Start With Amsterdam!

An Alternative Statement on the Sexual Nationalisms Conference

By Mikki Stelder

The Opening Panel

“This is the most fucked up conference I have ever been to”: says professor Jasbir Puar at the closing panel of the conference Sexual Nationalisms, held at the University of Amsterdam on the 27th and the 28th of January. This does not mean that the conference is bad, but rather that the conference is very revealing. The aim of the conference is to discuss “current” configurations of Lesbian-Gay-Trans-Bisexual (LGTB) politics in relation to interconnecting realities of globalization, neocolonialisms and increasing nationalisms. The critique of sexual nationalisms, or rather homonationalism, as Puar coined it, is “not a synonym for gay racism and conservatism”, it is intertwined with a critique of broader structures of racism, neoliberism and class exclusion that are at the core of these homonationalist configurations. Homonationalism is often set aside as a synonym for gay racism and a conservative politics, but if someone takes an interest in reading Puar’s work it becomes clear that homonationalism and nationalism are no longer categories that belong to the political right. Homonationalism is a liberal queer politics that works on the basis of a discourse that allows citizenship for some and excludes (often racially constructed) others.

The perspective of the conference already became apparent in the decision to choose sexual nationalism and not homonationalism as the title. Already in the opening speech of the first panel there is a lack of understanding on how the concept of homonationalism has been developed. A question that arises is: why did the organizers choose the term “sexual nationalisms” and not “homonationalism” or “gay imperialism”? The choice of renaming this concept, without revealing the purposes, erases previous labor invested in developing a strong critique of homonationalism over the years. The term is presented as a new invention in light of the conference and obscures the work already done over the years. It becomes even more problematic when the term “sexual nationalism” is heralded as an invention by a PhD-student from the University of Amsterdam Paul Mepschen, who is one of the organizers of the conference. It moreover becomes embarrassing that the person who coined the term, Jasbir Puar, is actually sitting on that opening panel. Why does a PhD-student, who is overtly privileged, but does not have any substantial academic credentials as of yet, get to wield so much power? Why is it that the concept of “sexual nationalism, ” already in the first five minutes of the conference, is wrongly introduced, while the person who developed the term is sitting right next to the speaker? Why is it that the speaker can get away with this? Mepschen hardly raised a finger when “sexual nationalism” was heralded as a term he developed. Only after the introduction, he laughingly refuted the praise, without correcting the mistake.

Language and Structure

It is revealing that a large part of the conference copies the same structures of exclusion it has purported to lay bare. Not only is the conference dominated by white men and from inside the European Union, the United States or Israel (which I will get back to later), moreover this academic conference seems to have forgotten that this stream of thought has been developed inside activist circles and emerged as a queer of color critique (both in the academia and in activist circles). Many times the politics of the microphone showed that activists, or people who looked too “activist-like”, were told to keep it brief, while most space for speech was reserved for the established academics and middle aged, white, (gay) men and (although in smaller proportions) women. The critique of the lack of diversity came from those who were used as a marker of the “diversity” in the conference. The declaration of a loss of this diversity came from the established and less established organizers and participants who claimed “we wanted to be more diverse, but they did not show up.” There was a lot of third person speech that was not carefully evaluated by the people using this speech. Trans people were almost always referred to in the third person, leaving no room for first person accounts. Sex workers were being explained as some self-explanatory category independent of where, what, how and who is being referred to. Africa remained in the speech of some a huge “country”, reifying the chain of connecting negative features to this “country” that needs to be rescued by an imperialist force, implying that this “country” is naturally backward. Questions on methodology were refuted by responses such as “but I am in the middle of it all,” performing the spectacle of neutrality through belonging, or claiming the position of a distant observer still maintained within the social sciences.

The Closing Panel

The closing panel of the conference was marked by the absence of two brilliant scholars, Jin Haritaworn and Fatima El Tayeb, who in the morning panel made a very critical intervention about the organization of this conference and the structural racism still encountered within academia. Jasbir Puar was asked to briefly explain why they did not want to attend. Instead of starting with her explanation, the audience first had to listen to the assigned brief key notes by Didier Eribon, Lisa Duggan, Gert Hekma and Joan Scott, and had to commemorate the death of David Kato, an activist in Uganda, who was murdered the day before. Notwithstanding the horror of the murder, this spectacle of commemoration was complicit to what was critiqued over the last two days. The commemoration became, again, a spectacle of sexual exceptionalism and consensus over a politics of belonging. Although most attendants of the conference had previously iterated an agreement over the problematic of Western spectacles of commemoration as the right response to the murder of LGTB’s from the global south, for example the two Iranian men who got hanged in 2009; the same spectacle repeated itself. This not only overshadowed the murder of LTGB people in other parts of the globe that get less attention, because of their apparent geopolitical redundancy. Moreover, this performance of mourning overshadowed the critique made by Haritaworn and El Tayeb, who did not seem to be grievable and whose absence behind the table did not seem to matter.

