like. The words were not different from the rest of the diatribe, it was the intensity that was frightening, and it was so much in contradiction with her looks (Tracey 2008, in Lehet Más a Világ).7

A liberal male politician who was insulted and beaten up by three young men, then refused help when he asked a policeman, says that “it was even more frightening (…) when a slim young woman went up to him, shouting: “I will kill you, you rotten, dirty Jew!” (Népszabadság compilation 2008, in Népszabadság Online). Thus, it seems that young attractive women who act so much in contrast to their socio-culturally prescribed behaviour patterns are seen as much more frightening than men who behave in the same way or act even more violently. Men are violent, but women are not supposed to. Another way of masculinising and sexualising attackers is best exemplified by the writer Lajos Parti-Nagy, who in his piece expresses shame about heterosexual masculinity 53

Sextures 2 (2) and Hungarianness in the following way: And now I’m ashamed that a handful of my decent heterosexual (i.e. hard-cocked Hungarian) fellow-countrymen, this macho mob, has managed to work my homecountry’s way up into a leading news item of European newsreels (Parti-Nagy 2008, in Népszabadság Online).

This quote is also remarkable because of the comments about the shame for the “Hungarian backwardness compared to Europe”, and I will return to this issue in the following section. On the one hand, the gay pride march is masculinised and heterosexualised in extremist texts which see the event as a penetration into the nation’s feminised body, whose honour they have to protect. On the other hand, the march is feminised by one of the participants with the event represented as a symbolic woman figure raped by men. Agáta Gordon, lesbian writer and activist declares: The gay pride has turned into violence. But this is not what happened! She was RAPED. The “Hungarians” did it deliberately, with their open faces-names-weapons (Gordon 2008, in Irodalmi Centrifuga).

And these are the rapists, representing a certain kind of violent masculinity: At every corner, a couple of replica men are bellowing with distorted faces. I know his face, he is the little Hungarian alcoholic macho abuser, the father, grandfather, boss, son of so many of us. Filthy fags, this man screams, spits out and throws a beer bottle at me, some others next to him are snarling in this tremor (Gordon 2008, in Irodalmi Centrifuga).

Gordon draws up an alternative vision of masculinity: I am marching with women. Young women, young mothers, lesbians, humanists, greens, twenty-somethings. They don’t want men like these. Armed men are protecting us from aggressive armed men. I don’t want protection like this. Men pay men to protect themselves from each other and to intimidate us. We don’t want politics like this. I am marching with men. They don’t want to intimidate us. They don’t want to intimidate men, either. They don’t want masculinity like this (Gordon 2008, in Irodalmi Centrifuga).

In her view, the march is the symbolic body of a woman, a victim of abuse; it includes women and men–men who are not aggressive (and it is implied that for the most part they are not heterosexual), therefore they are victimized as well, by heterosexual men. In this text she essentialises “men” and “women” and draws a parallel between violence against women and violence against gay people. This way, she assigns a certain kind of femininity (passive, victim, in need of protection, non-violent) and a certain kind of masculinity (violent, abusive, macho) to the participants and the attackers of the pride, regardless of their gender. It can be argued that my reading of the representations of the event is heteronormative, given that I claim that the march, the marchers, the attackers are heterosexualised, masculinised or feminised. Indeed, I do find the discourses used by the media actors heteronormative, though of course, other readings are possible. In my view, 54

Rédai Un/Queering the Nation there are no linguistic and conceptual tools available for these actors to write about the event in a non-heteronormative, deconstructive way. In Hungary–and probably in the whole post-socialist region–constructing distinct sexual identities is still relevant, both for straight and gay people, both outside and inside the LGBT movement. Deconstructing and queering identities seems far away. The other characteristic feature of the examined discourse is sexualisation. In general, Hungarian public discourses about homosexuality tend to centre on the imagined sexual activities of gay people in one way or another. Moreover, these discourses are often reduced to expressions of acceptance or rejection of fantasies of what gay people may be doing with each other in bed. The normative idea of straight sex often seems to be discursively reduced to the penetration of a woman by a man, both in straight and gay discourses. In such a context, it is not so surprising that the symbolism of “penetration” appears again and again in these texts, which makes the representation of the event sexualised, in a narrow, normative way. A nation lagging behind Europe The question of what it means to be a Hungarian, who is a “good” Hungarian, and what this violence means for Hungary appears as a significant issue on all sides. While discourses about recent extremist homophobic violence in Hungary often pose the country as a sort of “sub-European”, backward place, it is not a peculiar Hungarian phenomenon but one which fits into a rising tide of homophobic violence in former state-socialist countries in Europe. According to Renkin, the discourse on these events interprets homophobia in three major ways, all of which have certain limitations. He distinguishes psychological homophobia, heteronormative nationalism and homophobia as anti-“European”. He also describes a fourth type called Gays as the new Jews, which blends elements of the latter two (Renkin 2009: 22-26). Literature on CEE public manifestations of homophobia (Graff 2006; Waitt 2005; Schwartz 2005; Riszovannij 2001) mainly uses these approaches. In the media discourse about the 2008 Budapest Gay Pride there are some instances where authors refer to the homophobia of the extremist attackers as psychological homophobia and heteronormative nationalism, but the most dominant interpretation is homophobia as anti-“European”, as can be seen from the quotes below. As Renkin notes, this interpretation of post-socialist homophobia has recently become the most influential one (Renkin 2009: 24). Chakrabarty talks about the “tendency to read Indian history in terms of a lack, an absence, or an incompleteness that translates into ‘inadequacy’”, and about narratives of both imperialists and nationalists, in which, “the Indian” was always a figure of lack. There 55

Sextures 2 (2) was always, in other words, room in this story for characters who embodied, on behalf of the narrative, the theme of “inadequacy” or “failure” (Chakrabarty 1992: 5-6). Although these arguments describe a very different time period, geographical location and social-political scene, these transitional narratives, which describe Hungary as transitioning toward the ultimate goal of becoming a democratic capitalist country are very common. Similarly, the description of contemporary Hungary in relation to “Western Europe”, “Europe” or the EU in terms of inadequacy, lack, backwardness, under-development, failure, and as the “Other” of “European” is very common in discourses about offenses against minorities, be they Roma or gay people (Böröcz 2006). The “backwardness” discourse is the backbone of the homophobia as anti-“European” approach, deployed by authors on current CEE homophobic violence (Gruszczynska 2007; Graff 2006). Renkin notes that for the analysis of post-socialist homophobia, transition narratives have to be considered critically because “nineteen years after the collapse of Eastern European socialism, the nature of post-socialist change remains highly contested, and continues to be worked out through the concrete practices of the region’s inhabitants” (Renkin 2009: 27). Renkin in his discussion on the history of Hungarian gay prides, argues that while LGBT activists and participants of the prides have communicated: statements of transnational identity and loyalty…the Pride March has over time associated its participants with the spaces of a specifically Hungarian history, constructing LGBT people as legitimate inhabitants of national community (Renkin 2009: 28).

From what I have observed, demands by the (visible part of the) LGBT community to be accepted as part of the nation have been particularly strongly articulated in the past few years, alongside the increase of public expressions of homophobia on the part of the right-wing. As I noted above, Renkin is right to claim that these interventions into cultural-political debates about the “appropriate boundaries of belonging”, the assertion of a combined national and transnational identity have fueled homophobic reactions (Renkin 2009: 27). However, I would like to argue that the expression of stronger and more direct messages of national belonging can also be seen as a strategy of LGBT activists to fight against the monopolisation of Hungarian identity by the (extreme) right wing. It could also be seen as part of the recently more active struggle for achieving equal rights, especially when it comes to the rights to artificial insemination, child adoption and marriage/registered partnership. In other words, asserting that gay people equally belong to the nation is also a strategy to demand equal human and citizenship rights. The aim of the official discourse of the Hungarian gay pride organisers was to show that Hungarian gays want to be good sexual citizens who want marriage, family, children, want to belong to the nation; therefore they should be given the same sexual citizenship rights as straight 56

Rédai Un/Queering the Nation Hungarians.8 On the left side of the discourse, extremist violence posits Hungary as a backward, un-European, undemocratic nation, somewhere not quite in Europe. (Western) Europe / the developed world are positioned as the ideal, which Hungary has yet to reach. Gay people are presented as good Hungarian citizens who justifiably demand equal citizenship rights with heterosexual Hungarians; straight people who support gay rights as good Hungarians. Extremists are then positioned as bad Hungarians, and a symbol of backwardness and non-Europeanness, as the wart on the nation’s body that brings shame on the country and on “good” Hungarians. Violence is seen as a major embarrassment for Hungary in the eyes of “more European” nations. And gay people, who did not belong to the community of good sexual citizens before, have suddenly been turned into good citizens, whereas the attackers have became bad citizens. What is interesting is that the way Hungary is viewed as a result of what happened at the pride and the way in which the attackers are portrayed are similar. Does this mean then that the attackers have managed to discursively appropriate the country for themselves and shape it to their own likeness in the eyes of left-liberal actors? These are the major roles the various actors are put into within this discourse: (1) Hungary as backward: …European states with more established and older democratic traditions than Hungary… (Anon. 2008c, in Népszabadság Online). The counter-demonstrators have caused serious damage to the international reputation of Hungary (Anon. 2008a, in Népszabadság Online). In a normal country those who shock their fellow citizens would provoke debates, might be received with derision or contempt and would face authorities if need be. However, on the most beautiful avenue of Budapest, instead of debate, in front of the eyes of the protectors of order, some insane malicious people took the initiative again (Lányi 2008, in Népszabadság Online). The historical backwardness of Hungary in contrast to Western democracies is evident in this respect, as well (Lendvai 2008, in Népszabadság Online). Are we progressing towards Europe or Asia? (Anon. 2008e, in Népszabadság Online). The continued atrocities that distinguish Hungary from a line of European countries... (Király 2008, in Hírszerző). For this reason Hungary, according to general international consensus, has spectacularly sunk into the array of states that are incapable of granting the most elementary constitutional rights of freedom to their citizens (Hírszerző információ 2008a, in Hírszerző). Fodor Gábor said: the litmus test of democracy is always the protection of minorities (Hírszerző információ 2008b, in Hírszerző).

