Biopolitics, Imaginaries and Tensions in the Urban Space : A decolonial critique of the discourse of inclusion in the city of San José, Costa Rica (2024)

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Biopolitics, Imaginaries and Tensions in the Urban Space: A decolonial critique of the discourse of inclusion in the city of San José, Costa Rica (Thesis)

Mar Fournier Pereira

2022

Discourses of inclusion have gained special importance in Costa Rican politics. Political parties promise inclusion, NGOs compete for international cooperation funds to develop projects along these lines, collectives demand inclusion, entrepreneurs and corporations offer inclusive commodities, spaces and experiences. However, when analyzing these discourses and practices, the notion of inclusion seems, paradoxically, too lax and at the same restricted to a small sector of beneficiaries.This thesis seeks to analyze, from a decolonial perspective, these dominant discourses and practices of inclusion in the city, as well as the narratives of people who inhabit the city. I also seek to elucidate the ways in which biopolitics flows through discourses of inclusion, generating new ways to regulate populations. In this sense, in this work, inclusion discourses and practices are understood as both cultural and material processes. I pursue the following hypothesis: (1) that both conservative and progressive projects of inclusion in San José, share the rhetoric of “rescue”, which implies the intervention on bodies and spaces, wrought by social imaginaries on national identity, and therefore, (2) that the notion of inclusion in Costa Rica reproduces the coloniality of power. This approach is based on Christina Hanhardt's provocation to think of the city as “a critical nexus for analyzing how politics, policies and property have indelibly shaped LGBT social movements, in particular in response to violence” (Hanhardt, p.11). I think of the city of San José as a critical nexus for analyzing how biopolitics and national imaginaries have shaped social movements for inclusion (including LGBTIQ+). In dialogue with city dwellers who are left out of inclusive policies (trans* asylum seekers, queer people with disabilities, unhoused trans* people, sex workers, among others), I analyze the biopolitical and necropolitical practices that are reproduced in a variety of projects (from LGBTI bars to Christian charitable programs) that self-identify within the discursive framework of inclusion. The tensions that these projects generate produce dynamics of displacement, homonationalism, queer regeneration, social hygienism and the spectacularization of violence. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part delves into the historical processes that produce the imaginaries of Costa Rican identity, which is essential to understand the power relations that are established today in and around the inclusion projects in the city of San José. This part also addresses some of the main theoretical developments in the field of biopolitics, and puts them in dialogue with theories and knowledge produced in Abya Yala, in order to develop a plural theoretical framework for analysis. The second part analyses projects that seek the inclusion of impoverished and hungry people from the discursive positions of hygienism, charity or commodification in the city. The third part analyzes a series of discourses and projects of neoliberal inclusion developed in various fields: party politics, NGOs, neighborhood groups, gay entrepreneurship, diversity marketing. The thesis attempts to map the power relations that emerge within and around these projects, and tries to show the continuities that exist between apparently different projects.

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I Monster: Embodying Trans and Travesti Resistance in Latin America