The only panelist who repeated the problematic described above and developed by thinkers such as Haritaworn and El Tayeb, was Lisa Duggan, who herself, already in the beginning of the nineties, addressed the liberal rights discourses claimed by LGTB and queer activists and pointed to the scary balance between queer subversion and gay assimilationist politics.

The most embarrassing part of this conference (at least for some) has been the figure of Gert Hekma. He was asked to be on the closing panel to respond to the conference. Already a week in advance, Hekma devised his critique of the conference to quickly continue with his own agenda concerning the need for more sexual perversion. Already in an email he sent to his fellow panelists, and later during the last session, Hekma’s speech catered gay racism very much present in Dutch society (and other places). Perpetuating this mainstream view, Hekma ignorantly contributed to a harmful, moreover racist politics. He consciously tried to put himself in the position of the victim where he claimed: “I prefer a defense of these white secular ideas above a muslim ideology that has no good record when it comes to these rights – not in Holland, Europe or the Middle East. According to me, a greater problem with this white ideology (than its anti-muslim focus) is its very rhetorical quality with few practical consequences. The support for gay and lesbian and women’s rights hides continuing - white and muslim and other ethnic minority - abjection of gays (more than lesbians) and women who take sexual subject positions (sluts), and this abjection focuses on issues of gender (f.e. gay men are sissies and faggots, so unmasculine, and too visible) and sexuality (pubic sex, promiscuity, pederasty, women who refuse to be only sexual objects).” Why did he get this space?

Faking a Foucauldian stance, Hekma is all too quick to equate perverts, queers, sodomites, trans people, lesbians, and sluts, with the pedophile; refusing to address issues of consent amongst two or more sexual partners. Although the question of pedophilia is often only addressed through penal codes and public taboo and could use some critical space, Hekma critiques anti hetero-normative configurations of sex, but he does so by invoking a problematic image of sexual transgression that obscures questions of consent and violence when it comes to sex. He does so through creating the queer as someone fucking everyone, not very far away from, if even synonym to, the rapist.

To much disdain from a part of the audience, Hekma made an even bigger caricature of himself when he displaced his own personal scandal of pedophilia onto Muslims. He proclaimed “As we all know, all Muslims are pedophiles.” And then he goes on to state that sometimes “black people just want to be slaves during S&M games.” A part of the audience responded with rightful fury, but another part responded with enthusiasm when they applauded his speech. Although a member in the audience claimed that Hekma only had 30 seconds left to speak and a part of the audience quickly started a countdown, a bigger part of the audience violently repressed this political moment, by returning the platform to Hekma and aggressively muting those who spoke up.

It was not only the claims made by Gert Hekma, but also his own politics of silencing that he kept putting to the fore that made a part of the audience start the countdown. The majority saw this as a silencing of Hekma and stated they wanted “equal, free,” without questioning why Hekma got this platform. This attested to the larger problem of the conference where there was a refusal to see how Hekma and others had been taken space throughout the conference at the expense of others. One wonders if Hekma even listened to the panels he had attended over the last two days.

Another remarkable thing was the arrogant reaction of some audience members and the fact that Hekma still got a large round of applause. Secondly, the weird closing notes of Joan Scott made Hekma’s speech even more painful. Scott completely ignored what had just happened in the room, when it was her turn to speak (directly after Hekma). This moment appears even more hypocritical since Scott’s work on the veil in France gained fame and her work has been heralded as canonical. One would expect her to be sensible to such political moments. Her silence, though, appeared golden.

Critical Interventions

But let us forget about Hekma, more urgent matters deserve to be addressed. The most important panel of the conference was that of scholars Jin Haritaworn and Fatima El Tayeb, joined by Suhraiya Jivraj and white ally, Jennifer Petzen. This was the panel called “homonationalism, homo-neoliberalism, homo-neo-colonialism: crisis and travels, Europe and beyond.” Four interesting presentations were prepared, but never given. Instead, the panelists changed the format of the session into a roundtable discussion. This roundtable was necessary after one day of conference where all four panelist, and (some) audience members, felt the ancient workings of exclusion and white privilege (if not: supremacy). Firstly, they addressed that they refused to be instrumentalized by this conference as queer people of color, and next to that, opposed the instrumentalization of queers (and) academics of color in general. The fantasy of inclusion, as El Tayeb mentioned, was again created through active structural exclusion where the queer of color was used as a nominal and not an academic presence. This became apparent when the audience could ask questions. All the white academics were addressed with their last name or/and academic title and the queer academics of color were remotely addressed with their first name only.