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Sextures 2 (2) Hungary is not ready yet to accept otherness…” (Anon 2008f, in HVG Online).

(2) (Western) Europe as more developed/democratic: …such an extreme violent disturbance which took place in Budapest apropos of the gay pride is unimaginable in Western European countries (Niedermüller 2008, in Élet és Irodalom). Western European societies are much more resistant and dismissive towards extremerightist ideology and its elements than the Hungarian [society] (Niedermüller 2008, in Élet és Irodalom). …while in the Western part of the EU pride marches resemble fiestas, in the more backward Eastern parts the expression of “gay pride” meets with the resistance of extremist organizations (Lóránt 2008, in Magyar Nemzet Online).

(3) Gay people as good Hungarian citizens: This time [the attackers] wanted to beat to a pulp peacefully demonstrating Hungarians (Király 2008, in Hírszerző). ...the Day of Gay Dignity is the day of Hungarian dignity...(former state secretary Szetey Gábor, who came out at the 2007 LGBT Festival 2008, in Anon. 2008f, HVG Online). On 5 July two Hungaries were marching against each other on Andrássy Road. An aggressive–we believe–minority wanting to ease their own fears with the rejection and physical destruction of other people, and the citizens who belong to a peaceful, normal, open and tolerant Hungary (Dessewffy and Magyar 2008, in Petition against Violence).

(4) Straight people who support gay rights as good Hungarians: Those who are true Hungarians are here with us today (a speaker of the Gay Pride is quoted in the regular column From our correspondent 2008, in Magyar Nemzet Online).

(5) Extremists as harmful to the nation, as bad Hungarians: Those who lie to claim they are true Hungarians, while with their every single word, action, manifestation they can only cause harm to Hungary–it’s enough to think about the fact that because of them, we have managed to appear worldwide in the media with news of riots and violence again (Király 2008, in Hírszerző). Extremists disrupt the pleasure of freedom, the pleasure of those who want to say who they are and how they live out their Hungarianness (Anon. 2008a, in Népszabadság Online). Perhaps they are not even Hungarian, since their flag is bicolour (From our correspondent 2008, in Magyar Nemzet Online). Oh, yes, the sons of the nation broke up the decorative pavement of the national memorial site called Heroes’ Square with the aim of patriotic stone-throwing (Nagylevin 2008, in Freeblog). The President of SZDSZ called the attacks against the participants of the gay pride the

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Rédai Un/Queering the Nation shame of the Hungarian Republic (Hírszerő információ 2008b, in Hírszerző). Now, those who, referring to their own Hungarianness, attack Hungarian citizens with stones, chemicals and Molotov cocktails, are the traitors of Hungarian democracy… (Király 2008, in Hírszerző). Perhaps the term “Hungarians” is not suitable for the those who marched against gay people this afternoon (Kiss 2008, in Hírszerző).

When it comes to representations produced by the mainstream right-wing daily Magyar Nemzet and the extremist website kuruc.info, the above categories are turned upside down. Hungary is the motherland/sister/daughter whose virtue has to be protected; (Western) Europe is a morally decaying world which Hungary should not follow. Gay people are seen as non-Hungarians, diseased/immoral foreigners who penetrate the body of virtuous Hungary whose morality is presented as historically integral. Finally, extremists are positioned as good Hungarians, protectors of the future of the nation and majoritarian society, as well as its conservative values. Extreme rightist discourse is strongly heterosexualised, as I argued earlier. Hungary is a woman whose virtue has to be protected, who is threatened to be penetrated/raped, and the protectors are heroic men, the sons who risk their physical security to defend the mother nation. This way the “penetrators”–gay people (who would normally be depicted as feminised) as well as the police, the “liberal-communist-zionist conspirators” (i.e. left-liberal politicians and the prime minister himself), and “decayed Westerners”–are uniformly masculinised and heterosexualised. Some examples are quoted below: (1) Hungary as the motherland/sister/daughter to be protected: Hungary, however, because of the weak national resistance, and vile, cowardly politicians or dilettante leaders, had earlier been invaded by international liberal forces, and now we can see that year by year an increasingly tough, courageous and persevering patriotic resistance has unfolded, and the powers to be are getting nervous. This is the real victory and achievement! (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info).

(2) Western Europe / the EU as morally decaying, bad direction to follow for Hungary: …the Western European and American liberal-zionist media, of course, calls it a monstrosity that in Eastern Europe they can’t have “gay pride” parades with half a million people. What is monstrous in our view, however, is what is happening in Western Europe. Namely, that, for example, African immigrants, convicted thieves, drug dealers, burglars burn down the cars of tens of thousands (!) of innocent French citizens, and Western Europeans can feel foreign and excluded in their own country... What is monstrous is that in Western Europe liberal politicians and the aggressive fags who are against traditions and the nation have so much forced their sick world on normal society that for example the otherwise heterosexual and conservative mayor of London was marching on the front of the English fag march this year, wearing a pink hat (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info).

(3) Gay people as aliens, diseased/immoral/un-Christian/criminal, penetrating the nation’s body: 59

Sextures 2 (2) …we dare to protest against their morality, society and family destroying, blasphemous, subversive parades, their offenses against public morality (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info). But now, as an obvious provocation, they even blemished our national symbols with a historical Hungary banner–painted in the colours of the “gay pride” (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info). …at the march of homosexuals last year and this year as well, they offended the sensitivity of Christian people...(Pilhál 2008, in Magyar Nemzet Online).

(4) Extremists as good Hungarians, protectors of the nation and majority society, Christianity, morality, the future and conservative values: The army of Hunnia protects the capital of Hungarians (Népszabadság compilation 2008, quoting Toroczkai László, an extremist activist in Népszabadság Online). Standing up is a moral duty; we have to protect the virtue of Hungary (From our correspondent 2008a , in Népszabadság Online). Now another fag bar has received a Molotov [cocktail] in defense of Christianity, family and public morals (Népszabadság Online, 2008 referring to a publication in Kuruc.info). The cases are not without precedent: every time justice was dealt out as a consequence of attack against Hungarianness (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info). And it’s good that sons of the nation daring to act still exist (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc. info). We have shown that we don’t allow the deviants to behave in a disgusting way (Toroczkai 2008, in Kuruc.info). We don’t go out on the street to have fun but to protect the majority of the society (Anon 2008d, in Népszabadság Online, quoting Péter Tóth, Szeged’s director of the extreme right-wing party Jobbik here). We also have an opinion, rooted in the Hungarian morality of a thousand years, and so have to have the right of assembly (Anon. 2008i, in Kuruc.info).9

Conclusion In this paper I have looked into the intersection of gender, sexuality and national identity in the media discourse on the 2008 Gay Pride in Budapest. I have argued that while this has been the most visible gay pride in Hungary, gay people themselves were largely made invisible in the discourse by the violent attackers’ actions, by the division of the nation into “good” and “bad” Hungarians, by the heterosexualisation of the pride and the attack, and by the interpretation of homophobia as anti-”Europe” sentiments and public actions. Gay people themselves have participated in making themselves invisible in the discourse. Besides heterosexualisation, both the feminisation and the masculinisation of 60

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the pride and its participants appears in the discourse, while at the same time there is a strong tendency of ungendering participants. Apart from extremist interpretations of the violence as a heroic defense of the virtue of Hungary, in the discourse the dominant interpretation of the violent attacks against the pride as anti-”European”, uncivilized, undemocratic, positions the country as a “backward” one, lagging behind “Europe” / “the West”. Finally, I also argue that besides seeing escalating homophobic violence as a reaction to the LGBT community’s recently strengthened claims to national belonging, the demand to be accepted as part of the nation can also be interpreted as a reaction to escalating homophobic violence and as a strategy of the LGBT community to demand equal sexual citizenship rights with their heterosexual fellow-Hungarians.

LGBT People in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut, pp. 95-116.

Notes

Waitt, Gordon, (2005) “Sexual Citizenship in Latvia: Geographies of the Latvian Closet, Social & Cultural Geography, 6(2): 161-181.

1. The so-called “extreme left” does not exist in Hungary, so when I refer to “extremists”, I always mean “extreme nationalists”. 2. I will not go into examining “why now”, because that would divert the focus of my analysis into another direction. 3. Just one characteristic example of communicating this belonging through symbols: the 2007 gay pride was the first one where extremists were present in greater numbers and acted violently against the marchers. During the preparation for the 2008 pride, some activists suggested that the organizing NGOs should buy hundreds of national flags and distribute them among marchers to carry. 4. All quotes in this paper are my translation. 5. Péter György is quoted here; this is not the opinion of the author. 6. She identifies herself as heterosexual at the end of her piece. She writes under the name “Tracey”, which would not necessarily imply her gender, but I know her personally. 7. The name of this community portal in English translation means The World Can be Different. 8. For a discussion of sexual citizenship and national belonging from a cultural-legal approach, see Cossman, 2007. 9. Police is often referred to as ÁVH (the State Security Authority of the darkest communist times in the 1950s) in kuruc.info texts.

