Making Difference: Queer Activism and Anthropological Theory

After Difference. Queer Activism in Italy and Anthropological Theory by Paolo Heywood is a twofold book. On the one hand, it presents ethnographic research on a variety of issuesthe meaning of 'left-wing', the notion of 'double morality', and queer/LGBT activismwith 'difference' as their overarching theme and Bologna as their location. On the other hand, it engages with the nature of anthropological theory, and specifically with 'the relationship between ethnographic objects and analytical categories' (p. 6), a relationship that is characterized by irreducible 'difference'. The structure of the book reflects this twofold focus, as it is clearly divided in ethnographic and theoretical sections, which do not inform each other and are instead brought together by the common theme of difference. By keeping the two elements separate, Heywood explicitly makes the point that ethnography and anthropological theory are different from one another, and that such a difference should not be overcome or reduced but rather kept alive and constantly produced. The notion of bringing together through a relation of difference is also, Heywood argues, what creates an analogy between queer activism and anthropology. They both value and produce differencethe difference between activists, between groups, and between these and heteronormative society, on the one hand; the difference between ethnography and anthropological concepts, on the other.

WHEN I WAS invited to write about queer activism in Italy, my reaction was totally enthusiastic, as it would be a chance to combine my PhD research issues (the geographies of social movements) with my interest and engagement in queer politics. Nevertheless, when assembling ideas and developing the main argument, I struggled to identify a unitary social movement I could refer to as queer activism in Italy. Looking back on the literature on the diffusion of queer theory and practice in Italy (e.g. Pustianaz 2010; 2011; Scarmoncin 2012), I realized the source of my concerns: the reception and translation of queer (intended as a theory, an adjective, a noun, a verb, and/or a political practice) among Italian activists beyond the academic sphere. Who is currently using the adjective/ verb queer to identify their political practice of sexual dissidence in the Italian context? Do the people I think of, and refer to, as queer activists really define themselves as queer subjects? What are the relations between the use of queer and that of frocia (literally fag in the feminine form) among militants?

Gender/sexuality/Italy 6, 2019

This article explores some aspects of the relationship between feminism and queer in Italy today. There are significant areas where these two discursive and political paradigms have established and continue to establish productive, mutually reinforcing conversations and alliances. In other contexts, however, a sheer tension has emerged between the two, rooted in diverging views of the pivotal notion of "sexual difference." The article sets out to investigate and compare queer and feminist approaches to difference, reflecting critically on a number of scholarly, newspaper and blog articles that inform the current queer-feminist debate in Italy. On the one hand, it asks whether queer theory and activism have been misrepresented in these contexts, and how queer studies have responded to the critiques that have been addressed to queer theory and political practice. On the other hand, it points out how queer discourses have also partly misconstrued the positions and motivations of "sexual difference" feminism, at times relying on a form of linear temporality whereby queer fluidity would replace an "outdated" feminism. The article then looks at instances where a fruitful relationship between queer and feminism is established in academia and activism, especially in the recent development of transfeminism and the national network of Non una di meno.

Queer Studies: Methodological Approaches. Follow-up, 2009

In December 2008, the Graduate Journal of Social Science published a special issue on Queer Methodologies. During the production of that issue, we received a number of qualified and thought-provoking articles, focusing on the issue of queer methodologies from different angles. Indeed, the number and quality of submitted articles was so significant that we have decided to publish an additional, extracurricular, issue. This follow-up issue is a continuation of ideas we proposed in the first call for papers. It is thou an interesting “supplement” to the previous issue, enriching the already broad scope of interests presented. In this issue, the inquiries of the translation of queer are further problematised. While the December issue focused on the relationship between queer and geo- political contexts and academic cultures, the articles in current issue are focusing on the past, present and future of queer, further questioning the notion of “location’ and trans-historically located practises.

