A Queer Strategy of Equivocation: The destabilisation of normative heterosexuality and the rigid binary gender order

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antke Engel
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
Sexual Ambiguity ◽  
Queer Politics ◽  
Binary Gender

The critique of identity politics has opened up a sceptical attitude towards normative categories and demands for the coherence and stability of sex, gender and sexuality. At the same time reflections on mechanisms of exclusion within emancipatory movements and politics have also gained attention. Thus, not only (hetero-)sexism and homophobia, but also discriminations pertaining to the rigid binary gender order as well as racist discrimination are issues of importance to queer politics. Considering the critique of identity or minority politics, I have come to the conclusion that rather than to proliferate or to dissolve categories of sex, gender and sexuality, it is more promising to render them ambiguous: that is what I call a queer strategy of equivocation. Nevertheless sexual ambiguity is not progressive or liberating in itself. Instead, we have to realize that queer/feminist struggles against normative identities, a destabilization of binary, heterosexual norms or new forms of gendered or sexual existence are quite compatible with the quest for individualization put forth by neo-liberal forms of domination. Therefore, a strategy of equivocation should include the fight against social hierarchies, inequalities, and normalizations. The task is to consider simultaneously the working of and the intervention into different mechanisms of power; normalizations and hierarchizations, inclusions and exclusions work together, but not always in the same direction or without contradictions.

Organizing for Economic Justice in The Late 1960s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Martin Luther King

Shortly before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched the Poor People’s Campaign that aimed to highlight the links between economic and racial injustice. Although t 1960s are usually characterized as a period in which race, gender and sexuality were the key identity issues for American protest, this chapter brings to the fore issues of class and poverty. From SCLC to labor unions to coalitions of African American single mothers, a range of activist organizations waged their own wars on poverty, putting into action the poverty tours that Robert Kennedy conducted in the mid-1960s and accounts such as socialist Michael Harrington’s influential 1962 book The Other America. These organizations worked at the intersections between economic and identity politics. Their successes and failures account for the new, often regressive contours of political action, discourse and policy around class and poverty in the following decades, and the re-emergence of a progressive vision in contemporary protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

Managing the Postcolony: Minority Politics in Montpellier,c.1960–c.2010

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILE CHABAL
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Fifth Republic ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Jewish Populations

AbstractUsing the case study of Montpellier, this article explores the relationship between local political actors and postcolonial minorities since the end of the Algerian War – particularly, the city's pied-noir, harki, Moroccan and Jewish populations. It examines the discourses used to secure the electoral allegiances of these groups and the myriad ways in which they laid claim to certain civic and political spaces. It employs diverse oral, archival and audio-visual sources to demonstrate how postcolonial minorities have gained important concessions from local authorities and how identity politics has developed under the Fifth Republic, despite France's strong republican tradition.

scholarly journals DEMOCRACY, POLITICAL IDENTITY, AND THE FATE OF MINORITY POLITICS: REFLECTIONS TOWARDS INDONESIA’S NATIONAL CONCURRENT ELECTIONS IN 2024

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2(36)) ◽  
pp. 14-22
Author(s):  
SAMOSIR OSBIN
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
Long Time ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Depth Interviews

The 2019 and 2014 General Elections in Indonesia was laden with religious identity politics. The election of the DKI Jakarta Governor in 2017 confirmed the politics of religious identity. People were fed up of continuing the democratic process because black and dirty campaigns ruined elections. The Indonesia’s democratic posture is getting worse. Presidential candidates were also divided into the Allah party for supporters of Islamic religious identity and the Ibilis party branded for those who opposed. The principles of democracy, namely respect for human dignity, exclusion of primordial issues, open and fair elections, freedom for voters are actually lost and damage Indonesian democracy. For a long time, the issue of religious identity politics was the most dangerous for democracy and a healthy political process in Indonesia. How was the fate of Christian politicians in such bad religious identity politics at that time when they were nominated by political parties from strong Islam-based regions? The personal attitude of Christian candidates who can be trusted between their words and deeds, speaking less but doing more is able to transcend fears in the politics of religious identity. This research looks at the 2019 and 2014 General Elections to be a reflection towards the 2024 Simultaneous General Elections through in-depth interviews and literature reviews.

