Description
Book SynopsisTo what extent is queer anti-identitarian? And how is it experienced by activists at the European level? At queer festivals, activists, artists and participants come together to build new forms of sociability and practice their ideals through anti-binary and inclusive idioms of gender and sexuality. These ideals are moreover channelled through a series of organisational and cultural practices that aim at the emergence of queer as a collective identity. Through the study of festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, and Oslo, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe thoughtfully analyses the role of activist practices in the building of collective identities for social movement studies as well as the role of festivals as significant repertoires of collective action and sites of identitarian explorations in contemporary Europe.
Trade Review"Among the many merits of this rich study is also its great readability, including to nonspecialists of social movement sociology, queer theory, or gender and sexuality studies. [...] Eleftheriadis’s
Queer Festivals provides an innovative perspective on the realities of the oft-evoked yet insufficiently known queer movement, which is too frequently conflated with queer theory—while "queer" increasingly tends to be loosely applied to characterize any LGBT movements and festivals. One of the book’s theoretical ambitions is indeed to clarify the link between queer festivals and queer theory. This goal is successfully reached, as is that of accounting for the interplay between discourses and practices in the formation of a festival’s publics and the performance of its identity work."
- Guillaume Marche,
Journal of Festive Studies 3 (2021)
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Queer Festivals and the Anti-Identity Paradox: Transnational collective identities beyond the state 2. The origins of queer festivals in Europe 3. Organizing the queer space: Squats, Horizontality and Do-It-Yourself 4. What is 'queer' about queer festivals?: Negotiating Identity and Autonomy 5. 'Not yet queer enough': Constructing Identity through culture 6. Queering Transnationalism 7. Anti-identity, Politics and the State: Queer Challenges and Future Directions Appendix References Index
