Originally published here.
The politics of visibility date to the mid-20th century U.S and European homophile movement. At the heart of this politics was the conviction that political mobilization and social and politi-cal change could only emerge once lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) individuals overcame their own invisibility to one another and the society in which they lived. Yet social movement scholars and activists disagree on how successfully these visibility strategies travel beyond the countries in which they originated, in particular the U.S. and Western Europe.
Some have argued that the act of coming out epitomized by Pride Parades has been adapted successfully to myriad local conditions and that LGBTQ activism has, for several decades, been embedded into transnational networks and processes that have proved critical to its spread. Others charge that strategies such as Pride represent a western form of protest that cannot be imported uncritically.We explore the debates over Pride in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia, using our interviews with LGBTQ activists in post-Yugoslav countries and participation in several Pride Parades in Belgrade and Zagreb.
Despite being highly militarized, we find that these Pride Parades perform many sorts of paradoxical and sometimes ambiguous political work in achieving LGBTQ visibility and equal-ity. Our work on this topic reflects our respective experiences in this region as well as our scholarly interests, which span several decades, post-Yugoslav countries, and projects. Janice spent a year at the University of Zagreb as a Fulbright scholar in 2009 and has written about the politics of sex education in Croatia. Jill has lived and worked in the region for several years and has written about the politics of nationalism, democratic transitions, and gender equality. We conducted the research for this piece from 2011-2015 in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia, where we marched in Pride Parades and conducted interviews in the three capital cities.
After the collapse of state socialism in Yugoslavia in 1990, LGBTQ activism unfolded in the context of the violent breakup of the state and the associated wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. During this decade of conflict, LGBTQ activists initially focused their energies on opposing the rise of ultranationalist politics and regimes, exposing their links to an ideology of “nationalist patriarchy” that rested on sexism, militarism, homophobia, and violence against the “other.” During this period, LGBTQ activists cooperated closely with feminist and peace organizations in call-ing for an end to militarism and its associated heteronationalism, an ideology rooted in the belief that traditional gender roles are necessary for the survival of the nation.
And they succeeded, for example, in getting homosexuality decriminalized in Serbia and Croatia. After the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, which brought an end to the fighting in Croatia and Bosnia (though there would be another outbreak of conflict in the contested region of Kosovo in 1999), LGBTQ activists joined the struggle to topple the semi-authoritarian regimes in Croatia and Serbia and build a new democratic state in Bosnia. With the wars finally over and the regimes that had directed them removed from power, in 2001, LGBTQ activism took a new direction. Activists in Croatia and Serbia began to embrace a poli-tics of visibility, moving into the public sphere to make claims for LGBTQ rights within a larger human rights framework. Serbia’s postwar recovery and international legitimacy were linked with a greater respect for human rights, of which LGBTQ rights were an essential component.
The violence surrounding the 2001 Pride Parade in Belgrade and subsequent assassination of liberal Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, however, caused LGBTQ activists to modify their strategy of claiming public space for alternative sexual identities—although they continued to voice their political demands. At the same time, queer ideas and groups emerged, focusing on the need to create an alternative safe space and queer culture even as they articulated a more radical critique of transitional processes and Serbian political culture. The politics of visibility followed a similar trajectory in Zagreb, where, from the first Pride Parade in 2002, activists saw massive protests and violence and queer cultural spaces were formed as an alternative.
Even as activists made a partial retreat from a reliance on Pride Parades, they continued to engage in the interpersonal politics of visibility in order to build solidarity. They also con-tinued to make demands of the state. This latter activity was fundamentally shaped by the process of EU accession, first in Croatia (which joined the European Union in 2014) and later in Serbia whose government was working toward EU member-ship. Although Bosnia was not an immediate candidate for EU accession, LGBTQ activism there, too, was shaped by the heavy presence of international monitors, administrators, and advisors. Activists began to focus heavily on legal strategies, including the passage of anti-discrimination legislation, same-sex partner-ships, and other legal protections. But legislation wasn’t all the EU representatives in Brussels wished to see. They also insisted that holding peaceful Pride Parades was an essential step and necessary precondition for favorable membership consideration.
Debates over Pride among activists and scholars are not unique to the Balkans. In a forthcoming article, political scientist Kevin Henderson observes that each year brings new critiques of U.S. Prides as outdated, co-opted by corporate sponsors, and essentially empty rituals devoid of protest and politics. He dis-agrees, using archival material showing a long history of robust internal disagreement over inclusivity, march routes, who would lead the parade, corporate sponsorship, and many other deeply political issues. Pride, he suggests, is always a site of contentious politics, of protest within the parade. Likewise, activists in the Balkans disagree over whether a supposed lack of correspondence between local modes of protest and Pride Parades means that they are doomed to inef-fectiveness as a tool of social change.
As one scholar/activist explained her opposition to holding Pride Parades in Belgrade “we have no indigenous tradition of these kinds of festival parades.” Indeed, some argue that Pride Parades have a largely negative effect, as they prompt more violent reactions from an unreceptive public than other, more local, forms of activism and protest. Yet one Bosnian activist noted that, despite violence, “change is happening. More visibility always sometimes brings with it more hostility.” As one of our interviewees in Zagreb said about their internal arguments about the “right time” for Pride, “No one is ever ready for Pride.” Prides themselves construct the local readiness for them, even if it takes decades.
Many scholars would agree with the argument that the “politics of visibility” comes with risk, backlash, and sometimes more violence; it is also a potentially effective strategy to promote change if careful attention is paid to local contexts.
You can read the complete article here.