Jin Haritaworn discussed the ongoing citational violence found in academic writing. They asked the question of what can become theoretical and when, and which bodies get lost along the way. They were not only referring to quotes or footnotes, but to citational practices both relying on and fostering stardom of some academics thereby silencing other academics. We have to ask ourselves what the power structures behind stardom and citation are before we start writing.

El Tayeb explained that she would have rather presented the paper she had worked on, but felt unable to do so. She commented that every time a conference invitation came along there was hardly any space for her prepared presentations. She experienced a perpetual mental fatigue in repeating again and again the same struggle with no reward. One begins to wonder how the politics of performativity as resistance are unequally distributed in academia. It was not up to this panel, she explained, to take responsibility time and again for the academic violence exercised consciously or unwillingly, but always structurally towards academics, and moreover queer academics of color. What she pointed to, was that it was not this panel’s responsibility to critique the conference structure, but rather the task of the conference organizers and attendants to take responsibility for the structure of the conference.

Suhraiya Jivraj included a discussion of Dutch LGTB politics and the workings of the COC (the self-proclaimed and most powerful representative of the Dutch LGTB-community). She addressed the monopoly on funds and thus included class within the discussion. She asked the very important question of why queer people of color cannot organize grassroots in the Netherlands. Instead of drawing the superficial conclusion from this that there are no groups willing to organize, she addressed the problem of funding and the assimilationist and neoliberal politics of the COC. Groups who want to organize are forced to adopt a large part of the COC’s agenda before they are viable for funding. Jivraj argues that “the public” needs to be problematized if we want to understand what the public sphere is and how this is contrasted with the private. She concludes that “the anti-racist paradigm needs to be back at the centre” of the debate.

Jennifer Petzen, from a white anti-racist perspective, closed with a discussion of the “we” in this conference. She asked how this subject position is invoked in this conference and argues that these are no viable politics for both academic and ally work. She addressed the email sent around by Hekma to the people who would be on his last panel and the fact that no-one besides queer academics of color responded to this email. The audience seemed to be more shocked that this was used “against him”, than by the content of this particular email.

The discussion afterwards, instead of starting from a sense of being undone, and letting oneself be undone, started with a search for excuses, reductions and exclusions that had just been so carefully deconstructed. The panelists were, again, overtly addressed by their first names in an attempt to undo their academic credibility. The microphone was distributed at great unease with some members of the audience who got less time to speak than their white, male counterparts. One of these attendants claimed to be a white ally, but referred to his black “friend” in the audience, mistaking his last name with the last name of an activist who died years ago.

In this setting it took some time to be able to speak and there was no space to gather speech together and be able to carefully construct a sentence. One needs to also ask how exclusion is performed by those who can still speak towards those who cannot at that moment. It is no longer a question of who has the best performance, but rather whose speech is being overshadowed by the ignorant performance of those who had the privilege to be well trained and those who refuse to be undone?

After the grave effort of the panelists to explain the audience the continuous practices of (racial) exclusion, these attempts were quickly done away with by audience members who thought shame and guilt would be enough. Responsibility was the baby thrown away with the bathwater. Trans was displaced and referred to in the third person. Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) became a children’s tradition and was therefore okay. Sex workers could only be victims. And Gert Hekma became the biggest victim for some, because his agenda was “unrightfully” revealed.

Although the conference room reserved for this 9 am panel was large, most of the conference participants were sitting on the floor and on each others laps in another large conference room, attending presentations that were chaired by Judith Butler. Our conference room counted only about 50 people. One is reminded of Haritaworn’s remark on stardom, where they carefully set out to deconstruct the uses of citation in the academia. Of course Butler’s very influential work over the last decades should not be underestimated. She has made serious and important contributions, if not generated an entire academic field. But during the morning session Butler was not giving a keynote and although the audience was waiting for her to speak, she let the panelists talk. This is then also how stardom works. Butler is becoming an academic rockstar, also at her own expense, because it appeared as though people came to see her and not hear her speak. This gesture of the conference organizers to split these two panels: one with an academic rockstar and the other with a lot of academic rockstars, albeit only well known in smaller circles, contributed to the under-attending of the most important panel of the conference. Although presumably an attempt to split audience flows equally, this misfired on the organization.

The Statement

This panel and the closing panel fostered heavy debates after the conference. Because of the controversy the organizers of the conference decided to write a statement “After Amsterdam.” This statement is not about taking responsibility for the faults in the organization, but rather becomes a means to negate important contributions made in the conference and after. In the statement the organizers claim that they first wanted to organize a small conference, but to their great surprise this topic appeared big business, both for academic CV’s and on a more political plane. They write: “We soon realized that the issues we raised were crucial not just for us, but more broadly for the fields of gender and sexuality studies, in their intersections with issues of race, immigration, religion, and nation” (Statement Sexual Nationalisms). I wonder why the name “sexual nationalisms” is devised for an academic conference, when the organizers appear to be surprised that sexual nationalism has to do with the nation, race and immigration and their presupposition that it was them who raised the issues. Moreover, in their statement, the conference organizers who were dominantly white and male claim that they tried to be as diverse as possible. As addressed in the conference, we have to continuously ask ourselves who can claim diversity in this multicultural fantasy, where multiculturalism, already by Spivak in 1988, has been critiqued for its white assimilationist agenda.

