Fatima
El-Tayeb

This talk draws from a larger project that traces Europe-wide forms of racialization and translocal strategies of resistance to them. The latter originate (in) a queer of color identity and activism shaped by transnational movements, central among them U.S. women of color feminism and HipHop, but also rooted in very particular configurations of race, religion, colonialism, sexuality, nation and “Europeanness.” These configurations situate racialized communities in a “queer” space and time constellation that in turn provides the source for a particularly European queering of ethnicity. Fatima El-Tayeb briefly sketches this larger framework, then explores the spatio-temporal queering of communities of color through a neoliberal restructuring of the city, in which the symbolic inclusion of the white LGBT community is dependent on the exclusion of people of color and on the erasure of queer of color positionality.

Fatima El-Tayeb is associate professor in the departments of literature and ethnic studies and associate director of critical gender studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her most recent publications include European Others. Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (University of Minnesota Press 2011),  “‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European City,” in European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2011, and “‘The Forces of Creolization.’ Colorblindness and Visible Minorities in the New Europe,” in Françoise Lionnet, Shu-mei Shi (eds), The Creolization of Theory, (Duke University Press 2011).

Antke Engel, Institute for Queer Theory, in cooperation with Gladt e.V., Gender/Queer e.V. (i.G.), and ICI Berlin.

The lecture is part of the series The Subtle Racializations of Sexuality: Queer Theory, the Aftermath of Colonial History, and the Late-Modern State organized by Antke Engel, Institute for Queer Theory, in cooperation with the ICI Berlin.

Western states happily turn to gender and sexual politics in order to demonstrate their presumed progressiveness. They find support from some parts of feminist and LGBTI activism that regard (neo)liberal state and diversity policies as instrumental for achieving integration and recognition. Such alliances have recently been criticized for fostering new social divisions and endorsing occidentalist and sometimes racist premises. Interested in the nuances of this critique, the lecture series brings together theoretical and political considerations developed from anti-racist, queer of colour, and/or migrant perspectives on late-modern and neoliberal state policies.

The event, like all events at the ICI Berlin, is open to the public, free of charge. The audience is presumed to consent to a possible recording on the part of the ICI Berlin. If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.