References Böröcz, József (2006) “Goodness is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference”, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48 (1): 110-138. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (1992) “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ pasts?”, in Representations, 37: 1-26. Cossman, Brenda (2007) Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Czarnecki, Gregory E (2007) “Analogies of Pre-War Anti-Semitism and Present-Day Homophobia in Poland”, in R. Kuhar and J. Takacs (eds) Beyond the Pink Curtain. Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut, pp.327-344. Graff, Agnieszka (2006) “We are (Not All) Homophobes: A Report from Poland”, Feminist Studies 32(2): 434-451. Gruszczynska, Anna (2007) “Living ‘La Vida’ Internet: Some Notes on the Cyberization of Polish LGBT Community”, in R. Kuhar and J. Takacs (eds) Beyond the Pink Curtain. Everyday Life of

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Kuhar, Roman and Judit Takacs (eds) (2007) Beyond the Pink Curtain. Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe. Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut. Renkin, Hadley Z. (2009) “Homophobia and Queer Belonging in Hungary”, Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology, 53: 20-37. Riszovannij, Mihály (2001) “Self-Articulation of the Gay and Lesbian Movement in Hungary after 1989”, in H. Flam (ed) Pink, Purple, Green: Women’s, Religious, Environmental and Gay/Lesbian Movements in Central Europe Today. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, pp.150-160. Schwartz, Katrina Z. S. (2005) “Gay Rights: United in Hostility”, Transitions Online, 26 September, http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=aa00b6e3-462b-4cb9-b384d2cd8ac63df0&articleId=a03f7cf2-5560-4aec-bff4-28874c746f48, accessed 13 January 2009.

Internet sources (newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc) used for analysis Élet és irodalom Niedermüller, Péter (2008) “Egy meleg nyári délután” (“A Warm Summer Afternoon”), 21 July, http://www.es.hu/pd/display.asp?channel=PUBLICISZTIKA0829&article=2008-0721-092520HDQJ, accessed 9 January 2009. Nagylevin Nagylevin (2008) “A gyalázat (gyalazat) napja” (“The Day of Dishonour”), 7 July, http://nagylevin.freeblog.hu/archives/2008/07/07/A_gyalazat_napja/, accessed: 9 January 2009. Heti Világgazdaság (HVG) Online Anon (2008f) “Molotov koktél és verbális (koktel es verbalis) terror” (“Molotov Cocktail and Verbal Terror”), 5 July, http://hvg.hu/itthon/20080706_melegek_rendorseg.aspx, accessed 9 January 2009. Dobrovits, Mihály (2008) “Szökőállam és civil kurázsi” (“Escaping State and Civilian Courage”),7 July, http://hvg.hu/velemeny/20080707_melegek_gyurcsany_charta.aspx, accessed: 9 January 2009. Hírszerző Hírszerző információ (2008a) “Hol és (es) mikor lehet tojással megdobálni Dr. Kovács legfőbb ügyészt?” (“Where and When Can We Throw Eggs on Dr. Kovács, Solicitor General?”), 20 July,http://www.hirszerzo.hu/cikkr.hol_es_mikor_lehet_tojassal_megdobalni_dr_kovacs_ legfobb_ugyeszt.73327.html, accessed: 9 January 2009. Hírszerő információ (2008b) “Vágó István sajtótájékoztatón jelentette be, hogy gyáva–a KDNP két napig hallgatott” (“István Vágó Announced at a Press Conference that He Is a Coward–KDNP (Christian Democrat People’s Party) Was Silent for Two Days), 7 July, http://www.hirszerzo. hu/cikkr.vago_istvan_sajtotajekoztaton_jelentette_be_hogy_gyava_-_a_kdnp_ket_napig_ hallgatott.71950.html, accessed 9 January 2009. Király, Dávid (2008) “Egyszerűen senkik vagytok!” (“You Are Simply Nobodies”), 7 July, http:// www.hirszerzo.hu/cikkprint.71911, accessed 9 January 2009. Kiss, Ádám (2008) “Szolid melegek, őrjöngő (orjongo) ‘magyarok’” (“Sober Gays, Frantic

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‘Hungarians”), 6 July, http://www.hirszerzo.hu/cikkr.szolid_melegek_orjongo_magyarok_-_ videoriport_es_kepgaleria_a_melegfelvonulasrol.71772.html, accessed 9 January 2009.

Capital on 5 July, the Day of Shame?”), 20 September 2008, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-507580, accessed 9 January 2009.

Irodalmi Centrifuga Gordon, Agáta (2008) “ICAinfo a háborúból” (“ICAinfo from the war”), 6 July 2008, http:// elofolyoirat.blogspot.com/2008/07/gordon-agta-icainfo-hborbl.html, accessed 9 January 2009.

Czene, Gábor (2008) “Régi magyar deviancia” (“Old Hungarian Deviance”), 13 July, http://nol.hu/ archivum/archiv-498646, accessed 9 January 2009.

Kuruc.info Anon (2008h) “Videóval frissítve”: Orosz Jozefina coming out-ja a szintén Jordán-pozitív Vágó társaságában (“Updated with Video: The Coming Out of Jozefina Orosz, in the Company of Also Jordan-positive Vágó), 12 July, http://kuruc.info/r/6/26891/, accessed 9 January 2009. Anon. (2008i) “Győzött a buzilobbi: visszavonta határozatát a gyáva ÁVH, zöld út Szodomának” (“The Fag Lobby Has Won: the Coward ÁVH Has Withdrawn its Resolution, Green Light to Sodom, 12 June, http://kuruc.info/r/21/25989/, accessed 9 January 2009. Toroczkai, László (2008) “Köszönet, mérleg és a félreértések tisztázása (“Thank You, Accounts and the Clarification of Misunderstandings”), 10 July, http://kuruc.info/r/7/26887/, accessed 9 January 2009. Lehet Más a Világ (The World Could be Different Online Portal) Tracey (2008) “A meleg felvonulás” (“The Gay Pride”), 7 July 2008, http://lmv.hu/node/2759, accessed 9 January 2009. Magyar Nemzet Online D. Horváth, Gábor (2008) “Nagyon bosszant a helyzet” (I’m Very Annoyed by the Situation”), Interview with Krisztina Morvai, 12 July 2008, http://www.mno.hu/portal/573058?searchtext=me legfelvonul%C3%A1s, accessed 9 January 2009. From Our Correspondent (2008) “Láng, könnygáz, kőzápor” (“Flames, Tear-gas, Shower of Stones], 7 July 2008, http://www.mno.hu/portal/571249?searchtext=melegfelvonul%C3%A1s, accessed 9 January 2009. Lóránt, Károly (2008), “Meleg’ Európa” (“‘Gay’ Europe”), 21 July, http://www.mno.hu/portal/5741 01?searchtext=melegfelvonul%C3%A1s, accessed 9 January 2009. Pilhál, Tamás (2008) “A szocialisták ezúttal is a Fideszt okolják” (“Socialists Blame Fidesz Again”), 8 July, http://www.mno.hu/portal/571317?searchtext=melegfelvonul%C3%A1s, accessed 9 January 2009. Népszabadság Online Anon. (2008a) “Gyurcsány: Itt az ideje a jogos nemzeti önvédelemnek” (“Gyurcsány: It’s Time for Justified National Self-defence]. Népszabadság Online, 6 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/ archiv-498018, accessed 9 January 2009. Anon. (2008b) “Orosz József: ‘kaptam azért (azert)...’ (“Jozsef Orosz: ‘I was hit because…”), 7 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498137, accessed 9 January 2009. Anon. (2008c) “Ombudsman: a dobálás nem tartozik a véleményszabadság körébe”) (“Ombudsman: Throwing Objects Does Not Count as Free Expression of Opinion”), 7 July, http:// nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498143, accessed 9 January 2009. Anon. (2008d) “Jobbik: győzelem a deviánsok felett” (“Jobbik: Victory Over the Deviants], 9 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498333, accessed 9 January 2009. Anon. (2008e) “Mi történt a fővárosban július 5-én, a szégyennapon?” (“What Happened in the

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From Our Correspondent (2008a) “A tavalyinál keményebb támadástól tart a BRFK a melegek felvonulásán” (“The BRFK–Budapest Chief Police Office”), 25 June, http://nol.hu/archivum/ archiv-496821, accessed 9 January 2009. From Our Correspondent (2008b) “Erősödőben az intolerancia (“Intolerance is on the Rise”), 12 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498681, accessed 9 January 2009. Lányi, András (2008) “Forró ősz, hideg számítás” (“Hot Autumn, Cold Calculation’), 25 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-499321, accessed 9 January 2009. Lendvai, Paul (2008) “Útkeresés a radikalizálódás ellen” (“Finding Paths against Radicalization”), 23 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-499695, accessed 9 January 2009. Matalin, Dóra (2008) “Vékony jégen járunk” (“We Are Walking on Thin Ice”), interview with Péter György, 12 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498644, accessed 9 January 2009. Népszabadság Compilation (2008) “Július ötödike, szégyennap” (“Fifth of July, a Day of Shame”), 7 July, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-498079, accessed 9 January 2009. Népszabadság Online (2008) “Forrósodik a légkör a Melegfesztivál körül“ (“The Atmosphere is Getting Hotter around the Gay Festival”), 4 July 2008, http://nol.hu/archivum/archiv-497861, accessed 9 January 2009. Parti-Nagy, Lajos (2008) “A föl-földobott tojás” (“The Flung-up Egg”), 15 August, http://nol.hu/ archivum/archiv-498645, accessed 9 January 2009). Origo Anon. (2008g)”Gyurcsány: Itt az ideje a jogos nemzeti önvédelemnek“ (“Gyurcsány: It’s Time for Justified National Self-defence], 6 July, http://origo.hu/itthon/20080706-melegfelvonulasgyurcsany-betelt-a-pohar-itt-az-ideje-a.html, accessed 9 January 2009. Petition against Violence Dessewffy Tibor (Demos Foundation), Magyar Kornélia (Progressive Institute) (2008) Petition against violence, http://www.petitiononline.com/bss938/petition.html, accessed 9 January 2009.

