From Orientalism to Homonationalism: Queer Politics, Islamophobia and Europeanization in Kosovo
In: Southeastern EuropeSearch for other papers by Piro Rexhepi in
Current site
Google Scholar
This paper investigates the convergence of European Union enlargement strategies and queer politics in the production of Islamophobia in Kosovo. Through a reading of recent homophobic attacks in Kosovo, it examines how the incorporation of lgbti politics into the eu enlargement assemblages generate a representational praxis of queer communities in Kosovo under threat by Muslim extremists. This paper proposes that the Europeanization of lgbti rights depoliticizes queer communities and singles them out for protection as victims of Islamic fundamentalism by creating binary and exclusionary Queer/Islam divisions that prevent the emergence of intersectional solidarities and subjectivities such as queer and Muslim. In this context, European financed ‘coming out’ projects gain a new meaning in Kosovo, one where the promotion of visibility for certain queer subjects works simultaneously to expose Muslim ‘extremists’. Queer acceptance in Islamophobic times, then, becomes the ultimate test of who can and cannot become European citizen.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Amato, G. and International Commission on the Balkans. 2005. The Balkans in Europe’s Future. (Sofia: Centre for Liberal Strategies).
-
Ambrose D.2009. “Beyond the Kosovo rainbow: Today’s gay people trapped in a deadly past”, <http://dominicambrose.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/beyond-the-kosovo-rainbow/> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Atanasoski N.2013. Humanitarian Violence: The us Deployment of Diversity. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota).
-
Ayoub P., and Paternotte D.. 2014. lgbt Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe? (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
-
Birca M. 2009. “eu visa policy accused of creating Muslim ghettos”, <http://eurasia.ro/?p=26791> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Butler J.2008. “Sexual politics, torture, and secular time”, British Journal of Sociology, 59 (1): 1–23.
-
Chamseddine R. 2012. “Amnesty International: nato, ‘Keep the progress going’”, <https://collateraldamagemagazine.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/amnesty -international-nato-keep-the-progress-going/>.
-
Council of the European Union. 2013. “Guidelines to promote and protect the enjoyment of all human rights by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti) persons”, <www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/foraff/137584.pdf> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
El-Tayeb F.2012. “‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city”, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 19 (1), 79–95.
-
Embassy of the United States. 2012. “U.S. Embassy statement concerning violence targeting lgbt community”, <http://pristina.usembassy.gov/statement_concerning_violence_targeting_lgbt_community.html> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
eulex. 2013. “Indictment filed in Kosovo 2.0 Case”, <www.eulex-kosovo.eu/en/pressreleases/0482.php> (accessed 30 September 2014).
-
eulex. 2014. “Kosovo 2.0 verdict”, <www.eulex-kosovo.eu/en/pressreleases/0568.php> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
European Union Office in Kosovo. 2014. “Challenging homophobia: Building support systems for lgbt people in Kosovo”, <www.kosovoprojects.eu/en/content/challenging-homophobia-building-support-systems-lgbt-people-kosovo> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Fauchier A. 2014. “Kosovo: what does the future hold for lgbt people?” <www.fmreview.org/sogi/fauchier> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Foucault M., 1999. “The incitement to discourse”, 491–498, in Jaworski A., and Coupland N. (eds.), The Discourse Reader. (London and New York: Routledge).
-
Fowler A. 2014. “Same-sex marriage legal in Kosovo?”, <www.hrc.org/blog/same-sex-marriage-legal-in-kosovo> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Unlimited Free Press. 2011. “Kosovo 2.0, the other side”, <www.freepressunlimited.org/en/news/kosovo-20-the-other-side> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Global Detention Project. 2014. “Hungary detention details at the global detention project”, <www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/europe/hungary/introduction.html> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Golden T. 2007. “Chinese leave Guantánamo for Albanian limbo”, <www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/world/europe/10resettle.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Halberstam J., 2013. “The wild beyond: With and for the undercommons”, 2–14, in Harney S., and Moten F. (eds.), The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. (Brooklyn: Autonomedia).
-
Haritaworn J. K., 2012. “Wounded subjects: Sexual exceptionalism and the moral panic on ‘migrant homophobia’ in Germany”, 135–152, in Boatcă M. M., , Costa S., and Rodríguez E. G. (eds.), Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing).
-
Heiland A., , Comet T., and Reintke T.. 2013. “Anne, Teo and Terry go to Kosovo: What can possibly go wrong?”, <www.fyeg.org/news/anne-teo-and-terry-go-kosovo—what-can-possibly-go-wrong> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Hudson G. M., 2008. “Europe with America”, 37–52, in Miessen M. (ed.), East Coast Europe. (Berlin: Sternberg Press ).
-
Ker-Lindsay A., and Economides S.. 2012. “Standards before status before accession: Kosovo’s eu Perspective”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 14 (1): 77–92.
-
Kovacevic N.2008. Narrating Post/Communism: Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Borderline Civilization. (New York: Routledge).
-
Kulpa R.2014. “Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe: Discourses of homophobia, tolerance, and nationhood”, Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 21 (4): 431–448.
-
Kuus M.2004. “Europe’s Eastern expansion and the reinscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe”, Progress in Human Geography, 28 (4): 472–489.
-
Luçi B. 2013. “The sex issue, one year later: The debate is more important than the attack”, <www.kosovotwopointzero.com/en/article/935/the-sex-issue-one-year-later-the-debate-is-more-important-than-the-attack> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Manalansan M.F. IV. 2003. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
-
Massad, J. A. 2015. Islam in Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
-
Mepschen P., , Duyvendak J.W., and Tonkens E.. 2010. “Sexual politics, orientalism and multicultural citizenship in the Netherlands”, Sociology, 44 (5): 962–979.