Italian Studies, 2019

This article investigates the multifaceted theoretical orientations and political concerns of, and the urgent need for, queer Italian studies. Critically reflecting on the current social, cultural, political, and economic positions of LGBTQIA+ identified individuals and other minoritised people in Italy, the article maps out diverse but convergent ways of understanding the urgent public and institutional need for interdisciplinary approaches to embodied and theoretical Italian queerness, and the potential impact of this research, activism, and pedagogy. After an exploration into the traces that link queer Italian studies to historical research and feminist history and an elaboration of what a queer Italian pedagogy looks like, this article urges us to look across marginalised publics, so that by using these variegated geopolitical and theoretical positions, languages and praxes, those both inside and outside academia can collectively inform and further the discipline of queer Italian studies.

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1999

This article seeks to investigate the meaning of the term queer in the post-migratory setting of Italian-Canadian and Italian-North American women writers, and constitutes thus a contribution to recent studies which project the notion of queer within a diasporic framework. Specifically, it aims at analysing the ways in which the term has been recontextualised in this transnational context with reference to issues of ethnicity. Within cultural theory the concepts of 'queer' and 'diaspora' have been informed by post-modern and post-colonial theory and have intervened on theories of time, space and identity infusing them with notions of transgression, contingency, power and conflict. This study is based on the analysis of excerpts taken from short stories and poems in Curraggia: Writings by Women of Italian Descent, an anthology edited by three second generation Italian/Canadian lesbian and feminist writers (as they define themselves), published in 1998 by Women Press, ...

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2004

Lambda Nordica: Nordic-based journal on LGBTQ Studies, 2017

Creating space for claiming and articulating difference is at the heart of discussions about sexual diversity. Yet, discourses of sexual diversity themselves sometimes entail normative and exclusive mechanisms. Using the concept of disidentification, this paper engages with counter-narratives from civil society actors supporting sexual and ethnic diversity in the Netherlands and Flanders that are critical of a dominant framework of 'proper gayness'. This framework prescribes a self-centred coming-out logic that neglects and forecloses subjectivities that entail religiosity, commitment to ethnic community and queerness simultaneously. We coin ethnosexual subjectivity to analyse these civil society actor's critical, creative and sometimes affirmative accounts of queerness through inhabiting complex positions, and utilise the notions of space, specificity and diversity. As co-producers of knowledge about sexual diversity, these actors employ the notions of " coming-in " , " multiple-identification " and " self-acceptance " as a way to broaden the available space for sexual diversity, while being partly implicated in stigmatising politics of cultural and ethnic difference. I want to suggest, then, an important imaginary of society that is made up of micro worlds in which sexual lives are conducted at a distance from the dominant hegemonic order. […] There are multiple differences in practice, in legitimacies, in visibilities. (Plummer 2015, 117–8) The above quote conveys what is at stake for many critical academics and/or civil society agents in the field of sexual diversity; sexual diversity as difference, visibility, legitimacy and (in)equality. In this article, we aim to unravel and analyse sexual counter-narratives in two West-European contexts, namely the Netherlands and Flanders. We specifically look at how two organisations aiming at supporting sexual and ethnic diversity construct discourses that are critical of existing ideas about what constitutes " normal " non-heterosexual subjectivity, but at the same time cannot entirely escape the dominant discursive context they are part of. We argue that sexual counter-narratives are constructed through an emphasis on differences in the encounter with dominant assumptions about non-heterosexual identities and lives. We underline the importance of taking the postcolonial context seriously, in which power differentials shape which sexual identities and lives are socially and culturally (more) legible and considered to be in need of official support. A postcolonial perspective, for us, comes down to an epistemological standpoint that takes voices of ethnicised (Krebbekx et al. 2016) or migrant communities as a starting point for rethinking questions of gender, sexuality and queerness. Stacy Douglas et al. (2011, 108) point at the necessity in the contemporary political landscape of " queer antiracist critique, " which the authors characterise as a " form of intersectional critique " that " serves as a tool for building spaces and movements that are committed to interrogating gender and sexuality norms. " The queer antiracist critique that we adopt in this article not only engages in analytical critical deconstruction, but also simultaneously commits itself to creating space for claiming and articulating differences.