The illiberal east: the gender and sexuality of the imagined geography of Eurasia in Armenia

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the ways in which Armenian right-wing nationalists understand the particularities of Armenian culture that stand apart from what they deem ‘Western values’, such as human rights and tolerance for homosexuality. Armenian right-wing nationalists place Armenia within an imaginary geography that I call the ‘Illiberal East,’ making up a part of a ‘Eurasian’ civilization. I discuss the debates in Yerevan surrounding the screening of the Serbian film Parada about the unfolding of a Gay Pride Parade in Sarajevo, claimed to be European propaganda unleashed onto Armenians. I then explore the notion of gender as a Western perversion with damaging consequences in the East through the right-wing nationalist condemnation of an event organized by a feminist organization as well as the National Assembly’s approval of the law protecting equal rights that included gender in its wording. Finally, I analyze a fairytale about Gender as a personified and destructive force. I show how the Illiberal East is imagined and invented. While the ‘West’ has been active in producing the ‘East’ as a backward region, the Illiberal East is an Eastern invention of a radically different civilization, or what we might understand as a self-Orientalizing narrative. While imaginary, the culture talk that informs the Illiberal East has real consequences, such as anti-homosexual discourses and often violence toward LGBT persons, and is rooted in geopolitical alliances, especially those led by Russia.

Keywords:

• Eurasianism
• gender
• illiberalism
• imagined geographies
• sexuality
• postsocialism

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the staff at PINK and WRC who, over the years, have continued to be dear friends, comrades, and colleagues. I appreciate the wisdom, insight, and patience of the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed a great deal to this article. A version of this work was presented as an invited lecture at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville’s 2017 Visiting Lecture Series on the theme of Violence, organized by Raja Swamy. I also presented a version on a panel at the 2018 American Political Science Association. Thanks to Veronika Zablotsky, Banu Bargu, Neveser Koker, Sara Hassani, and Navtej Purewal who were a part of that panel for their comments and engagement with the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Tamar Shirinian

Tamar Shirinian received her B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of California at Berkeley in 2007 and her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, with a Certificate in Feminist Studies, from Duke University in 2016. She is currently a Postdoctoral Teaching Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Her current book project, Survival of a Perverse Nation: Queer Transformations in Postsocialist Armenia, investigates the widespread rhetorics of sexual and moral "perversion" in everyday life. Her work has been published in American Ethnologist, QED: Journal of GLBT World-making, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, and lamda nordica. She has edited a special issue of Armenian Review entitled "Queering Armenian Studies,” which also includes an original research article by her. Her work has been translated in Armenian, Turkish, and Georgian.