Joseph M . Pierce

LARR, 2020

Since 2010, legal gains for LGBTQI communities in Latin America have exposed the contradictions of inclusion under a rights-based approach to sexual citizenship. Expanding neoliberal economies and multicultural incorporation has yet to resolve persistent inequalities or ongoing gender-based violence, in particular for trans and travesti populations in the region. Rather than depend on the symbolic and material protections of the state, however, many trans and travesti activists, artists, and performers argue that since the state is interested in normalizing sexual relations and gendered identities through legal recognition, it cannot be a source of identification, safety, or freedom. Focusing on recent work by Susy Shock (Argentina) and Claudia Rodríguez (Chile), this article demonstrates that "monstering" (to monster) has become a crucial form of epistemological resistance to neoliberal politics of inclusion and recognition in Latin America and of opening up new possibilities of imagining collective belonging. Los avances logrados desde el 2010 para las comunidades LGTBQI en América Latina han descubierto las contradicciones inherentes de la inclusión dentro de un marco legal de derechos en relación con la ciudadanía sexual. Ni las economías neoliberales expansionistas ni la incorporación multicultural han resuelto las inequidades persistentes o la continua violencia de género, en particular para las poblaciones trans y travesti en la región. En vez de depender de la protección simbólica o material del estado, sin embargo, muchas activistas y artistas trans y travesti afirman que siendo que el interés del estado reside en normalizar las relaciones sexuales y las identidades de género a través del reconocimiento legal, el mismo estado no puede ser fuente de identificación, seguridad o libertad para ellas. Enfocándose en trabajo reciente de Susy Shock (Argentina) y Claudia Rodríguez (Chile), este artículo demuestra que "monstruosiarse" (volverse monstruo) comprende una forma importante de resistencia epistémica a las políticas neoliberales de inclusión y reconocimiento en América Latina, así como una apertura hacia nuevas posibilidades de imaginar la pertenencia colectiva. Yo reivindico mi derecho a ser un monstruo.-Susy Shock, Poemario trans pirado (2011) Para las travestis reales el estado no puede existir.-Claudia Rodríguez, Dramas pobres (2016) In the twenty-first century, legal gains in the realm of sexual citizenship have led to increased visibility for many-and greater security for some-lesbian, gay, and trans people in Latin America. 1 The passage of marriage equality legislation in several countries and a growing progressive agenda regarding gender identity laws have opened the door to new (and old) debates such as abortion, HIV/AIDS services, the rights of sex workers, and gender-based violence (femicidio and travesticidio). 2 At the same time, however, we see 1 I use lesbian, gay, and trans intentionally, since I am referring to a specific set of identities, not all those that are often included under the rubric of sexual diversity and/or gender variance.

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Andrés Valencia M.

Queer Epistemologies in Education. Luso-Hispanic Dialogues and Shared Horizons, 2020

In this Glossary, the Criscadian Collective departs from a cultural production approach to create a double-lensed framework to conceptualize the queer in a language teacher education program at a Colombian public university and to represent queerly the findings of their research. Multiple data were collected and analyzed: syllabi, murals (pictures), in-depth interviews with members of the LGBTQ community, and the collective’s autoethnographic data. Findings are presented as entries. Each entry problematizes/qualifies/reterritorializes the queer by explaining how the heteronormative and homonormative discourse-practices-spaces are (re)produced curricularly and pedagogically at the material and symbolic levels in their teacher education program. Findings intersect the queer with categories such as race (Black), identities (Marica, Hybris), pedagogy (Queer PedagogieS, (In)visible), politics (Resistance, Amphibians, Crisis), and place (Mariposario).

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Co-opting Queers: LGBTI+ Social Movements Advocating and Resisting the Institutionalization of Homonormative Policies in Ecuador

Luma Mantilla Garino

2019

This master’s thesis project investigates the degree to which homonormative paradigms have permeated Ecuadorian institutions, as well as the perceptions, identities, framing strategies, and mobilization tactics of local LGBTI+ social movement actors, since 2008. As an investigative work, it seeks to fill the gap within research of Ecuadorian social movements and provide an overture to the study of LGBTI+ social movement actors in this national context. Through the use of a combination of political opportunity analysis, critical frame analysis, collective identity analysis, new social movement perspectives, and both Latin American and Western theories on gender and sexual diversities, this study provides an overview of the key opportunities and obstacles facing LGBTI+ social movement actors in Ecuador, as well as the structuring power of hegemonic conceptualizations of human rights and sexual citizenship. It provides evidence of how homonormative understandings have enabled novel forms of co-optation OF and BY sexual-generic diversities, prompted the encystment of stigmatizations against peripheric, dissident bodies/identities/expressions, and narrowed local conceptualizations of sexuality, identity, and binarity. The study concludes by arguing that any alterations to this new hegemonic reality will be hard to achieve, as the genuinely emancipatory discourses of dissident sexualities and identities are pushed further (and farther) into marginalization; and that the only route towards social justice will require great empathetic strides from all actors, as well as the courage of victorious LGBTI+ populations to question, and risk, all the advances they have accomplished.