About the author Dorottya Rédai is currently working on her doctoral research–a school ethnography focusing on the intersections of gender, sexualities, race/ethnicity and class in sexual citizenship construction in Hungary, at the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest. Since 2002 she has been doing research in the fields of gender and education, violence against women, gender in the media, and the Hungarian LGBT community, and she has also been involved in activist work with feminist and LGBT NGOs in Budapest. Dorottya can be contacted at [email protected]. 64

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The Queer Therapist Unbound COUNSELLING IDEOLOGIES: QUEER CHALLENGES TO HETERONORMATIVITY edited by Lyndsey Moon Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, 250 pages Writing about the nascent normative establishment of trans/gender regulation in 2004, Judith Butler expressed her own worry, namely, “I don’t find many people writing in this area” (Butler 2004: 89). Counselling Ideologies is a book that installs its contribution exactly in the area Butler alarmingly pointed at and, in a sense, engages in the dirty work of queer theory, that is, transposing it as a praxis not only by bringing in the dirty words of desires repressed both before and within sessions. Not that there is dirtiness only in queer praxis, yet in the wider queer literature one rarely finds a detour from the elliptical and chiasmic self-reflexivity dominating the identitarian hyphenation of the queer writer. This book engages mostly professionals from the field of psychotherapy and deploys the practical dimension of operationalized de-historicizing of the underlying heteronormative templates within the scientific establishments of psychic care. The two ambitions–enacting deheterosexualization of therapy and showing resisting therapeutic 65

Copyright © 2012 Sextures, Volume 2, Issue 2

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Sextures 2 (2) practices–reveal substantial chunks of the heterosexualist paradigm in present day care of the soul. Although there appears no methodological query whether such questioning is not normative itself, one should bear in mind that the pretension is not to instruct practitioners, let alone theoreticians, but to perform the founding act of, finally, “writing in this area”. Because of the book’s capital nature, the editor has given some sway of approaching the subject-matter to some contributions. These essays should be then regarded in two groups–those that subversively address the field of psychotherapy per se (whether from theoretical or practical point of view) and those that rely on a more flexible interdisciplinary atonement. In general, both theoreticians and practitioners would find themselves dissatisfied with this book if they expect high theory or plain empiricism: the majority of these chapters are a confluence of personal narratives with academic overtones. Given the high skepticism (and I mean this in an aesthetic way) of the majority of queer writers, terms like “respect” and “client-centeredness” might not quite evoke a feeling of respectability for great deal of the potential readership (and this is for a reason I outline at the end). Preserving one’s respect–or co-creating it where it has been swept by the collective fury of pathologization–is of course not far away from queer’s post-structuralism–it is a more practical flection of Derrida’s “We have to welcome the other inside”. The inside is here psychotherapy. If there is a dominating normative view interjected all through the book, it is the assumption that “Heterosexuality is ‘naturalized’ through conversations and ‘talk’ via therapeutic models” (Lindsey Moon, p. 80). Such a view is revealed by the first chapter on sectarianism, where Tina Livingstone (ch. 1) is concerned with the “sanitizing discourse” in psychotherapy. Sectarianism “exists within cultural commonality and comprises factions set against each other by reason of doctrine or dogma” (p. 10). This is how Livingstone is able to proceed to analyzing the denial of personhood in therapy and its re/construction and validation just as revalidating desire is later a higher end of this critical approach (Moon, p. 74). As a matter of queer reflexivity, the author worries over the power of meaning in categorization that allow “creating alternative oppressions rather than alleviating them” (p. 20) both in and out of the minority. A conclusion such as “any categorization can… propagate a new sectarianism” (p. 23) is obviously implied in the entire volume. Ian Hodges (ch. 2) engages in a rather ambitious, if obfuscated, analysis of heteronormativity in psychoanalysis. He states that “applying queer theory to therapy invites us to understand therapeutic practices and techniques as key elements in the contemporary exercise of government and authority” (p. 36). This calls for a much larger project considering that he regards the Oedipus complex as reflection and description of dominant power relations. However, his aim is to suggest that queering psychoanalysis 66

Panayotov The Queer Therapist Unbound can be positively engaged to transform personhood beyond “naïve realism”, a realism presupposing that relations of power do not figure centrally in the rapport. The higher end of this is the undoing of culturally-inflicted ideological damages done to queer embodiment to the extent of self-hatred, itself producing the power of counseling authority much before Oedipus. Alex Iantaffi (ch. 3) shares a first singular narrative of his troubles as a developing therapist and scholar with the disciplining effects of gender dichotomy in existing models of training therapists (GRRAACCEESS, the Family Life Cycle Model). Inviting us in his peer research, he manifests how these models produce queer alienation and hierarchy of oppression (p. 57) in academic surrounding where even social constructionism is properly heterosexualized and potentially reversed against the ends of queering the discipline. Iantaffi’s engagement is to simply show how the personal in the training is still to be revealed as political, which he reasonably does. Julie Tilsen and David Nylund explore (ch. 5) a perverse form of intra-communal tension which they call (after Lisa Dougan) homonormativity. Here, we are witnessing a very practical reading of Foucaultian discourse reversal in queer youth culture. Profiling queer youth resistance serves them to outline the normative seams of homonormativity down to the apolitical gay formalism and consumerism. Another aspect of their contribution (shared by a later chapter) is to show that the coming out narrative is a privileged site of subjugating a pre-marked identity that “can unwittingly work in the service of the institutionalization of heterosexuality” (p. 98). This reversal is shown in the ways they engage Gender Identity Disorder (GID) to empower trans clients much the same way Butler states that “[t]he only way to secure the means by which to start this transformation is by learning how to present yourself in a discourse that is not yours, a discourse that effaces you in the act of representing you” (Butler 2004: 91). Yet the question they bypass–perhaps due to the natural homology between youth and resistance–is what to do with people who do not want to resist, who want to embrace the achievements of the entire historical queer retribution just the same way some therapy clients are not willing to dispense with identity categories. Furthermore, the proliferation of marginal identities to a manageable market makes it very easy to discern how queer youth resistance is a rite of passage to instituting the very system it tries to surpass. This is obvious where they are searching for proliferation of identities through the notion of queer while later stating “where other see pathology…we revel in political activism” (p. 99). Ultimately, statements such as “privileging clients’ experiences over theoretical assumptions is a queer practice!” revel in some form of quasi-academic activism indeed, but they hardly manifest that there is no prescriptive authority centered around homonormativity. Catherine Butler, Roshan das Nair and Sonya Thomas (ch. 6) concentrate on 67

Sextures 2 (2) the racial question in queer theory/therapy engaging in a discussion over queer theory culturally privileging homophobia rather than racism. This is an important essay in that it reminds a fact that is easily read as a platitude: that white queer theoretician have established “dichotomy between heterosexuality and everything that falls outside of this” (p. 106). To overcome these, the authors insist that what has to be researched–and thus they do–is the white queer’s privileged position of unmarkedness, a position that itself allows the aforementioned hierarchy of oppressions; the latter is possible because the corollary of disadvantages–the privileges of the white race–are silenced and serve as the background of “[w]hiteness [which] is not queer when it is taken as the invisible norm” (p. 110), and at the same time they perceive their effort as one contributing to “black queer theory”. The case of a black essentialism, however, should be contested too–while many consider being black by birth, it is all too often the case that many blacks take sexual identity to be a choice, though this is not a privileged reading of the black communities and black essentialism should not be augmented as such (per Audre Lorde). To the extent the authors strive to find an intersectional approach to oppression that would itself embody the queer method of non-hierarchy by recognizing the multiple parts of one’s identity in the analysis where multiplicity persists, they manage to do so. Perhaps the chapter by Christian Klesse (ch. 7) provides one of the brightest analysis one could read in the literature on bisexuality, and, as he well shows, this is the LGBT acronym letter that is most troubling and prejudiced against in sexual minorities. Klesse makes it very clear that it is thanks to bisexuality that one can see the extent to which many queers retain a residual heteronormative identity based on gender asymmetry/inversion (especially on the subject of same-sex marriages and their “successfulness”). The very conception of bisexuality as some form of “psychic (if not physical) hermaphroditism” (p. 125) is so oft that one can clearly catch the limits of post-modern “queer liberals” and their alleged respect to differences. What is queerest about bisexuality, as Klesse invites us to find, is that it is always undermined regardless of one’s object choice: whether regarded as deficiency or inherent indecisiveness or just “fence-sitters”, bisexuality is the sexuality closest to the perpetual exercise of performativity and self-re/claiming. Klesse’s concern that this leads to serious identification issues through internalized “bi-negativity” that poses a very specific problem for the therapist, further exacerbated by the role of civil marriage, is not the least exaggerated. Bisexuality, as Klesse researches it outside marriage in polyamory, can be thus regarded as predispositional and two-directional polyamory. The bisexual positionality implies–and this is the worrisome though enchanting paradox– that one is always a step before one’s own disappearance as a sexual subject. Coping with stereotypes about it as the sign of instability can make it the queerest of sexualities, and yet the most detrimental to one’s psyche. 68

Panayotov The Queer Therapist Unbound Mark Casey (ch. 8) presents an ethnographic and urban approach to sexuality studies in relation to the fundamental social research categories and the now banalized area of “social inclusion”. This essay carefully reveals that sexual identity creates identificatory troubles only in relation to numerous other identities with which one engages in the process of social participation. Casey informs us about the sense of inclusion and exclusion in the North of England via the topoi of the gay-lesbian scene and the home space. Seeing these as meaningful research figures that generate belonging and comfort of living, Casey tries to address a set of “unique mental health needs” from inside and outside. This is far too ambitious for such a chapter and is surely a part of a larger research to follow. Yet Casey carefully makes the reader aware that just as the home can become one’s isolation rather than one’s paradise (p. 156), so the gay scene appears as a repressive penitentiary through its own selection processes of digestible and marketable “differences”, especially in the gay male scene (p. 151). The bourgeois commodifying advent of youthfulness casts a shadow on the “gayness” and inclusivity of the gay scene and the grim anticipation upon reading Casey’s essay is that the collective terror of the gay community towards ideals of eternal vitality represses a fear of the death drive–a subject which the author, perhaps consciously, does not address. Sekneh Beckett (ch. 10) is a psychologist whose professional leaning is to work at the edge of Islamic psychology and rehabilitating gay and lesbian people’s identity. Beckett’s account of Islamic stigmatizations of sexual difference is that they constitute truth games (per Foucault) whose procedures of truth-making are to be revealed by making transparent the specific Islamic discourse that subjugates sexual difference without necessarily involving resistance. Avoiding such direct resistance is instructed by an ethnic psychology method and here Beckett proposes a terminological twist by elaborating the concept of “coming in”, a process which appears, in her practice, to have been very helpful in that it conforms to, but also transformatively challenges the specific Muslim family structure. Obviously the author applies the term in order to positively rehabilitate familial bonding without re-subjugating the queer subject anew, with the intention of discretely rebuilding a psychologically more susceptible surrounding for queer identified people. At the same time, letting “coming in” work therapeutically appears to serve as an inward version of coming out–it can be read as a selective coming out process. One however wonders if this notion, when operationalized, is not a way to selectively avoid levels of hostility controlled by the ethnic psychology. Dossie Easton’s chapter (ch. 11) on counseling BDSM clients itself presupposes that the author deals with at least four levels of pathologization: within society, sexual minorities, the client, and the therapist. Bearing in mind that the scaffolding of power relations in BDSM is made to disintegrate power itself and to transform it in a fetishized 69

