LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space

Europe and the European Union are unavoidable,  if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yugoslav space. This volume interrogates the forms and implications of the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s) and Europeanisation(s) in all of the Yugoslav successor states.

Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality. This creates a linkage between “Europeanness” and “gay emancipation” which elevates certain forms of gay activist engagement and perhaps also non-heterosexuality, more generally, to a measure of democracy, progress and modernity. At the same time, it relegates practices of intolerance to the LGBT community to the status of non-European primitivist Other who is inevitably positioned in the patriarchal past that should be left behind.  

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“This meticulously-researched, edited volume offers a brilliant analysis of the complex linkages between LBGT rights and European integration, and their implications for activists, citizens, and officials alike. It is a major contribution to the literature on activism in the post-Yugoslav space as well as LGBT activism more broadly. A must read for students and scholars of gender studies, European studies, and social movements.” (Jill A. Irvine, Presidential Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma, and Co-Editor of Politics & Gender)

“This strikingly original collection represents not only a pioneering work in LGBT studies, but also offers a powerful case for engaging the study of post-conflict Southeastern Europe with enhanced theoretical depth and wider social engagement. The result is an impressive and useful volume both in terms of the scope of its coverage and the scholarly rigour of the individual texts.” (Eric Gordy, Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London)

Bojan Bilić is Marie Curie Fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is the author of We Were Gasping for Air: (Post-)Yugoslav Anti-War Activism and Its Legacy (2012) and co-editor of Resisting the Evil: (Post-)Yugoslav Anti-War Contention (2012) and Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia (2016).