The organizers reinforced a very strange image of geographical Europe. They write: “Our definition of Europe was very inclusive (contributions extended from Western and Southern to Eastern Europe, including Russia, Israel, and especially Turkey)” (idem). The last two mentioned countries stand out, the first, Israel. Why does a conference on “sexual nationalism” so easily mention Israel, whose pinkwashing campaign is used to present this country as a liberal country upholding human rights standards, while at the same time occupying and besieging Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank and treating Palestinians in Israel as non-citizens. And why is the presenter from Israel, presenting on “sexual nationalism” in his own country, constantly refuting activist and academic attempts of revealing Israel’s pinkwashing campaign, by stating this term is false, because there are gay rights in Israel that should not only be negatively investigated. And why is Turkey mentioned as “especially” Turkey. This caters to maintaining an orientalist and imperialist trope of Turkey as that country on the outskirts of Europe, a little bit Islamic, a little bit secular, but definitely in need of European salvation.

The organizers also mention that after inviting a whole list of scholars, they realized that this work has been done for a long time already by queer academics of color and go on to describe how they tried to increase the diversity of their conference. They refute their own responsibility for the disgraceful last panel by displacing the blame on these queer academics of color when they write

“However, we still want to express our regret with this decision by two of our guests. While we acknowledge that the list we had first published in July manifested real political shortcomings, we believe that the final list of invited scholars, as well as the overall conference program, did not eventually justify such a perception of marginalization… In our view, it is useful to hold such conversations, even if it means hearing harsh criticism – as we did from them” (idem). Apparently it is alright to be criticized, but the critical voices are still critiqued for being too critical and that is where matters end.

Although in the statement the organizers do mention that they were wrong in inviting Hekma, they innocently reproduce the argument of “controversy for controversy’s” sake, by pointing out that they invited him “in good faith” (idem), hoping for a stimulating discussion, which already after Hekma’s email should have occurred as pointless. They take on the position of the victim of Hekma’s harmful speech.

They close by saying: “We (the vast majority of participants) are engaged in the fight against sexual nationalism. We believe we have learned from these academic tensions; but they should not detract from common political and intellectual goals” (idem). Here they argue that we have common political goals, and critique should not distract from these common goals. As if these “academic tensions” are separated from “our common goals.” But what becomes clear is that there is a mis – (if not wrong) understanding of these “common” goals. Who gets to decide what these goals are and how they can be articulated? And was it not precisely the critique of the conference that tried to set these goals straight? Claiming a “common” political goal can be harmful to that which is claimed to be pursued.

Although the organizers by this statement try to articulate a response to the rightfully critical reactions, they displace the blame and remove the anti-racist debate from the center of the critique. Instead of catering to the critique and taking it seriously, the organizers rather take on the position of the innocent victim, instead of creating the space for the important political and intellectual goals they claim to seek and represent. The critique of the conference could have been a space to create some “commonality” or at least discussion of these “common” goals, but the statement obliterates this space.

Start With Amsterdam!

This was not a bad conference after all. And I thank the organizers for making an effort in organizing this conference and presenting it as an open and free conference, making it in thought accessible to everyone, even though we are in strong disagreement over the organizational structures. It was a “fucked-up” conference (and statement). What was bad about it made it good. At least for some. It was a setback to experience an academic conference (and statement) set in one of the most homonationalist countries in Europe that did not seem to practice what it preached and even that which was preached were hijacked words and discourses. There were some very good panels, the one discussed at length here has been the most influential. From every corner there were cries to decentralize Europe and move away from and destabilize Western and white supremacy. Whoever still had the naïve fantasy of academic freedom has been heavily duped, but comes out even more critical through the carefully crafted critical interventions of some participants. Hopefully perspectives have shifted and preconceptions deconstructed. Rightfully, white supremacy has been critiqued and addressed and the content of this critique still needs to be at the center of the debate. These critiques need to be continuously brought to the forefront of the debate, to challenge the explicit and implicit practices of exclusion that are all too often silently reproduced and endorsed. Let’s not fool ourselves by thinking “After Amsterdam,” but let us start with it. Start With Amsterdam!

Works Cited

Statement Sexual Nationalisms. “Sexual Nationalisms: European Sexual and Racial Politics through the Academic Prism.” 2 Febrary 2011. Web. http://www.sexualnationalisms.org/statement-february-2nd-2011.php