Sextures 2 (2) pleasure, one should be extremely careful not to read this chapter as a self-help or lastinstance contribution. Easton’s concern is mainly to inform other practitioners who almost always are not prepared to devise a respectful approach in the various stages towards the affirmation of desire BDSM clients need. The detrimental identification of real life with the “scene space” (p. 222) in BDSM is something which, where lack of knowledge and hostility preoccupy the therapist, can virtually revert the whole process against the subject by trying to “cope with” rather than “go with” one’s needs. Not to mention that the need of comfort and self-value in these cases arises from the assumed homology between real and imaginary. In this book the work of Moon and Ansara is particularly important to the field and one has to assess their writing as powerful acts of discursive resistance –no more, no less than that. Lyndsey Moon’s work on the democratization of feeling away from heteronormativity sets an own project that has the potential of absorbing much of the invested in a field known as the sociology of emotions (ch. 4). Moon, however, is concerned with a very crucial (queer) materializing distinction between feeling and emotion and for this she utilizes Bourdieu with astute level of precision. According to Moon, feeling is a “main liberatory tool” for therapy. Her main assumption is that in queer communities feeling and eroticism are “consciously disengaged” from the said queer corporeality. The distinction feeling/emotion obviously has extremely important implication beyond the queering of psychotherapy. Feelings are abstract objects, while emotions/ emotion words (which often overlap) are social objects. According to her, the construction of personhood is a dialectics dependent upon the interaction between emotion and feeling. The problem comes when this interaction sustains the social meanings in a presumably despotic way within the now constructed social actor. Through emotion words we construct social meaning for emotion which comes from (corporeal) feelings out of (queer) experience and embodiment in the first place. This has the general implication that in counseling there is an agreed and socialized subjectivity (of heteronormativity); the social link is often ossified as heterosexist ideology and this can be discerned as ideological procedure exactly through the distinction between feeling and emotion words that collectively (though not rationally) construct a feeling (such as the feeling of hostility in internalized homophobia). The scene of counseling seems exclusively appropriate for such a research since it provides “a micro-structure of socio-emotional life”. The ensuing “construction of emotional habitus” via reification of the original emotion words/states should be then rerouted in a more democratic, queer-sensitive way. This Bourdieuan dialectic of the habitus between social subjectivity and subjective sociality, when grasped as co-reifying exchange between analyst and client, is a much powerful heuristic tool for 70

Panayotov The Queer Therapist Unbound the queer praxis. And what Moon subsequently calls poly-emotinality is precisely the tool to unleash the dirty and unsettling dictionaries of our feelings censored by heterosexist treatment (which is both homo- and hereto-oppressive). This might serve as a real liberation for the therapist who is “arguably constrained by the same normative structures that fail to recognize sex, gender and sexuality” (p. 80). As Moon reveals, the big challenge of this liberation is that it enters the professional field in the academia; or else what she calls academic “stonewalling” to LGBTIQ sensitivity would amount to the grim practice of “gatekeeping” transgender people away from their transitioning. Y. Gavriel Ansara’s chapter (ch. 9), from which the book borrows its name, is the other analytical revelation of this book. This is a text that touches the bone of contention in its own right by analyzing cisgenderism as opposed to people with nonassigned gender identity.1 Lavishing in its own experientially informed mechanics, with the pointed ambition of theoretical contribution thereupon, this chapter provides several levels of reflexivity in a subject that will not be left uncontested for the decades to come, namely material vs. experienced gender. It practically covers a very wide walk of therapeutic struggle for self-acceptance: from setting the very psychic conditions before counseling to linguistic affirmative pronoun-sensitive approach to supporting (and in some cases devising) semantic structure of self-identification, etc. Ansara is positively right to be trenchantly at odds with the “gender specialists” and their attending “grandiose nomenclature” (p. 176), a mainstreaming in psycho-establishments and disciplines which is today not only powerful framework of expertise but also a profitable factory of letterwriting and “the production of demand” for officially sanctioned sexuality (Guattari 1995: 211). Of course Ansara is not the first to recognize that gender expertise produces its own sectarian mentality (gatekeeping is a particular byproduct of this), nor the fact that this presupposes “a common link between people with affirmed gender identities” in a system that refutes an innumerable universe of people unqualifiable for the medical eye (see Barnes 2001). He is, however, someone who might well be remembered for the theoretical pun “Gender Specialist Identity Disorder”, a network whose profession parasitizes onto trans-gendered lives2 facing us with the old issue of minorities management from within minoritarian either self-entitled or state-controlled medical “avant-gardes”. “Beyond cisgenderism” is an ambition that would involve something much more then depathologization of trans-people and the rewriting of the Harry Benjamin GID Standards of Care. If taken literally, Ansara’s reflections have the consequence that, if the opposition between GDI-labeled subjects and people with non-assigned gender that do not self-qualify as GID be resolved in favor of the latter, this is going to hurl the entire medical and legal establishment’s system of gender legitimacy in a trans-gendered mess which no known establishment would be able to manage (whether this is a bad thing in 71

Sextures 2 (2) terms of chaos is easy to guess). This simply means that there will be no more “genuinely trans people”; it means that the “acronym soup” that “LGBT” is will have to be abandoned for its “coercive queering” (p. 188); it also means that Ansara’s (and others) own social positioning is at this point not far away from Deleuze and Guattari’s statement that “there are as many sexes as there are terms in symbiosis” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 242; see also Deleuze & Guattari 1983: 70), a statement whose implications are not necessarily healthy when seen from a professional psychotherapist’s point of view. Not that the text of Ansara intends to provision such a chaos (a state implicitly unleashed by transfeminist arguments, see Postić 2005). On the contrary, one can rather feel the compassionate outrage of an intelligent analyst and practitioner who wants to hold the reigns of praxis in a deregulated queer therapy. “Beyond cisgenderism” is to un-label trans-people as privileged queer theory trope, to reinstate their materiality–paradoxically taken away from coercive queering–much the same way feminists reclaim their bodies from heteropatriarchy ever since the 60s. “The effect to be explained” will then be not non-assigned gender people; rather, it is the defective nature of both academic discourse and (gay) parochialism that becomes visible and thus self-explained once cisgenderism is being marked. On this point, Ansara’s own writing does not in any way suggest a shared normative solution, nor does he calls for a trans-normalization, and thus he implicitly calls for an incendiary conceptual struggle against diagnosing as the institution of a “lucrative source of income”. Because of all this, Ansara’s contribution makes it very clear how lonely in their therapeutic activism people like him are, and what enormous ethical responsibility lies on the shoulders of those co-constructing gender-variant lives anew. The “institutional cisgenderism endemic to counselling ideologies” (p. 197) is a real-life problem reproduced by the very system which pretends to transcend it within the frames of diagnosing. But “transcending cisgenderism” is itself a trope that will ultimately produce its own normativity and coercive system of therapeutic queering. It is everybody’s worry to anticipate what happens in a multi-identitarian world where one’s living is thought of as the right to differ equally importantly as everyone else. It is for this reason that deheterosexualization/deideologization of therapy, revealing “therapeutic ideology” (whose pillar is still the ideology of heteronormativity, as well as homonormativity) are equally important as the normative obligation to anticipate what normativity one unwillingly calls for. “Deheterosexualisation” is not the same as “queering/queerness”–“the non-linear and non-inevitable trajectories that fan out from any given event and lead to unpredictable futures” (Halberstam 2008: 153). Its procedure would mean to define a queered terrain of ideological neutrality. As a pioneering book, it is hard to touch the ground of normativity when the idea is to disrupt it. But that does 72

Panayotov The Queer Therapist Unbound not redeem you of the task to see therapy itself as counter-revolutionary and anti-queer: an assumption which is here visible only when the queer therapist is not allowed to be revolutionary. Therefore much could be said by the dissatisfied reader (presumably theorist) upon reading this book on the desired praxis it envisions, precisely because it does not involve neutrality: it brings in neutralization of congealed scientific dogmas whose recent emendations, as the authors in various ways reveal, are often nothing more than reinscribing the dichotomous thinking in a subtler way, and this is a way profitable at that. Perhaps because of its pioneering character, despite the intrinsic web of Foucaultian arguments, the book does not account for the ideology it professes: that the institution of confession, regardless of its liberalization, is yet to produce more guilt within the liberated confessant. Aside from the implicit rebellious approach of Ansara underscored above, this volume fails to address queer/client-centered psychotherapy as ideology itself, and this is important. Why? If, historically, we as queers are not allowed to reform the heteronormative cathedral we are forced to live in, and if we are, however, allowed to ring its bells, this still does not mean that the bells toll in any queerer way. The analyses of phenomena such as homonormativity, bi-negativity, hierarchy of oppression do not, too, suggest that ours is not ideology. The work of historicization that queers have been doing since Foucault onwards overburdened us with levels of self-awareness unthinkable in regular academic settings. This historical work is often reducible to the insurance of the scientific defensive, itself the result of heteronormative interiorizations within us. It is for this reason that it is difficult to accept–or at least understand–why there is not a single mention of antiestablishment therapy in a book that approaches a highly ideologized field that concerns real lives, in a book where the work of much of the authors is sometimes outside, against, or questioned by the establishment. And it is for this reason that queers creatively suffer from an internalized obligation to anticipate the step forward–especially if your resistant psychotherapeutic practice is indebted to Foucault. But, as Patricia MacCormack reminds us, “Transgressive sexuality has frequently been defined through the dominant paradigms which it transgresses” (MacCormack 2005). A hidden layer of this volume invites us to think yet again for the specter of representation in queer theory and therapy itself, for what is most clear about queer here is that it is another disciplining concept. Representation and equality are often regarded together. Here, thinking psychotherapy-as-equality will be to crucially mistake priorities, namely, that undoing the heteronormative dogma is not equal to equality: it is a procedure of extending the dogma in a positive way. It is a procedure where the tyranny of the self and the accoutrements of choice (Salecl 2004: 32-3) over oneself works precisely as “the 73

