Transnational ways of belonging and queer ways of being. Exploring transnationalism through the trajectories of the rainbow flag

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the trajectories of the rainbow flag through the concept of transnationalism and sets up a theoretical exchange between transnational migration research, critical sexuality studies, and queer scholarship. By engaging with the analytical differentiation between transnational ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’ this article reads these concepts through a queer lens, while also challenging some of their underlying assumptions. We are asking if, and in that case how, the rainbow flag can be regarded as a visible manifestation of transnational ways of queer being, and as a floating signifier filled with different meanings through quotidian acts and diverse and unequal queer ways of being – interlinked as it is with global hegemonies and colonial genealogies besides signifying local specificities – but nevertheless somehow indicating transnational ways of queer belonging to an imagined queer community.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational
• queer
• postcolonial
• rainbow flag
• homonationalism
• globalisation

Acknowledgments

Our special thanks goes to Petra Dannecker and Sara de Jong for their support and efforts in putting together this special issue. We also want to thank all the authors of this issue for their helpful comments during our writing workshop in Vienna in 2016, as well as the reviewers for their constructive critique. This article is the result of a truly cooperative working process; the collection of the material, the analyses and the writing have been done together, on equal terms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. By taking our point of departure in critical queer and poststructuralist theory (Butler 1990; Foucault 1978) as well as in postcolonial and decolonial gender and sexuality studies (Muñoz 1999; McClintock 1995; Stoler 1989), we are aware that terms like queer or the abbreviation LGBTIQ have been, and still are, debated, contested and challenged from very different angles and viewpoints and that these terms are particularly problematic when being used beyond the Euro-American context (Massad 2007). When we use the term LGBTIQ, it is related to a specific historical and political context or movement which is based on these social categories and/or identifications. Following queer theory, we also employ queer as a verb (to queer; queering) which points to our intention to deconstruct, destroy, question, destabilise, and displace certain phenomena related to sexuality and gender from a critical theoretical perspective (Warner 1993).

2. Kuchu, a term of Swahili origin, is being used as self-description of sexual and gender queers in Uganda.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [2014-01418].