-
Marku H. 2014. “The enemy within: Kosovo’s moral crusaders”, <www.kosovotwopointzero.com/en/article/1027/the-enemy-within-kosovos-moral-crusaders> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Mindry D.2001. “Nongovernmental organizations, ‘grassroots’, and the politics of virtue”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26 (4): 1187–1211.
-
Papantonopoulou S.2014. “‘Even a freak like you would be safe in Tel Aviv’: Transgender subjects, wounded attachments, and the Zionist economy of gratitude”, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 42 (1): 278–293.
-
Puar J. K.2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
-
Puar J. K.2013. “Rethinking homonationalism”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45 (2): 336–339.
-
Quinones M. 2013. “Kosovo 2.0: Defining a new nation”, <http://thenewcontext.milanoschool.org/kosovo-2-0-defining-a-new-nation> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Rahman M.2014. “Queer rights and the triangulation of Western exceptionalism”, Journal of Human Rights, 13 (3): 274–289.
-
Rexhepi P. (2016). “EUrientation Anxieties: Islamic Sexualities and the Construction of Europeaness,” in Krajna, Zlatan, and Blanuša (eds.), Europe Unfinished: eu and the Western Balkans in a Time of Crisis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield).
-
Robelli E. 2012. “Faith led astray”, <http://issuu.com/vanlennep/docs/religion_english?e=0/1100072#search> (accessed 30 September 2014).
-
Robelli E. 2013. “A place for space”, <www.kosovotwopointzero.com/en/article/876/a-place-for-space> (accessed 30 September 2014).
-
Rao R. 2012. “On ‘gay conditionality’, imperial power and queer liberation”, <http://kafila.org/2012/01/01/on-gay-conditionality-imperial-power-and-queer-liberation-rahul-rao/#more-11088> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Richmond O. P.2009. “Becoming liberal, unbecoming liberalism: Liberal-local hybridity via the everyday as a response to the paradoxes of liberal peacebuilding”, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 3 (3): 324–344.
-
Rudaku A. 2012. “‘The night of sex’ and the lgbt cultural conflict”, <www.kosova-sot.info/print/nata-e-seksit-dhe-konflikti-kulturor-mbi-lgbtne> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Scott J. W.2011. The Fantasy of Feminist History. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
-
Schulman S. 2011. “Israel and ‘pinkwashing’”, <www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r=0> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Seyward D. 2013. “Kosovo’s homophobia”, <www.kosovotwopointzero.com/en/article/665/kosovos-homophobia> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Tekin A.2005. “Future of Turkey–eu relations: A civilisational discourse”, Futures, 37 (4): 287–302.
-
Todorova M.N.1997. Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press).
-
Visoka G.2011. “International governance and local resistance in Kosovo: The thin line between ethical, emancipatory and exclusionary politics”, Irish Studies in International Affairs 22 (1): 99–125.
-
Wessels E.2011. “Becoming Žižek’s neighbor: Alterity, affect, and network in popular culture and policy at the 10th anniversary of 9/11”, International Journal of Žižek Studies 6(2), <http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/390/439> (accessed on 27 November 2015).
-
Woodcock S., 2004. “Globalisation of lgbt identities: Containment masquerading as salvation, or why lesbians have less fun”, 1–13, in Frunză M., and Văcărescu T. E. (eds.), Gender and the (Post)“East”/“West” Divide (Cluj-Napoca: Limes).
-
Xharra B. 2014. “Radical Islam: The next blow to Kosovo”, <http://zeri.info/artikulli/35849/islami-radikal-goditje-e-radhes-ndaj-kosoves> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Zuin M., and Apostolidis K.. 2008. “On constitution writing: The case of Kosovo: Interview with Professor Louis Aucoin”, Praxis, 23: 123–128.
-
Zeqiri B.2014. Documentary: stigma. Produced by Blerta Zeqiri <www.eulex-kosovo.eu/en/news/000495-a.php> (accessed on 30 September 2014).
-
Žižek S.2008. Violence: Six sideways reflections. (London: Profile Books).
-
4
For more on this, see Rexhepi (2016).
-
6
For instance, in 2009, the Young Federalist European Movement accused the eu of creating Muslim ghettos with its visa policies when the eu approved new visa regimes that allow Macedonian, Montenegrin, and Serbian citizens to travel into the eu but not Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, and Turkey—all majority Muslim countries. See: Birca (2009).
-
7
See: Richmond (2009).
-
10
See, for instance, Rao (2012).
-
11
See also Žižek (2008).
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2552 | 381 | 51 |
| Full Text Views | 470 | 18 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 544 | 101 | 0 |
From Orientalism to Homonationalism: Queer Politics, Islamophobia and Europeanization in Kosovo
In: Southeastern EuropeSearch for other papers by Piro Rexhepi in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This paper investigates the convergence of European Union enlargement strategies and queer politics in the production of Islamophobia in Kosovo. Through a reading of recent homophobic attacks in Kosovo, it examines how the incorporation of lgbti politics into the eu enlargement assemblages generate a representational praxis of queer communities in Kosovo under threat by Muslim extremists. This paper proposes that the Europeanization of lgbti rights depoliticizes queer communities and singles them out for protection as victims of Islamic fundamentalism by creating binary and exclusionary Queer/Islam divisions that prevent the emergence of intersectional solidarities and subjectivities such as queer and Muslim. In this context, European financed ‘coming out’ projects gain a new meaning in Kosovo, one where the promotion of visibility for certain queer subjects works simultaneously to expose Muslim ‘extremists’. Queer acceptance in Islamophobic times, then, becomes the ultimate test of who can and cannot become European citizen.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2552 | 381 | 51 |
| Full Text Views | 470 | 18 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 544 | 101 | 0 |
