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Boundaries of Queerness: Homonationalism and Racial Politics in Sweden

Online ISBN:
9781529223552
Print ISBN:
9781529223521
Publisher:
Policy Press
Book

Boundaries of Queerness: Homonationalism and Racial Politics in Sweden

Katharina Kehl
Katharina Kehl

Lecturer

Lund University
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
24 July 2024
Online ISBN:
9781529223552
Print ISBN:
9781529223521
Publisher:
Policy Press

Abstract

Recent decades have seen increased mobilization of LGBTQ rights in various nationalist projects of (non-)belonging. This book provides new insights into how race, sexuality and gender feature in these projects by examining contemporary constructions of Swedishness. It combines explorations of boundary making and belonging with queer conceptualizations of subjectivity, read through a racialization lens. The author analyses constructions of Swedishness through LGBTQ rights across three empirical sites: a ‘pride parade’ organized by the Swedish populist right, Swedish Armed Forces’ marketing material, and an Instagram account for racialized LGBTQ people. The analysis shows how constructions of Swedishness rely on separating an LGBTQ-friendly Swedish Self from various dangerous racialized Others. These separations are maintained by narratives of threat and protection, making LGBTQ people intelligible as potential victims while locating anti-LGBTQ violence firmly outside of White Swedishness. The book identifies various ways in which racialized LGBTQ people manoeuvre these normative grids of intelligibility, carving out liveable lives in the context of exclusionary constructions of Swedishness. The book contributes a deeper understanding of the multiple ways in which gender, sexuality and race are part of (nationalist) boundary-making moves. It points to the urgency of engaging with how these boundary-making moves draw upon and enable grids of intelligibility that make some queer lives more liveable than others. And it reminds the reader that if we look at boundary making through a queer performative understanding of intelligibility, even the most (homo)normative and (homo)nationalist notions of (non-)belonging remain sites of contestation and re-articulation.

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