Sexual Politics of Belonging: Sexual Identities, Nationalism, and Citizenship in Post-Yugoslav Croatia

II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . III CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 2: NATIONALISM AND SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP IN THE GLOBALIZING WORLD . 7 2.1. Nationalization of solidarity and belonging . 9 2.2. The intersections of nationalism, gender and sexuality . 15 2.2.1. National citizenship and the public/private divide . 15 2.2.2. Sexuality as a border: Heteronationalism and homonationalism . 19 2.2.3. Sexual citizenship and the politics of belonging in the Anglophonic West . 21 2.3. Nation-States, Globalization, and Sexuality . 27 2.4. The intersections of nationalism, gender and sexuality in Croatia after the break-up of Yugoslavia . 30 2.5. Conclusion . 36 CHAPTER 3: TOWARDS A PROGRESSIVE IDENTITY POLITICS . 37 3.1. Sexual identity and politics: Gay and lesbian politics and queer theories . 38 3.2. Politics beyond identity: Agency and resistance in Judith Butler’s theory of identity. 45 3.3. Intersectionality and subjectless critique . 53 3.4. Postpositivist realism and (sexual) identity . 56 3.5. Toward a politics of solidarity and alliance . 64 3.6. Conclusion . 70 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCHING THE INTERFACE BETWEEN THE SOCIAL AND THE PERSONAL: METHODOLOGICAL CONCERNS. 72 4.1. On Critical Positionality: Siting and sighting the researcher in her project . 73 4.2. Data collection: Sampling strategies . 77 4.3. Critical Discourse Analysis: Categories of analysis . 81 C E U eT D C ol le ct io n v 4.4. Narrative strategies of self-identification: Assimilation, queer disposition and strategic positioning . 84 CHAPTER 5: SEXUAL IDENTITIES, VISIBILITY, AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING . 87 5.1. Visibility and sexual politics . 88 5.2. “From this day on we won’t be invisible anymore:” The visibility of sexual minorities in Croatia . 92 5.3. Privacy, normalcy, and the image of the “good gay citizen” in the strategy of assimilation . 100 5.3.1. My room, my freedom: Claiming national belonging through privacy . 101 5.3.2. We are here and we are normal: Visibility in the service of assimilation . 106 5.4. Queer visibility . 109 5.5. Strategic positioning: Lesbian identities and the politics of visibility . 115 5.6. Conclusion . 122 CHAPTER 6: RE-IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: SOLIDARITY AND BELONGING AT THE INTERSECTION OF SEXUALITY AND NATIONALISM . 124 6.1. From “people of Croatia” to “Croats:” Nationalism and belonging in socialist Yugoslavia and postYugoslav Croatia . 125 6.2. A leader in the region: Nationalism and regionalism in the context of the EU accession process . 133 6.3. Quest for origins and national patriotism: Assimilation into the nation . 136 6.4. Queering the nation . 147 6.5. Strategic positioning: Towards Yugo-regionalism . 152 6.5.1. Yugo-regionalism: In favor of the concept . 152 6.5.2. Language and “mentality” as markers of both commonality and difference . 153 6.5.3. Yugo-regionalism: “Re-Balkanization,” anti-Eurocentrism, and regional solidarities . 158 6.5.4. Yugo-regionalism: Potentials and shortcomings . 165 6.6. Conclusions . 168 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION . 170 7.1. The political potential of identity . 172 7.2. The intersection of nationalism, gender and sexuality in relation to self-identification . 176 REFERENCES . 178 C E U eT D C ol le ct io n 1 Chapter 1: Introduction The centrality of identity as an analytical category and object of research in the social sciences and humanities has been widely acknowledged (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). The prominence that the concept of identity has gained in contemporary social theories is undoubtedly influenced by its salient presence as an important organizing element in the struggles against different modes of social oppression, LGBTIQ movement being one of them (Phelan, 1993; Alcoff, and Mohanty, 2006), as well as in the nationalizing processes still dominant in the globalized world (Brubaker, 1996; Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Malešević, 2011). At the same time, in the past two decades the political utility of gender and sexual identities for emancipatory political struggles has been heavily contested from the position of queer theory. Informed by Butler’s (1990, 1991, 1993) view of identities as “instruments of regulatory regimes” (Butler, 1991, p. 13) operating through the processes of categorization that stabilize the otherwise fluid self, queer theory scholars argue for a politics that would challenge the notion of identity as a useful ground in the struggles for equality (Warner, 1993; Duggan, 1994; Halperin, 1995; Bunzl, 1996; Jagose, 1996; Eng, Halberstam and Muñoz, 2005). Situated in a scholarly context where the concept of identity represents an important yet contested analytical and political category, my research explores the intersection of nationalism and sexuality in relation to self-identification in order to reclaim the relevance of the concept. The position on identity that I take in this project is informed by postpositivist realism, which conceives of identity as a product of dynamic interplay of social and personal aspects of life, thus opening up a space for individual agency situated in the process of negotiation whereby identities are constructed (Alcoff, 2006; Alcoff and Mohanty, 2006; Wilkerson, 2007). Drawing on the notion of non-pre-determined agency located in socially embedded self-reflexivity, in my research I examine the ways in which the notion of citizenship is re/imagined from the differential positions of people “othered” on the grounds of their sexuality in the contemporary Croatian context of nation-building. I am analyzing the practices of self-identification in the life narratives of people whose sexual practices do not follow the hetero-norm in order to explore the ways in which nationalism as the dominant ideology of belonging has been challenged or reinforced by the narrative strategies of those who have been denied access to national belonging. C E U eT D C ol le ct io n 2 The main aim of my research is twofold. By examining the ways nationalism and sexuality constitute each other on the level of personal experiences and self-identification I will contribute to the ongoing discussions on the intersection of sexuality and nationalism/national citizenship. I will argue that these debates, by focusing exclusively on the larger processes of social structuring, have mostly overlooked the ways in which these larger processes influence and, in turn, are influenced by individual sense-making practices (Mosse, 1985; Stychin, 1998, 2003