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Intersectionality for and from Queer Urban Activism Viewed through Lesbian Activism in Barcelona

Maria Rodó-Zárate

Geography Research Forum, 2019

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Payne (2021) Queer Urban activism under state impunity: Encountering an LGBTTTI Pride archive in Chilpancingo, Mexico.

William J Payne

Urban Studies, 2021

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Inclusion in the homonormative world city: The case of gay migrants living with HIV in Barcelona

Cesare Di Feliciantonio

Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica

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The Fiction of Javier Payeras and the Neoliberal State: Framing Queerness in Postwar Guatemala

Andrew Bentley

Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades, 2021

This essay establishes parallels between sexual diversity and the neoliberal state, ultimately to demonstrate how queer and trans Guatemalans embody public urban space where they have been ostracized in the postwar period. The essay begins by situating queerness in the context of recent Latin American cultural criticism to subsequently provide a detailed genealogy of the mutual imbrications of queerness and neoliberalism in postwar Guatemala. Ultimately, I contend, emergent discourses of LGBTQ+ subjectivities as depicted in the novels Ruido de fondo (2003) and Días amarillos (2009) by Javier Payeras elucidate how queer and trans Guatemalans navigate the fragmented cityscape.

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\u3cem\u3eSoy Moderno y No Quiero Locas\u3c/em\u3e: Queer Citizenship in Lima, Perú

Marco Herndon

2016

This paper explores the LGBTQ rights movement in Lima, Peru from 1980 to the contemporary period. It uses a historically-based, ethnographic methodology to explore the LGBTQ rights movement and its mediation of transnational and domestic contexts. Particular focus is paid to the Movimiento Homosexual de Lima and the recent Union Civil Ya! campaign. It builds off existing critical scholarship examining how Latin American LGBTQ movements respond to domestic contexts and reconstruct transnational success stories. Its main claim is that although Peru’s gay rights movement initially focused on intellectually-inspired, deep-seated cultural changes toward sexuality, mainstream organizations now construct claims to legitimate citizenship through an internationalist discourse that forms part of Peru’s ongoing project of cultural and economic modernity. The research adds much needed context and insight on the formation of the Peruvian queer movement in an anti-democratic, conservative politic...

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el barrio de La Chueca of Madrid, Spain: An Emerging Epicenter of the Global LGBT Civil Rights Movement

Omar Martinez

Journal of Homosexuality, 2010

The purpose of this article is to examine and deconstruct the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) barrio (community) of Chueca in Madrid, Spain, from political and sociological perspectives. First, we develop a critical framework for understanding the historical, political, social, cultural, and economic changes that took place in Spain after Franco's death in relation to LGBT issues. Ethnographic research was conducted from May to July 2007 in the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza, and focused primarily on the community of Chueca. A social constructionist perspective was used to examine sociocultural issues in this ethnosexual community through an in-depth study of the dynamics of this barrio. The theoretical framework of intersectionality and the constitutive relations among social identities is exemplified in Chueca. Hence, individuals in Chueca and their intersectionality perspective reveal that their identities influence and shape their beliefs about gender and symbols. We describe how Chueca reflects recent progressive changes in LGBT-related laws and statutes drafted by the federal government and how these have influenced the high level of societal acceptance toward intimate same-sex relationships in Spain. Additionally, we exemplify and present Chueca as an enclave that has been affected by the globalization of the private market, “gay” identity, and enterprise, having a direct effect on cultural norms and social behaviors. Last, we examine the current state of the Chueca community relative to other developing LGBT Latino/a communities in the United States.

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Biopolitics, Imaginaries and Tensions in the Urban Space : A decolonial critique of the discourse of inclusion in the city of San José, Costa Rica (2024)
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