5. New Waves of Theorizing in Global Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Almost All

This chapter evaluates new modes of theorizing in global politics. These are based on long-standing concerns in social and political theory and all of them involve identity politics in one way or another—a form of politics in which an individual’s membership of a group, based on certain distinctive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, acquires significant political salience and is implicated in hierarchies of power. It follows that identity itself involves issues of both who an individual is, and who that individual is not. This involves not just self-identification or self-definition, but is also mediated by the perceptions of others. In some cases there are connections with social movements concerned with issues of justice and equality in both domestic and global spheres. In almost all cases the specific issues of concern, and their theorization, have come relatively late to the agenda of global politics and so may be said to constitute a ‘new wave’ of theorizing in the discipline. The chapter looks at feminism, gender theory, racism, cultural theory, colonialism, and postcolonial theory.

Male parody, sketch comedy and cultural subversion : the work of Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Deveau
Keyword(s):  
Gender Performance ◽  
Performance Techniques ◽  
Sketch Comedy ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Gender Constructions ◽  
Queer Politics ◽  
Binary Gender

"Male Parody, Sketch Comedy and Cultural Subversion" is a Master's thesis that analyzes the male performances of Canadian comedians Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith. Queer and feminist scholars suggest that subversive gender performance techniques such as camp can destabilize compulsory heteronormativity and binary gender constructions. Through the study of sketch comics Thompson, Mercer and Smith, it is evident that a range of masculine performances, both implicitly and explicitly in support of queer politics, are supported within popular comedy and Canadian maninstream media. The diverse comic techniques used by these actors prove effective in critiquing aspects of patriarchy, masculinity and heteronormativity as well as questioning essentialist assumptions behind social notions of hierarchy and marginality.

Class and Performance in the Age of Global Capitalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL MURPHY
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Economic Stratification ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Sociological Approaches

This article addresses the relative absence of class-based analysis in theatre and performance studies, and suggests the reconfiguration of class as performance rather than as it is traditionally conceived as an identity predicated solely on economic stratification. It engages with the occlusion of class by the ascendancy of identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality and its attendant theoretical counterparts in deconstruction and post-structuralism, which became axiomatic as they displaced earlier methodologies to become hegemonic in the arts and humanities. The article proceeds to an assessment of the development of sociological approaches to theatre, particularly the legacy of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. The argument concludes with the application of an approach which reconfigures class as performance to the production of Declan Hughes's play Shiver of 2003, which dramatizes the consequences of the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s for ambitious members of the Irish middle class.

Strange Fruit: A Performance about Identity Politics

2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Patrick Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
A Performance

Each of the eight movements of Johnson's performance reflects a different aspect of his identity around which his queerness pivots. The movements range from drag to black masculinity to how Johnson negotiated race, gender, and sexuality in Ghana. Johnson's performance—utilizing slides, music, voice-overs, and dance— encouraged audience participation.

Circulating Visions of ‘High Islam’: The Adoption of Fantasy Middle Eastern Architecture in Constructing Malaysian National Identity

Urban Studies ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (13) ◽  
pp. 2913-2935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Moser
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Diverse Population ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Architectural Change

This paper examines how growing conservatism among Muslims in Malaysia has been manifested in the architecture and urban design of Putrajaya, Malaysia’s new capital. Rather than drawing on vernacular design traditions or developing a design idiom that recognises a religiously and ethnically diverse population, the state has recently adopted a fantasy Middle Eastern style for secular national buildings in Putrajaya. In this paper, recent architectural change is examined as a manifestation of social, political and religious trends as well as a demonstration of how Putrajaya’s design can reinforce existing social hierarchies and legitimise the ideological agenda of the state. It is suggested that there are various reasons for the adoption of ‘High Islam’ that relate to broader transnational religious change, Malaysian identity politics and nation-building, and lingering influences of the colonial occupation.

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