Homomonument as Queer Micropublic: An Emotional Geography of Sexual Citizenship

Abstract

Emotions have remained under-addressed in scholarship on public memorial art, particularly with sexuality content. This case study on the Amsterdam-based Homomonument attends to this gap by differentiating emotions according to multi-scalar, multi-temporal and multi-semiotic dimensions of everyday lived experiences of sexual citizenship. Based on discourse analysis of secondary materials and social media coverage, supplemented with auto-ethnographic experience, the study explores how present-day feelings of respect, agitation and celebration around Homomonument are mediated at intersecting levels of the body, local community, broader society and especially emergent virtual community spaces. Such understanding requires critical interfaces with reminiscences, contemporary values and normativities, and future imaginaries. Specifically, this paper puts in perspective how Homomonument operates as queer micropublic: a space for intercultural encounter and 'queerying' sexual difference. This appears to be a multifaceted meaningful process, too: Homomonument ambiguously holds contesting, reconciling, indifferent and empathic sentiments alongside belongings and sexual identity expressions in quotidian life.

Queer Monuments: Visibility, (Counter)actions, Legacy

“…This entails an ongoing concern with questioning sexual and gender normativities around representation, social engagement, and how queer monuments are embodied through memorial practices, interpretations, responses, and usages or misusages. The possibilities and limitations in this regard depend on: the material affordances of the objects of commemoration (e.g., site, scale, text, design, visuality/iconography); how the monument is commissioned and preserved (e.g., publicly and/or privately); and how it involves public communities and is introduced to them (see Stevens & Franck, 2015;Zebracki, 2017aZebracki, , 2021.…”

“…Through our cross-case auto-/ethnography and archival study, this conversational article contributes novel grounded, comparative insights into debates on queer monuments and how they aid in remembering, and providing critical reflection on, LGBT+ lives and experiences (e.g., Dunn, 2017;Orangias et al, 2018;Zebracki, 2017aZebracki, , 2020a. Despite some multi-authored publications, this research field, and the particular canon on queer monuments/memorializing, is still governed by single voices in lieu of dialogic texts as we pursue on these pages.…”

Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

“…Also, two of her great, great aunts who she deeply admired were involved in a sweatshop strike on nearby Spadina Avenue in 1936 (interview with Toronto-based artist, 2010). Echoing what Zebracki (2016) identifies as the queer practice of exploring the diverse spatial scales and temporalities that constitute everyday spaces, Radiodress strived to articulate the various ways the personal and political shaped and continue to shape the neighbourhood's streets, alleyways, storefronts and public spaces with each hand.…”

“…As articles about the Koffler Centre's actions circulated in blog posts and newspapers, they re-ignited discussions about queer politics and neoliberal placemarketing within the art and activist communities. Within these debates, arts-activists engaged in queer acts of relationality across sites and scales (Zebracki, 2016) by making connections between the blacklisting of the each hand project with corporate sponsors' and conservative city councillors' ongoing attempts to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) from marching in Toronto's annual Pride parade (Muzzlewatch, 2009). Similar to the Through these conversations, artists and activists drew attention to ongoing attempts to prioritize homonormative urban space amenable to contemporary capitalism and police politicized queer identities and practices (Puar, 2007).…”

“…acts of co-opting and re-working discourses which exclude minoritarian subjects (Muñoz, 1999). Through such disidentificatory interventions, artists contest neoliberal logics and forge solidarities across sites and scales (Zebracki, 2016;De Leeuw and Hawkins, 2017).…”