'Turkish, Dutch, gay and proud': Mapping out the contours of agency in homonationalist times. (September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yildiz, Armanc
• Is Part Of: Sexualities. Volume 20:Number 5/6(2017:Aug.)
• Page Start: 699
• Page End: 714
• Publication Date: 2017-09
• Subjects: agency -- Netherlands -- homonationalism -- Islamophobia -- tolerance -- immigration; Sex -- Periodicals; Sex customs -- Periodicals; Sex (Psychology) -- Periodicals; 306.705
• DOI: 10.1177/1363460716645805
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-4607

Abstract

In 2012 Amsterdam Gay Pride Canal Parade hosted a Turkish Boat, organized by Dutch citizens of Turkish decent. The newspaper articles consistently emphasized what an advancement this was for the Turkish migrants, considering their 'cultural background.' Simultaneously, public opinion on the former immigrants from Turkey and Morocco as intolerant towards LGBTI people and how they are 'gay bashing on the streets' was still present. The scholarship on homonationalism and gay imperialism has been dealing with questions of Orientalism, islamophobia and racism since the 2000s. The question of agency within this scholarship, however, was not dealt with extensively. This paper will engage with this question by mapping out Dutch homonationalism and focusing on how this specific context produces historically contingent subject positions – such as gay, lesbian, Muslim, Turkish or Moroccan-Dutch – that are hierarchized within the Dutch public sphere. None of them is innocent of power or neutral, the power configurations among these subject positions lay the ground of agency upon which the subject can act.