Europeanisation, LGBT Activism, and Non-Heteronormativity in the Post-Yugoslav Space: An Introduction

‘When one doesn't even exist’: Europeanization, trans* subjectivities and agency in Cyprus

“…As the argument goes, Europeanization is not a linear process towards progress, and it serves to mask the major ‘west’ European powers’ colonial legacy. By citing the mushrooming of transnational LGBTI NGOs, these powers legitimate their self-assigned role as saviours of repressed minorities in ‘backward’ cultures, whom they leave devoid of agency (Bilić, 2016; Rahman, 2014; Renkin, 2016; Rexhepi, 2016; Sadurní et al., 2017). 6…”

“…Bilić (2016), for example, also problematizes ‘Europe’ as the panacea for LGBTI inequality and sees Europeanization as a dynamic process in which ways of governing and being governed are constantly contested (Bilić, 2016: 6). However, the author finds more ground in arguments that see this process – and the ensuing LGBTI politics – as one that uncritically emulates ‘Western models while ignoring, misinterpreting, or effectively remaining disengaged from local grievances’ (Bilić, 2016: 12). Therefore, Europeanization ‘reflects, refracts, and reproduces long-standing asymmetries and power differentials’, between core and non-core EU countries and within non-core EU contexts (Bilić, 2016: 6).…”

“…However, the author finds more ground in arguments that see this process – and the ensuing LGBTI politics – as one that uncritically emulates ‘Western models while ignoring, misinterpreting, or effectively remaining disengaged from local grievances’ (Bilić, 2016: 12). Therefore, Europeanization ‘reflects, refracts, and reproduces long-standing asymmetries and power differentials’, between core and non-core EU countries and within non-core EU contexts (Bilić, 2016: 6). This approach does not annihilate local actors’ agency either but, in treating it as a set of collective but internally heterogenous, divergent and conflicting struggles for social change, it places more emphasis on its implication in the perpetuation of power differentials and the depoliticization of non-normative identities than on its role in eliminating these differentials and enabling multiple and complex identities and subjectivities (Bilić, 2016: 8; Brković, 2014; Butterfield, 2016; Rexhepi, 2016).…”

“…The effects of the Europeanization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* 1 and intersex (LGBTI) human rights discourses and activism paradigms on national LGBTI communities have been extensively discussed (e.g. Ayoub, 2013, 2015, 2016; Bilić, 2016; Brković, 2014; Rexhepi, 2016; Slootmaeckers and Touquet, 2016; Swimelar, 2016). 2 Nonetheless, these effects on trans* people and politics in the margins of ‘Europe’ have received less attention (e.g.…”

The Common Language of Discipline: “Nesting Pedagogy” and Alternative Subject Positions in Power in Serbia

“…In the discussion above we have seen how European values and sexual citizenship have increasingly become discursive instruments for homonationalist practices of dividing European space into the properly European and the homophobic Other whose European identity is yet to be attained. 5 The discursive deployment of unequal sexual citizenship engenders further geopolitical ideological binaries not only between the EU and post-Yugoslav space, but also within the former Yugoslavia (Bilić 2016). In a panoramic worldview of nesting Orientalisms, the border between the civilized/tolerant and uncivilized/homophobic space seems to cascade from the West eastwards, engendering further hierarchical divisions on an ever diminishing scale.…”