Sextures 2 (2) diagnosis works as its own social pressure” (Butler 2004: 99), where the unleashing of countless possibilities of queer-identitarian terror after undoing the heterodogmas over the practice of psychotherapy will produce a circuit of other countless maladies of the soul (and queer practitioners should be ready not to misread them as social ones) just as focus group politics demands representation as the foundation of politics by disavowing it. Yes, there are many gendered anti/identities that will come forth; there are possibly those that will gradually evaporate or soften with the amelioration of the heteronormative fist. Yes, the counseling will have to be democratized, and those who are queer-informed in the lines of psychotherapy will have to educate and influence the entire scientific community of its residual straight mind. And yes, this will mean that queering psychotherapeutic models will introduce a whole set of identities whose problems have to be affirmed as such, and even then alleviated. One can hardly see how this will not be achieved without the ideology of queeras-method, especially when it is already both disciplining and an academic discipline. These chapters open rather than close such questions concerning regulation of desire, disciplining identities, ideologization of scientific methods all hidden in the scientific altar of heteronormativity. However, they unquestionably outdo issues that have yet to be questioned: that “psychotherapy is a relation of clienthood” (Rose, nd); that any notion of psycho-treatment which is liberatory has to be radically de-bourgeoisified (something which the book definitely attempts to do) and has to question its authority rather than construct, install, and exercise it (this is exactly what is missing); that where therapy itself is not regarded as the potential perpetrator of yet another pathologization (such allegedly progressive achievements as the Bockting and Coleman comprehensive treatment model and the Harry Benjamin standard rules for the care of gender identity disorder), the difference between the “choice conditioned by a diagnosis and one that is not” (Butler 2004: 75) is intrinsically blurred. Since this project overlooks the history of anti-psychiatry, it is useful to remind that if there is a lesson to be learned from Wolfgang Huber’s teachings, it is precisely that medicine is a self-automating power: He to whom medical power (violence) is disclosing itself only as an experience of powerlessness and external determination in singularisation and interchangeability, that is objectively as “object-likeness”, has indeed grasped a basic trait of this whole system (Huber 1976, emphasis mine).3

Queering the medical establishment and the psychotherapeutic terrain already presupposes that the heteronormative control is nothing short of the disease of powerlessness where it was not for the production of powerless debilitated subjects. The unbinding of the queer therapist should therefore account for its self-coercive aspect as teleological one. The counseling authority, in short, has to be stripped as powerless in both a material and 74

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Panayotov The Queer Therapist Unbound performative way (see Cooper 1978: 34). Its performative powerlessness depends on the queer power to question the authority of therapy itself and embrace it as Pathopraktik (Huber 1978). For, if it is true that the only way to live under capitalism is to be ill, then “[e]very sort of therapy … is, in reality, only the restoration of one’s capability to work, and nothing else. Either way, you will continue to remain an ill person” (Sartre 1972). For such reasons client-centeredness should sooner or later be substituted for decentering the social link that psychotherapy sustains, or else the latter might appear as an exercise in an a-historical self-perpetuation of signification. Let us remember in such context that Huber’s willing and rational delirium against psychiatry in the 70s was very close to the anti-social dimension of queer: it was set against the signifier itself in order to establish the Pathopraktik as the norm of some sort of mad people’s councils. Not opposing the signifier would then mean replacing iatrocracy with another form of it, culminating in Ersatz-iatrocracy: precisely the danger that the unbound queer therapist faces. This is why he resisted potential allies like Laing, Cooper, Basaglia, and even Sartre who supported SPK. The entire hoax that Huber produced back then is a gesture hard to understand: he wanted liberation from the liberation itself. He insisted that “against the signifiers … stands only the self-stigmatization in illness” (Huber 2003)–a depressing conclusion not the least encouraging for any practitioner resistant to heteronormativity. For this reason Huber isolated himself from the anti-psychiatric circles, seeing them as providers of socially normalized feel-good delinquency. This suggests that not being able to positively address a residuum of pathology in queerness–namely, its aberrant, anti-identitarian fulcrum, or simply: what makes queer so queer, its immanent asociality–and not willing to regard queer as the affirmation of pathology means that any project that aimed at full-scale institutional revision of heteronormativity is itself a normalizing ideology that invites to counsel you queernormatively. The avoidance of the extreme queering of psychotherapeutic establishment–letting queer’s own pathology to evolve as commonality–is definitely related with the fear of seen as deprofessionalized. Queer is a normative bound–and yet, queer has never been a profession. References Barnes, Whitney (2001) “The Medicalization of Transgenderism”, Trans-Health, (I) 1, http://transhealth.com/displayarticle.php?aid=6, accessed 1 March 2011.

Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guattari, Felix (1995) “To Have Done with the Massacre of the Body”, Chaosophy, ed. By Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e): 207-214. Halberstam, Judith (2008) “The Anti-Social Turn in Queer Studies”, Graduate Journal of Social Science, (5) 2: 140-156. Huber, Wolfgang (1978) “Iatrocracy on a World-Wide Scale”, SPK/PFH, http://www.spkpfh.de/ Iatrocracy_on_a_worldwide_scale.htm, accessed 1 March 2011. Huber, Wolfgang (2003) “Addendum”, SPK/PFH, http://www.spkpfh.de/Preface_Sartre.htm, accessed 1 March 2011. MacCormack, Patricia (2005) “Necrosexuality”, Rhizomes, 11/12, http://www.rhizomes.net/ issue11/maccormack/index.html, accessed 1 March 2011 Postić, Jelena (2005) “Transgressing Gender”, in Djurdja Knezevic (ed.), Women and Politics: Sexuality between the Local and the Global, Zagreb: Ženska Infoteka. Rachlin, Katherine (2002) “Transgender Individuals’ Experiences of Psychotherapy”, International Journal of Transgenderism, (6) 1: 1-18. Rose, Nikolas (nd) “Power in Therapy: Techne and Ethos,” Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/rose2.htm#Rose, accessed 1 March 2011. Salecl, Renata (2004) On Anxiety. London & New York: Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1972) “Crash-Down of the All Dominating Medical Doctors’ Class’ Programme”, SPK/PFH, http://www.spkpfh.de/Preface_Sartre.htm, accessed 1 March 2011.

About the author Stanimir Panayotov holds a BA in Philosophy (Sofia University, Bulgaria) and MA in Philosophy and Gender Studies (Euro-Balkan Institute, the Republic of Macedonia), and is a younger researcher and PhD student in the same establishment. He has published at the intersections of continental philosophy, gender and queer studies internationally and is also a translator in the same fields of authors such as A. Rich, Sedgwick, Halperin, Jarman, and others. He is also an activist of the Bulgarian LGBT movement for the last 10 years. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Butler, Judith (2004) Undoing Gender. London & New York: Routledge. Cooper, David (1978) “The Invention of Anti-Psychiatry”, Semiotext(e), (III) 2: 66-74. Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1983) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R Hurley, M. Seem and H. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Sextures 2 (2) ALEXANDER LAMBEVSKI [email protected] REVIEW ARTICLE



DELEUZE AND QUEER THEORY edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 189 pages.

Finally, a book that queers queer theory as we know it in its most institutionally established Butlerian Anglo-American version. Ten dissonant essays, ranging from Claire Colebrook’s brilliant analysis of Deleuze’s affirmative ontology and ethics of non-being as the condition for a queer theory that goes beyond Butler’s Foucault-inflected insistence on discursive constitutions of (sexual and gendered) subjectivities, identities, and (parodic) repetition of norms (pp.11-23)1 as the everything of queer thinking, to Jonathan Kemp’s lucid meditation on aspects of embodiment of the penetrated male body (pp. 150-167) and Crysanthi Nigianni’s schizoanalysis of lesbian desire (pp. 160-184), that theorize the concept of bodily materialism from various angles and theoretical perspectives. Understanding bodily materialism, as it is theorized in Deleuze and Queer Theory, is not for the faint hearted. There are so many fascinating lines of theoretical flight, productive 77

