Homosexualität im Nahen Osten. Eine Analyse hegemonialer und konkurrierender Diskurse

Tolino, Serena (2021). Homosexualität im Nahen Osten. Eine Analyse hegemonialer und konkurrierender Diskurse. In: Küppers, Carolin; Schneider, Martin (eds.) Zwischen Annäherung und Abgrenzung. Religion und LSBTIQ* in gesellschaftlicher Debatte und persönlichem Erleben. Geschichte der sexuellen und geschlechtlichen Vielfalt in Deutschland nach 1945: Vol. 8 (pp. 57-84). Berlin: Männerschwarm Verlag

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In this article I consider what analytical categories we could use when dealing with “homosexuality” in the Middle East, looking at the local contemporary discourses on homosexuality, analyzing both the dominant and the competitive perspective. My thesis is grounded on a close analysis of a set of diverse primary sources, such as on-line fatwās, published by the leading Islamic websites, such us Islam on-line, OnIslam, Islam Questions and Answers, Islam-net, religious magazines and booklets, personal interviews to activists for human rights and documents of Lebanese and Egyptian organizations. Through the analysis of these sources, I argue that there are two competing discourses: the mainstream official, propelled by religious scholar, and the competitive one, propelled by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) organizations. I am building on the Foucauldian notion of discourse, which refers not only to a linguistic tool, or to linguistic signs, but which intends discourses “as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things”. (Foucault : 1971: 49). Rather than the Foucauldian “dominated discourse”, in this essay I use the phrase “competitive discourse”, which shows the capacity of agency of the subjects embodying these ideas, shedding light on how they are not dominated, but they are active in challenging the dominant discourse and in contributing to changing it.

NB: leicht revidierte Übersetzung des Artikels "Homosexuality in the Middle East: an analysis of dominant and competitive discourses", in DEP, Deportate, Esuli, Profughe., Rivista Telematica di Studi sulla memoria femminile 25 (2014)

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