Final Report Summary - LGBT ACT (Minority politics, social movements and equal rights: the Italian inter-associative LGBT activism)
The research activities have allowed the researcher to underline some critical concepts that help to understand how LGBT movements act in the political field and how LGBT movements practice and think their strategies. In particular, the researcher has worked on the notion of “activist resilience”, in order to understand the paradoxes of the Italian situation, where a strong political participation at the Italian Parliament didn’t permit the LGBT movement to obtain major advances in LGBT rights. But also where a strongly homophobic context didn’t prevent the emergence and organization of an LGBT inter-associative network. The fieldwork activities of observation and interviewing has allowed the researcher to better observe the activist interactions in the act of conceiving national and local strategies. In particular, highlighting an issue that has never been studied, the researcher proposes to grasp, through the study of the “LGBT moment”, the conflicts between different organizations, for the leadership of the Italian movements. The detailed and methodic study of the archives and the interviews with major activist that contributed to the introduction in Italy of the “LGBT” formula shows the particular hegemonic configuration of Italian mainstream LGBT activism and the oppositions coming from the “antagonistic” activism.
Focusing on the emergence of the “LGBT moment of homosexual activism” the comparative analysis has permitted to better understand the inter-associative relations. The study of the Italian LGBT movements has been enriched by a comparative approach, in particular with the French case, in order to problematize the transnationalization of LGBT activism. If the French case and the recognition politics implemented in the last 20 years has lead the movements to a strong unitary configuration, the resistant Italian political field to LGBT rights has produced a strong cleavages configuration of the Italian LGBT activism.
Building a multidimensional model of LGBT activism will allow to enrich the European literature on gender and sexuality political studies and will lead to consider LGBT politics not only as legal claims but more broadly as a complex and plural field including three major dimensions, as revealed and studied by the researcher’s works:
Minority politics: beside the claims of LGBT movements a broad and huge activist field exists that one can define as a discursive field contesting the heteronormativity model of current democratic society and, thus, the majority pattern of democracy. As a legacy of the revolutionary activism emerged during the 1970s, and theorised later as a queer theory, the politics of LGBT minorities is a specific form of activism thought and practiced by LGBT people within the activist field but also at its margins and boundaries, not always approving official activist discourses and even contesting them. To think LGBT activism as a form of minority politics allows the LGBT politics to be understood as a plural, complex and multidimensional one. This minority politics is mostly visible at the local level and during local events.
Social movement: during the last twenty years, the convergence of local LGBT organisations, the alliances and the strategies of institutionalisation of a national movement introduced a structured LGBT movement that, like other social movements, is currently facing some tensions and conflicts engendered by leadership conflicts, concurrency between activists and organisations, but also by new issues emerged in the last decade concerning “homonationalism” trends within the LGBT field, as showed by the creation of new organisations such as “Facciamo breccia” especially involved in a critical queer position within the LGBT movement. It is to study the social LGBT movement to grasp the tensions that cross them.
Equal rights: the claims for equal rights are not constitutive issues that led to the emergence of LGBT movements, as well as they are not an exclusive dimension of LGBT politics, but precisely an expression of their juridical moment. Thus, it is to understand how Italian LGBT movements imported and continue to import equal rights activism models provided by countries such as Belgium, Spain or France, but also by European LGBT organisations (ILGA) and institutions. This will permit to evaluate how multiple dynamics influence specific contexts and in particular how the Italian LGBT politics are “multidimensionally” crossed by local, national and transnational issues.
These researches and the related activities of publication and dissemination of the results has permitted permit to introduce in the Italian academic field the issue of LGBT politics. They also intended to promote a public debate of LGBT rights in Italy, within the LGBT activist space but also in the public domain.
Finally the LGBT Act project has allowed the scientific community to:
1. Understand the political logics of emergence, organization and transformation of an activist LGBT field in Italy.
Through an original approach to LGBT activism, mixing archival researches and ethnographic methodologies, the researcher has mapped the critical moments in the history of Italian LGBT movements that allow the understanding of a major political trajectory that led from gay liberation discourses to gay rights discourses. It is to understand the dissolution of revolutionary movements and the emergence of democratic movements.
2. Mobilize an empirical-based approach it is to propose an historical and political study of the emergence of an Italian LGBT activism.
The researcher Dr. Massimo Prearo has conducted ethnographic researches mixing observation and participation methods that has strengthened the understanding of the main hypothesis of the project, that is to say that the political moments studied are not the result of a sort of historical necessity, but rather the result of political strategies, different forms of activist project options and, above all, of activist conflicts.
