Eventalizing Berlin Anti-homophobia Policy in the Racialized and Sexualized "Social Curriculum of Germanness"

My dissertation offers an eventalization of two interrelated anti-homophobia policy proposals, which were introduced to the Berlin House of Representatives in 2008/2009: (1) the Green Party Berlin’s “Berlin Action Plan Against Homophobia,” and (2) the SPD Berlin/Left Party Berlin’s “Initiative: ‘Berlin Champions Self-Determination and Acceptance of Sexual Diversity’” (ISV). I conduct a Foucault-inspired genealogy of these policy texts and trace their emergence in the wider public debates around “homophobic hate-crime” in Berlin in the early 2000’s. I trace how the discourse on “homophobia-as-violence” interlocks in these social and political debates with the “social curriculum of Germanness” to produce three affectively charged figures through and against which the “progressive liberal German subject” comes to know itself: “the vulnerable homosexual” in need of state-protections, the “backwards homophobic (Muslim/Turkish/Arab) migrant” in need of civilizing measures, and the “pre-democratic homophobic (neo-)Nazi.” In the first part of my dissertation, I work my way towards the policy texts. I highlight some of the discourses, actors, and institutions that helped “homophobia” emerge as a social and political problem. These discourses are: (1) discourses of national remembrance, which help frame the fight against homophobia as a moral lesson from Germany’s Nazi past; (2) discourses around Berlin’s exceptional tolerance for gays and lesbians; (3) hate-crime statistics, which make homophobia intelligible as a problem of violent crime; and (4) Orientalist and psychological discourses, which tie “anti-gay attitudes” to “migrant youths.” In the second part, I work backwards from the policy texts. I illustrate how the Green Party’s action plan centers “homophobia-as-violence” in productive ways. Situating the policy problematizations of “homophobia” in the wider public debates on “homophobic hate-crime” in Berlin, I demonstrate that the proposed policy measure of special anti-homophobia education for “migrants” is rooted in Orientalist discourses that frame the social problem of “homophobic violence” in Berlin as a “clash of civilizations.” I further illustrate how the discourse on “migrant homophobia” produces some areas of Berlin as “tolerant spaces” for gays and lesbians and others as dangerous “no-go areas.” This discursive strategy of containing “homophobia” in “migrant” bodies and spaces helps to maintain the myth of Berlin’s sexual exceptionalism.

Department dc:contributor.department

Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Wallner, Michael

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sykes, Heather

• Anti-Homophobia Policy
• Anti-Muslim Racism
• Curriculum Studies
• Homonationalism
• Islamophobia
• Policy-as-discourse

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/121494

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/121494