In the twenty-first century, “LGBTQ+” has emerged as a key discursive cornerstone to signal alliances and oppositions and underpin broader geopolitical claims in the international arena. From the US War on Terror, backed by the rhetoric that Jasbir Puar defines as “homonationalism” (Puar 2013) or the EU’s use of LGBTQ+ issues in enlargement processes (Shevtsova 2020; Slootmaeckers 2017) to bans on displaying “abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors” on television in China, the declaration of the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization in Russia, or police raids in gay clubs in Venezuela, there has emerged a picture of a world allegedly firmly divided into two camps—of states supporting LGBTQ+ rights and ones vehemently opposing them. This binary has often been theorized through the opposition of “homonationalism” vs. “heteronationalism” (see, e.g., Renkin & Trofimov 2023), and its most recent visceral manifestation is Russia’s invasion into Ukraine under the banner of fighting for “traditional values” (see, e.g., Kratochvíl & O’Sullivan 2023). Additional binaries such as Christianity vs. Islam, West vs. “the rest,” and democracy vs. autocracy have often also underpinned this framing.
Yet, how do we reconcile such binary frameworks with facts such as, for instance, a growing sexual and gender diversity within religious institutions in the uncompromisingly Catholic Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, where queer priest:esses have been increasingly appointed as heads of parishes or churches (Bárcenas Barajas 2014; Córdova Quero 2018)? Or with the hosting of events like the Queer Art Festival in Azerbaijan—the country consistently ranked as “the worst in Europe in terms of LGBTQ+ rights” by ILGA Europe (Safarova 2021; ILGA-Europe 2023)? At the same time, signals of conservative developments come from regions firmly seen as the “pro-LGBTQ+ camp”—the introduction of “LGBT-free zones” in Poland (Ploszka 2023), a ban on gender studies in Hungary (Pető 2021), decidedly homophobic claims by the German AfD (Doer 2021), or the denial of gender affirmation to trans-individuals in Florida (Human Rights Campaign 2023). Set alongside each other, these practices decidedly call for a more nuanced approach to the idea of a bipolar world.
The proposed edited volume seeks to deconstruct an alleged bipolarity in international relations and explore the entanglements and slippages between homonationalism and political homophobia as two global forms of ideological and cultural domination. Our reference to and modification of the historical Cold War is intentional. As this concept emphasizes international political competition, tension, and proxy conflicts between two adversary camps, scholars have debunked the myth of their monolithic and dichotomic nature by revealing both the plurality within them and the porosity of boundaries “separating” them (e.g., Klepikova & Raabe 2020). In theorizing the contemporary “queer Cold Wars,” the proposed edited volume attends to such pluralities of actors and political systems that are never uniform or fully aligned in their goals, seeking to explore the roles of states, supranational organizations, transnational movements, and local and global communities. It also advocates for examining the role of the globalized economy and the spreading of neoliberal capitalism as a vehicle for transporting and adopting (and adapting) ideas of homonationalism and political homophobia (think here, for example, of Rahul Rao’s concept of “homocapitalism”; Rao 2015). Finally, it recognizes the alignment of these new “Cold Wars” with the arrival of the era of digital cultures and interrogates the role of digital infrastructures and networks in troubling the alleged binaries.
We welcome papers that seek to trouble binary geopolitical visions of sexuality and gender from the following perspectives and beyond:
- religion (organized faith, economics of belief, etc.)
- economic perspectives (humanitarian aid, homocapitalism, etc.)
- education (schooling, ban on sex education, “protection of minors” discourse)
- research (challenges to queer research globally, bans of research institutions, ethics of transgressing boundaries of the global West/South/East divides)
- healthcare (regulations, adoption of ICD-11)
- media (representations, global cultures of queerness, streaming platforms as vehicles of queerness)
- culture (literature, film, arts; infrastructures of queerness – festivals, etc.)
- memory politics (museification; showcasing of national and/or transnational queer histories)
- mobility (sex tourism, asylum seeking, etc.)
- digital cultures (networked homophobia; digital activism, etc.)
Contributions from all Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines are welcome (Political Science, Social Science, History, Economics, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Religion Studies, Media Studies, Memory Studies, Education Science, Medical Humanities, etc.)
Timeline and Requirements: Please submit a 500-word abstract and a short bio (one PDF) by May 31, 2024 (to maryna.shevtsova@kuleuven.be; tatiana.klepikova@ur.de; emil.edenborg@gender.su.se).
In case of acceptance (communicated by late June), a 4000-word extended draft should be submitted by October 11, 2024. The editors are currently seeking funding to workshop extended drafts among contributors—should this funding be granted, the workshop will take place on October 28–29, 2024 in Leuven, Belgium.
Full papers (up to 7,000–8,000 words, incl. footnotes and references) will be due by February 1, 2025. All contributions will undergo a rigorous peer review before publication. Editors are also securing funding to publish the edited volume in open access. They will submit a proposal to an international publisher following the selection of abstracts submitted in response to the call for papers.