3. Propose theoretical multidimensional model that aims at discussing critical notions in the fields of LGBT studies and political studies.
Finally, the LGBT Act project has permitted to highlight the complexity of the configuration of Italian LGBT activism, to show how a strong territorialization of the movement tends to make it weaker, comparing it to other Italian movements, and then to establish that political inside conflicts are not to be considered as the problem that weaken the movement, but on the contrary, the productive dynamics that shape its polymorphic form.
Focusing on the emergence of the “LGBT moment of homosexual activism” the comparative analysis has permitted to better understand the inter-associative relations. The study of the Italian LGBT movements has been enriched by a comparative approach, in particular with the French case, in order to problematize the transnationalization of LGBT activism. If the French case and the recognition politics implemented in the last 20 years has lead the movements to a strong unitary configuration, the resistant Italian political field to LGBT rights has produced a strong cleavages configuration of the Italian LGBT activism.
Building a multidimensional model of LGBT activism will allow to enrich the European literature on gender and sexuality political studies and will lead to consider LGBT politics not only as legal claims but more broadly as a complex and plural field including three major dimensions, as revealed and studied by the researcher’s works:
Minority politics: beside the claims of LGBT movements a broad and huge activist field exists that one can define as a discursive field contesting the heteronormativity model of current democratic society and, thus, the majority pattern of democracy. As a legacy of the revolutionary activism emerged during the 1970s, and theorised later as a queer theory, the politics of LGBT minorities is a specific form of activism thought and practiced by LGBT people within the activist field but also at its margins and boundaries, not always approving official activist discourses and even contesting them. To think LGBT activism as a form of minority politics allows the LGBT politics to be understood as a plural, complex and multidimensional one. This minority politics is mostly visible at the local level and during local events.
Social movement: during the last twenty years, the convergence of local LGBT organisations, the alliances and the strategies of institutionalisation of a national movement introduced a structured LGBT movement that, like other social movements, is currently facing some tensions and conflicts engendered by leadership conflicts, concurrency between activists and organisations, but also by new issues emerged in the last decade concerning “homonationalism” trends within the LGBT field, as showed by the creation of new organisations such as “Facciamo breccia” especially involved in a critical queer position within the LGBT movement. It is to study the social LGBT movement to grasp the tensions that cross them.
Equal rights: the claims for equal rights are not constitutive issues that led to the emergence of LGBT movements, as well as they are not an exclusive dimension of LGBT politics, but precisely an expression of their juridical moment. Thus, it is to understand how Italian LGBT movements imported and continue to import equal rights activism models provided by countries such as Belgium, Spain or France, but also by European LGBT organisations (ILGA) and institutions. This will permit to evaluate how multiple dynamics influence specific contexts and in particular how the Italian LGBT politics are “multidimensionally” crossed by local, national and transnational issues.
These researches and the related activities of publication and dissemination of the results has permitted permit to introduce in the Italian academic field the issue of LGBT politics. They also intended to promote a public debate of LGBT rights in Italy, within the LGBT activist space but also in the public domain.
Finally the LGBT Act project has allowed the scientific community to:
1. Understand the political logics of emergence, organization and transformation of an activist LGBT field in Italy.
Through an original approach to LGBT activism, mixing archival researches and ethnographic methodologies, the researcher has mapped the critical moments in the history of Italian LGBT movements that allow the understanding of a major political trajectory that led from gay liberation discourses to gay rights discourses. It is to understand the dissolution of revolutionary movements and the emergence of democratic movements.
2. Mobilize an empirical-based approach it is to propose an historical and political study of the emergence of an Italian LGBT activism.
The researcher Dr. Massimo Prearo has conducted ethnographic researches mixing observation and participation methods that has strengthened the understanding of the main hypothesis of the project, that is to say that the political moments studied are not the result of a sort of historical necessity, but rather the result of political strategies, different forms of activist project options and, above all, of activist conflicts.
3. Propose theoretical multidimensional model that aims at discussing critical notions in the fields of LGBT studies and political studies.
Finally, the LGBT Act project has permitted to highlight the complexity of the configuration of Italian LGBT activism, to show how a strong territorialization of the movement tends to make it weaker, comparing it to other Italian movements, and then to establish that political inside conflicts are not to be considered as the problem that weaken the movement, but on the contrary, the productive dynamics that shape its polymorphic form.