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- Convenors:
-
Peter Hoerz
(Hochschule Esslingen)
Dany Carnassale (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
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- Stream:
- Gender and sexuality
- Location:
- VG 4.107
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to explore how LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer) people try to make themselves (comfy) at home - in designer apartments, community centers, gay-lesbian retirement homes, refugee hostels, shared apartments, homeless shelters or just online.
Long Abstract:
In recent years queer scholarship has produced a growing number of studies related to the mobilities of the so-called "global LGBTQ population" and there is little doubt that at least parts of the LGBTQ-populations are highly mobile as cosmopolitan tourists, migrants, refugees or just as people moving from one city to another.
While focusing queer mobilities however it has almost been forgotten that travelling or escaping from an uncomfortable place in order to reach a promising destination necessarily implies at least temporal stays in certain places, since tourists are eventually coming home, refugees are finding shelters and those trying to escape from rural hometowns to the metropolises are finally furnishing their new apartments or homesteads. Moreover focusing queer mobilities largely means overlooking those LGBTs who are staying true to a certain place for years, decades or even for their entire lives.
Against this backdrop the panel seeks to explore how LGBT-folks are making themselves (comfy) at home. These homes may be designer apartments, community centers, gay-lesbian retirement homes, shared homes, refugee camps, homeless shelters or certain communities on the internet. With that said the panel's aim is to find out with whom LGBTQ-people are living (partners, parents, children, room-mates…), how they are living (pompous homes, tiny apartments, shelters or in the streets…) and what dwelling generally means to them.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The paper analyzes the local queer scene and gay culture in Hamburg. By comparing different forms of dwelling in public and private space it shows how settings and strategies of living as well as collective and personal identities are constructed
Paper long abstract:
Within cultural anthropological constructions of space the city has been sketched since the Chicago School as a "laboratory for social processes of every kind".
The Hamburg district of St. Georg in the geographic center of the city has been characterized as a gayspace for decades: a physically manifested area of the gay community, which has a high concentration of bars, clubs, but also cafes and restaurants as public spaces. Here, the urban gay community creates a space where different identity concepts can be expressed. The focus of the analysis lies on those lifestyles, in order to capture places in their nature as well as their dependence on social groups. The specific urban development in this area is characterized by a manifestation of queer consumer structures, jobs and forms of life as a structure of a physical practice that finds expression and realization here.
The paper is an ethnographic fieldstudy about the local queer scene and gay culture, public spaces and individual homes in the city of Hamburg. By analyzing the fluffy retrostyled Cafe Gnosa - a traditional public space and hotspot of the scene - the research aims to define settings and strategies of homemaking besides home. This place is not only a Restaurant but also an informal cultural institution and community center. Different actors of this "extended home" give examples how collective and personal identities are constructed and connected with a local cultural identity. Furthermore a closer view on personal material objects of dwelling shows how these can represent elements of identity.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on the experiences of queer asylum seekers and refugees living in shelters and camps in northern Italy, trying to analyze their efforts to dwell in places commonly perceived as homo/transphobic.
Paper long abstract:
Life conditions experienced by asylum seekers and refugees who are at the same time queer people remain overlooked in the majority of southern European countries. In the case of Italy, some works related to academic field and LGBTQ activism seem to suggest a critical analysis about how the economic crisis have affected queer people's lifes - for instance proposing reflections about the precariousness and disquiet of homeless, unemployed, poor queer individuals - but little attention is given to the intersections of skin-colour, linguistic barriers, class and (homo)sexuality.
The proposed paper aims to deal with the experiences of some queer asylum seekers and refugees living in shelters and camps in northern Italy, trying to analyze their efforts to dwell in places commonly perceived as homo/transphobic. In these places they have to decide whether hide, cope or reveil their sexual identities with their roommates (mainly coming from the same geographic area) and the social workers (usually Italians speaking only English). Because asylum seekers and refugees have fled from their countries for discriminations or persecutions related to their sexual behaviours, their narratives are sometimes characterized by opacity and ambivalence. In some cases talking about intimate issues is lived with dread, while in other situations is experienced with pride.
In this research, ethnographic lens reveals its usefulness looking at different ways to describe, express and legitimate queerness in asylum shelters/camps, and rethinking the dominant hetero/homonormative narratives that commonly portray queer asylum seekers and refugees as powerless victims.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to shed light on political practices and everyday life in the spacial context of the ‘Rosa Lila Villa’, the first Viennese LGBT community centre that celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2017 – a place that was and still is meant to be a ‘home’ for gays, lesbians and transgender people
Paper long abstract:
In early 2016 when the café of the Viennese LGBT community center, 'Rosa Lila Villa', has been closed this event has been discussed intensively within the local LGBT population: LGBTs who were coming of age in the 1980ies/90ies remembered this place as one of the few places where they always had felt unquestioningly welcome, while younger LGBTs claimed that they would miss the café's acknowledged cuisine. The collective lament about the loss of the café however largely covered up the fact that gastronomy was only a component of the political and social project, pursued by the center's activists. Established in 1982 in a run down structure by gay/lesbian squatters the 'Villa' has never been meant to only serve coffee for LGBTs but also and to a greater degree to provide legal advice and counseling, space for political activism and an empty building to initiate a gay/lesbian residential community. Yet these facets of LGBT activism substantially fell into oblivion - partly because of the community's diversification, partly because of its depoliticization. But these facets of activism are upheld - yet by a new generation of 'queer' activists who are focusing new inequalities and challenges and maintaining the idea of creating a 'home' for the 'community'.
Based on interviews with activists and the analysis of primary materials the paper aims to shed light on the day-to-day life and the political practices in the special context of the center with special attention to the aspect of maintaining a home for the community.