'Unpacking (post)homonationalism'

Organized by MA major Social Justice Perspectives and the Sexual Diversity Committee of Scholas, the student association at the International Institute of Social Studies, this seminar aims to unpack the notion of homonationalism.

Speakers

Dino Suhonic

Dino  is executive director of Maruf, queer Muslim organization in the Netherlands, high school teacher and opinion maker. He frequently speaks and writes about queer Muslims, multiple discrimination and intersections of LGBTQI-phobia and islamophobia. He started the first empowerment program for queer Muslims in Netherlands. Maruf is the co-founder of the 'Global Queer Muslim Network', founder of European Queer Muslim Network and facilitates different queer Muslim platforms on national and international level.

Dino Suhonic has appeared in several Dutch television programmes and writes for newspapers like NRC, Volkskrant and De Correspodent.

He will focus on post-homonationalism in the Netherlands.

Mikki Stelder

Mikki Stelder is a scholar and community organizer working at the intersections of themes such as, (settler/post) colonialism, pinkwashing and homonationalism, antiracism, anticolonial-queer critique and the contestations of solidarity both in the Netherlands and in the context of Palestine (solidarity).

Mikki recently defended their/her PhD entitled Queering the Occupation: From Zionist Sexual Politics to Palestinian Anticolonial-Queer Imaginaries, which explored the questions: How to respond to the Palestinian Queer Call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions? And how to write with a movement for radical social justice within the academic industrial complex?

Mikki's work has been published in Settler Colonial Studies and Journal of Palestine Studies. Mikki's current research turns its attention to the role of maritime imagination in the construction of Dutch empire and colonialism and its contemporary repercussions. Mikki uses the pronouns she/her/they/them.

Mikki will contribute some of the insights from their/her dissertation, focusing specially on pinkwashing and the limits of the analytic of homonationalism for understanding the context of Zionist sexual politics. Mikki is especially interested in the ways in which this analytic has occluded certain Palestinian anticolonial-queer critiques.

Olava Basabose

Olave is black, vegan, non-binary trans femme, queer, feminist, Umurundikazi, neuro-atypical, money-poor and a resolute romantic. She is one of the authors in the book ‘BLACK – Afro-European literature from the Low Countries’ and was candidate councilor for the Haagse Stadspartij during last municipal elections. Since recently she has her own YouTube show: Olave Talks.

The seminar will be moderated by Jeff Handmaker.

What is homonationalism?

Homonationalism is a conceptual frame developed by Jasbir Puar 'for understanding the complexities of how "acceptance" and "tolerance" for gay and lesbian subjects have become a barometer by which the right to and capacity for nationality sovereignty is evaluated'. Puar suggests that the concept has been 'deployed, adapted, rearticulated, and critiqued in various national, activist, and academic contexts', resulting in 'generative and constructive debate'.