Copyright © 2012 Sextures, Volume 2, Issue 2

ISSN 2071-6834

“deviant lines along established [queer and Deleuzo-Guattarian] thinking” (Nigianni, p.1), staging exciting new onto-epistemological encounters and seeking theoretical resonances between thinkers, like Deleuze and Butler, usually read against each other (see Anna Hickey-Moody’s and Mary Lou Rasmussen’s article on “The Sexed Subject In-between Deleuze and Butler”, pp. 37-53). Many contributors in this book are committed to the Deleuzian attitude of practicing “philosophy as a sort of buggery or (it comes to the same thing) immaculate conception” (Deleuze 1995: 6) in order to “create new possibilities for queer theory” (Hickey-Moody and Rasmussen, p. 40). Although Foucault claimed Deleuze as the philosopher of the 21st century (Foucault 1977, cited in Shildrick, p. 127), Deleuze’s influence on queer theory and feminist studies of sexed subjectivities has been marginal compared to Foucault’s and Butler’s, “partially because…[Deleuze’s] ontology is not easily mapped over existing knowledge structures” (Hickey-Moody and Rasmussen, p. 42). These reservations about Deleuze’s work have considerably impeded “positive encounters between” (Hickey-Moody and Rasmussen, p. 42) his work and queer, lesbian and gay, and feminist studies of sexualities. Deleuze and Queer Theory goes some way in translating Deleuze into more familiar ontoepistemological idioms, yet this translation is done in a way that opens up both DeleuzoGuattarian and more established queer and feminist thinking to new becomings, “further constructions that are just as provisional, but more firmly grounded in the solid earth of experience” (Conley, p. 35). Summarizing such complex translations in the short space here is an ungrateful task, so here I will focus only on a very small number of interesting theoretical connections. This in no way suggests that any of the other connections I will not be able to mention in this review are any less interesting, or well-argued. With this disclaimer in mind, I want to focus here on a smaller number of essays in the book, beginning with Dorothea Olkowski’s essay titled “Every ‘One”–a Crowd, Making Room for the Excluded Middle” (pp. 54-71) that brings together physicist and philosopher Karen Barad’s work on the “amazing sea creature, the Brittlestar, an invertebrate related to starfish, creature that has no eyes, but is all eyes” (Olkowski, p.54), speculative cognitive science and Deleuze’s work on differentiation and repetition. Olkowski brilliantly explores many important implications of Barad’s study of the Brittlestar, with one of the most important ideas being “that nature makes and unmakes itself experimentally and that nature’s differentiations of its own material were never binary” (p. 55, original emphasis). She perceptively explores the resonances between Barad’s work and that of Gilles Deleuze, who argues that the rules for vector space apply to nature and so nature itself is associative, commutative and distributive, where mere association–as opposed to unity–means that the laws of nature distribute parts which cannot be totalized, and that nature is conjunctive, expressing itself as this and that, rather than as Being, One or Whole (p. 56)

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Lambevski Deleuze and Queer Theory Throwing also physicist Fotini Markopoulou’s work on the infinite divisibility of continuous spacetime and Intuitionistic logic, and French physiologist Cabanac’s work on the multidimensionality of sensitivity and cognition in the mix, Olkowski comes up with a speculative, but nonetheless very hopeful, theory about how “every living thing is a pointof-view that is constructed from within through its vulnerable sensitivities, and that is not constructed as a singular entity, but as a crowd” (p. 69, original emphasis). This theory “seems to hold profound implications for our self-understanding as well as our social, political, and environmental constructions” (p. 69) including all those powerful cultural binaries/signs such as “male-female, heterosexual-homosexual, rational-emotional, active-passive, and so on…” (p. 58). Luciana Parisi in a similarly impressive manner stages an intriguing encounter between Barad’s reworking of the concept of performativity in the light of Bohr’s quantum physics, and Deleuze’s philosophy of immanent desire in her essay on “The Adventures of a Sex” (pp. 72-91). Following Barad, Parisi warns “against the relativism of a [Butlerian] theory of performativity that exclusively locates action, change, dynamics in the discursive arrangement of signs, leaving behind the complex agential realist activities [of matter], which defy any splitting of the material from the discursive” (p. 79). Starting from Deleuze’s premise that there are no homosexuals, but only “homosexual productions of desire, and homosexual assemblages that produce utterances, proliferating everywhere” (Deleuze 2004: 288), Parisi embarks on exploring the “centrality of the ontology of performativity – be it discursive or material-discursive–in queer theory and consider whether this offers a challenge to psycho-bio-logic queerness as the ultimate constitutor of all modalities of sex” (p. 75). Parisi poses a radical question: is there a “politics of future sexual becoming that defies the bifurcation of culture from nature, gender from sex? (p. 75)” Most queer theorists, influenced by Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, have argued for the disentangling of queer sexuality “from the law of nature, [which is] always mediated by the cultural realm of the symbolic” (p.76), thus arguing against psychoanalysis’ claim that “naturally everyone’s a little gay”. According to this dominant view in queer theory, “performativity shows the conditions under which certain biological differences become norms of sex in certain historical periods” (p.77), and at the same time it “uproots sexual identity from the bio-cultural imperative of natural sex through the transgressive and subversive repetition of signifiers” (p.77). Performativity in this sense “does not offer an identity, but a modality of sexual transformation entangled to the productive transformation of discourses” (p. 77). However, as Parisi and some others before her have argued, this sort of social/sexual/discursive change is entirely parasitic, fully dependent of, and predetermined by, the dominant discourse, structures and ideologies that produce it (Lambevski 2005). 79

Sextures 2 (2) Barad reworks Butler’s concept of performativity to “include non-human agencies as constitutive of the reality of matter” (p. 79), thus proposing a concept of performativity that goes “beyond its anthropomorphic limitations” (p. 79). For Barad, reality is “not delimited to the linguistic or discursive acts or the human-centred vision of the body” (p. 79). Barad understands performativity not as “iterative citationality (Butler) but rather intra-activity” (Barad 2005: 212), which means “continual change is derived from actual intra-actions between the constitutive components of matter” (p. 35). Parisi, following Barad, suggests that “queer theory needs to embrace a relational ontology that rejects the metaphysics of things and the relativism of effects and that is yet able to account for the ‘role we play in the intertwined practices of knowing and becoming’ (Barad 2005: 213)” (p. 80). From this standpoint, Barad proposes the concept of quantum queerness, which encompasses both human and non-human, and which explicitly excludes “all possibilities of defining queerness from one external point of view, for example, a hetero-normative point of view of sex” (p. 80). Parisi sets this concept of quantum queerness in productive tension with Deleuze’s and Guatarri’s philosophy of immanent desire, particularly with their concepts of the abstract machine and the event. For Parisi, the abstract machine refers to a posthuman performativity, which addresses not the discursive apparatus that enables sexuality to enter a regime of repeatability of signs that can in turn subvert the discursive structure, but an apparatus that includes the material body as directly implicated in the observational construction of the meaning of how matter comes to matter (p. 89).

Sexuality, for Parisi, is not the ultimate order of the symbolic but the desire primarily implicated in the abstract feeling of what happens to the world, when mental, affective, social, aesthetic assemblages transversally combined across all scales of matter, deploy the singular engineering of each world as an event, a pure occurrence of sex (p. 89).

In his brilliant essay on “Queer Hybridity” (pp. 92-114), Mikko Tuhkanen explores the reasons for the embarrassed silence and misunderstanding with which the monism of both Gloria Anzaldua’s and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophies are greeted in dominant AngloAmerican queer theory. While careful to specify many points of “harmony, discord, similarity, divergence, correspondence or tension” (p.95) between the two thinkers, Tuhkanen convincingly argues there is a “paradigmatic agreement between their projects” (p.95, emphasis in original), since they are both engaged, contra to “practically all of their contemporaries” (p.95), in ontological contemplation. Neither Anzaldua’s nor Deleuze’s thinking can be grasped “through the philosophical perspectives that are currently hegemonic in social sciences and the humanities” (p.93), and that revolve around “the all-but-complete deconstruction of ontology and metaphysics” (p.93) by feminism and 80

Lambevski Deleuze and Queer Theory dominant queer theory. Both feminists and queers have historically had very good reasons for their suspicion of ontological inquiry which “has seemed to require the reduction of difference to identity, of multiplicity to a universalism, of the human to the man” (p.93), a reduction which has “traditionally taken place according to criteria where hegemonic particularities are universalized and where other perspectives, such as women’s [gay men’s or queers’], are rendered partial, inadequate or, simply, inconceivable” (p.93). However, without granting that both Anzaldua’s “insistence on the ‘metaphysics of interconnectedness’” in her seminal work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), and Deleuze’s continual affirmation of the positive and active force of desire proceed from ontological frameworks, it is easy to dismiss Anzaldua’s metaphysics of interconnectedness as a naïve generalization (Keating 2000, Alcoff 2006) or see Deleuze’s, Nietzsche- and Spinoza- inspired, philosophy of “affirmation, force and will-to-power as symptomatic of the theorist’s privileged immunity to pain, loss and melancholia – or, at worst, of his…protofascism” (p.95). In his essay, Tuhkanen systematically tackles such misconceptions and misreadings of Anzaldua’s and Deleuze’s work. Whatever their differences, both thinkers are philosophers of becoming. For Anzaldua, “evolution–that is, the world’s relentless change and becoming – is enabled by the consistency of being (by spirit) and the ontological interconnectedness of bodies, the fact that bodies resonate with others, find themselves partially replicated by others” (p.95). For Deleuze, becoming is an open-ended struggle between molecular and singular desiring, a concept that ontologically resonates with Anzaldua’s spirit and evolution, and the molar forces of stability and identity. This, as Tuhkanen argues, does not mean that Deleuze’s affirmation of desire inoculates “one against difficulty, suffering or disappearance, neither does it make any particular loss or extinction inevitable” (p.95). For Tuhkanen, both Anzaldua’s and Deleuze’s work map “the contact zones of such struggles” (p. 95) between being and becoming, the molecular and molar, stasis and change/evolution. Finally, Margrit Shildrick in her essay on prosthetic performativity (pp.115-133) engages in a profound meditation on how “corporeality as sexed might be differentially constituted along the designated lines” (p.118) of able-bodied and disabled morphologies. The primary aim of Shildrick’s essay is to challenge the violence and poverty of the entrenched denial of any sexuality in people with congenital or early onset disability whose corporeality, or modes of embodiment, are “both radically anomalous and resistant –either projectively or retrospectively–to normative recuperation” (p.116). Starting from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s rewriting of desire, contra Freud and Lacan, as “productive, excessive to the embodied self, and unfixed” (p.121), Shildrick develops the notion of prosthetic or intercorporeal sexuality where the organic and inorganic, “the assembly and disassembly of surprising connections, the capacity to innovate, and the productive 81

Sextures 2 (2) troubling of intentionality are all experienced by disabled people who are prepared to explore the uncharted potential of prostheses” (p.122). Shildrick lucidly explores how Foucault “prefigures the queering of desire that is associated with Deleuze” (p.123), since Foucault is interested in “what bodies can do, in how they are productive, rather than in how they respond to unconscious impulses, and in how the erotic can be redistributed to non-genital sites” (p.123). With Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of the body without organs, the focus shifts from the integrity of the whole organism to an emphasis “instead on the material and momentary event of the coming together of disparate parts, bodies need no longer be thought of as either whole or broken, able-bodied or disabled, but simply in a process of becoming through the unmapped circulation of desire” (p.123). For those habituated of thinking of queer as the non-, anti-, or contra- of dominant representational thought, this edited collection of essays will be deeply unsettling, since it decisively moves queer and queerness from the confines of the signifier, discourse, and language to the material realm of the (always composite) body’s relations with itself as the positive ground for conceiving difference that goes beyond the “majoritarian definition of minoritarian others, …product[s] of an either/or [signifying] process: an exclusionary, traumatising difference working through negation, identification and melancholy that produces different-others always stuck in inferior positions” (Nigianni, p.4). One of the major contributions of Deleuze and Queer Theory is the shattering of the myth of the origin of queer theory in Anglo-American literary criticism in the late 1980s. Rather, this collection of essays forces us to rethink everything we knew as queer theory, opening our eyes to the unusual and radical queer vistas of Deleuze’s, Guattari’s, Hocquenghem’s, Cixous’, Derrida’s and Anzaldua’s thought, whose queer writings were, in some cases, written twenty years before those of Butler’s, Sedgwick’s or Bersani’s. Despite the minor irritations of missing page references to quoted work of others in some of the essays, I found Deleuze and Queer Theory a provocatively fresh, exciting and very bold book that does not shy away from providing brilliant answers to some very tough and pertinent questions at the heart of radical queer politics: “Is after all the heterosexual matrix of imposed naturalised performances the only reality we can imagine? Is language the only air we can breathe? Is text the only land we can inhabit? Is parody the only resistance we can imagine?” (Nigianni, p. 3). For all the contributors in Deleuze and Queer Theory the answer to all these questions is one hopeful and resounding NO.

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Guidelines for contributors

Lambevski Deleuze and Queer Theory References

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Alcoff, Linda (2006) “The Unassimilated Theorist,” PMLA (121)1: 255-259. Anzaldua, Gloria (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute. Barad, Karen (2005) “Posthumanist Performativity”, Materialitaet Denken, Bielefelsd: Verlag. Deleuze, Gilles (1995) Negotiations, translation by M. Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles (2004) “Preface to Hocquenghem’s L’Apres-Mai des faunes,” Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), pp. 284-288. Foucault, Michel (1977) “Intellectuals and Power,” in D.F. Bouchard (ed) Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keating, AnaLouise. (2000) “Risking the Personal: An Introduction,” in Gloria Anzaldua, Interviews/Entrevistas. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-15. Lambevski, S. Alexander (2005) “Schizo Vibes and Hallucinatory Desires: Sexualities in Movement,” Sexualities, (8)5: 570-586.

About the author Dr Alexander Lambevski is a founding editor and publisher of Sextures, director of Mandrake.ATM and an independent scholar from Sydney, Australia. He worked as a research fellow at the National Centre in HIV Social Research at the University of New South Wales between 1998 and 2002, and remained affiliated with the centre until 2009. His main research interests lie in the interface between gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality, citizenship; queer theory and the history, anthropology and sociology of emotions. He has published numerous peer reviewed papers in international journals as well as chapters in edited books on the mentioned topics. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Objectives and scope of the journal

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Sextures provides a forum for open intellectual debate across the arts, humanities and social sciences about all aspects affecting the intricate connections between politics, culture and sexuality primarily, but not exclusively, in the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe. It aims to offer new and challenging debates on sexualities to academic and non-academic audiences in these regions and globally.

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All articles submitted to the e-journal will be refereed by members of the editorial/advidory boards and external referees. We are seeking articles, essays, reviews, visual and audio material, or artwork in a wide range of disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences. Reading our concept and previous published issues will help you get a sense of the kinds of work and approaches we intend to publish. If in doubt email us. We are particularly interested in, although not limited to, the following topics: • • •

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Sexual or intimate citizenship Intersections, of ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, gender, sexuality and geopolitical locations Critiques of Western epistemic hegemony in queer theory, gay and lesbian studies, queer studies, LGBTQI studies, women’s studies and sexuality studies Emotions, intimacies and sexualities Human rights and sexual identities Reproductive rights of women Geographies of sexualities The interface between ethnicity, class, religion, age, gender and sexuality Sexual identities/sexual communities Sex tourism Representations of sexualities in the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe, including pornography and mass media communications of sexualities All aspects of sex work (health, criminal, social, etc.) Globalization of sexualities

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Postsocialist transition and the diversification of sexualities Social aspects of health and sexuality (including the links between drug/alcohol use and sex work, drugs and sex, HIV, HEP C) Cultural representations of HIV/AIDS in the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe Commercialization of sex and sexualities Internet and sex/sexualities Methodologies for research in sexuality studies Sexual politics Nationalism and sex/sexuality Love and intimacy Key thinkers and theories of sexuality Queer ethics Queer theory Gendering of sexualities Transgressive sexualities Sex at work Sexual harassment and sexual violence Feminism and sexualities Traditional/unconventional masculinities and sexualities Narrative of sexualities Youth pregnancy and adolescent sexualities Gender blending/transitioning Constructions of deviant sexualities as national threats in discourses of national securities Sex in schools and sex education Bodies and sexualities Moral panics and the regulations of sex and sexual identities Politicization of sex and sexualization of politics Stigma, shame, sex and love

Sextures also welcomes book reviews; interviews; reviews of films and film festivals; reviews of video clips; panel discussions and debates; photographs and accompanying material; audio and video clips; information about undergraduate and postgraduate courses in sexualities in the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe; relevant calls for grant or research proposals, information about donors supporting research in the area of sexualities in the above mentioned regions; information about activist projects in the area of lesbian, gay, transgender and women’s rights; antigay violence projects, anti-trafficking projects; HIV/HEP C prevention projects; bibliographies of sex research in the Balkans,

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Guidelines for contributors Central and Eastern Europe; conference announcements and reports; etc. Submission of manuscripts Sextures does accept relevant unsolicited manuscripts, book reviews, bibliographic essays or any other material that meets our publication guidelines. Feel free to send us your manuscripts at anytime. Based on a successful review of your work, we will contact you with an offer to publish your work. Manuscripts or other types of publication input are accepted only on the understanding that the proposed work is not being considered for publication anywhere else. The editorial board and/or external referees will provide constructive feedback. Manuscript preparation Original papers should not normally exceed 10000 words. However, we are very happy to consider excellent, substantial and original essays well in excess of the prescribed word limit. Reviews should be no longer than words. You must upload your paper through the authors’ page on our website (www.sextures. net.authors). Ensure that your paper includes: 1. title page with title and author; 2. abstract page: the abstract should be about 150 words, plus 5 key words: 3. the text of the article; 4. endnotes (but please keep these to an absolute minimum); 5. fully checked reference section following Harvard style with authors and dates bracketed in the text (author surname, year of publication: page number); and 6. a separate page with the full details of the author/s, their current affiliation, email details, plus a short biographical note (no longer than 100 words). Please use non-racist, non-sexist and nonhomophobic language. We prefer the use of plurals rather than he/she. Sextures editors are accessible only via email or internet communication. You can incorporate short documents, like abstracts for articles or reviews, in the body of an email message. Larger documents should be emailed as attachments in Microsoft Word (.doc), Apple Pages or RTF (.rtf) format. Please do not send us PDF or HTML documents. Our preferred format is Minion Pro, 12 point, 1.5 line spaced, both sides aligned. Headings should be in bold on a separate line, but otherwise the same

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as the main text. Long quotations should be indented, single line spaced, and indented for 1 cm from the the normal text on each side. Leave a blank line between paragraphs and do not tab new paragraphs. It helps us immensely if you keep the formatting in your manuscript to a minimum. Please submit images or audio/video clips as separate files, indicating where they should appear in your text. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders to publish material in any media already published somewhere else. Use double quotation marks with single quotes inside double quotes. Dates should be presented in the form 3 April 2008. Do not use points in abbreviations, contractions or acronyms (e.g. AD, USSR, PR China, Dr, PhD, MA).

is made on publication of the special issue. For more details visit www.sextures.net/editors or contact the editor at [email protected]. Editors of special issues will be usually responsible for soliciting material, soliciting peer reviewers for submitted material, communicating in a timely fashion with contributors, peer reviewers and the publisher of Sextures, and for preparing material that has passed the review process for publication in Sextures in accordance with Sextures’ guidelines for contributors. Sextures will electronically publish the issue on its website, and reserves the right to discretion over content relating to issues of legal liability, fair comment, quality and length.

We accept contributions using both British and US spellings as long they are done consistently. By submitting their work to Sextures, authors of original papers assign copyright of their work to Sextures. However, authors retain their right to reuse the material in other publications written or edited by themselves and due to be published preferably at least one year after the initial publication in Sextures, with a prior written notice to Sextures. Special issues and guest editors We welcome proposals for special issues of the e-journal. We are hoping to develop a great deal of content using independent editors and editorial teams, who will be given all the freedom to pursue their proposals and ideas. Thanks to funding from Mandrake.ATM for development of young academic editors, Sextures offers financial incentives to guest editors to produce a special issue. Please send us a preliminary email briefly outlining the subject or topic you would like to cover in a special issue, rationale, editorship and potential contributors. We may ask you to provide a full proposal. Once your proposal is accepted the publisher will make an agreement with you over the content, size and management of the special issue. Payment

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