Srdjan SremacVU University AmsterdamESA RN 34, Religion in the Public DomainBelfast, 3-5 September 2014

 

Eros vs Agape: A Public Discourse Analysis of Sexual and Religious Nationalism in the Western Balkans

Contested Privates•The project is part of the Contested Privates research group at VU University Amsterdam

•CP analyzes the polarization of religion and homosexuality in political debates and popular culture and compares the contemporary situation in the Netherlands with its recent history and with Serbia, Spain, and Sweden. What do conflicts about homosexuality teach us about the place of religion in society?

The Western Balkans

-Societies of ‘frozen conflicts’.-With the ‘national revival’, which peaked in the 1990s civil war, the Western Balkans witnessed the ‘comeback’ of Orthodoxy in Serbia, Roman Catholicism in Croatia, and Islam in Bosnia.

-Desecularization and clericalization of the society.

-Secular ‘religion’ of nationalism

Research Question:

The main research question of this project is: How are national, sexual, and religious identities configured in public discourse and how does that affect conflicts around sexual diversity in the Western Balkans?

The projects focus on the strategic and ideological assumptions, interests, and effects of present-day constructions of (homo)sexuality and religion in public arenas of the Western Balkans.

Methodological & Theoretical Framework•The Affect Theory •Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion

•(shame, guilt, hate, disgust…)•Religious Nationalism(Juergensmeyer, Smith, Friedland)

•Sexual Nationalism (Mosse, El-Tayeb, Pryke…)

•Discourse Analysis

Religion and Homosexuality

- The construction of religion and homosexuality emerges fromdiscursive negotiations of cultural and national identities.

- The negotiation here builds on the notion of a Western threat to the

nations’ identities, and religion is embraced as a means to unite the

Country and counter the threat.

- Not only that religion justify discriminatory practices against sexual minorities but is closely tied up with, and inseparable from, ethnic recognition, national self-determination and struggles for social and economic justice in the post-conflict societies.

- The interaction of nationalism, ethnocentrism, religion, and anti-westernism targets homosexuality as an internally unifying enemy.

Cultural Iconography

Some Examples of Religious Hate Speech in the Media

• Metropolitan Amfilohije explicitly links homosexuality with modern civilization, defining it as “something imposed by modernity and invoking, in that way, the myth about a Western conspiracy against Serbia”

• Metropolitan Amfilohije - “a parade of shame and embarrassment”. He utilizes the rhetoric of “brimstone and fire” when condemning LGBT sexualities, calls them a “thorn in the flesh for the Churches” .

• One year earlier he had referred to the event as “a parade of Sodom and Gomorrah”.

- Patriarch Irinej: Conchita Wurst's Eurovision 2014 win caused Balkan floods. God sent the flood as a “divine punishment for their [the LGBT community’s] vices”.

- He added: “God is thus washing Serbia of its sins”.

- Amfilohije of Montenegro said that the floods were “not a coincidence but a warning,” explaining that the extreme weather was a sign that people must reject the “Jesus-like-figure”.

- God sent the rains as a reminder that people should not join the wild side,” he reportedly added.

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Religious Hate Speech

- Montenegro: We [the church] strongly condemn this parade of shame and disease, and we are praying to God to repeal this disease and the devil’s attack on Budva and Montenegro” (BalkanInsight 2013).

-Bosnia and Herzegovina: “Who is framing the Bosnian public in relation to gay gathering during the month of Ramadan?“

-Croatia: “The conspiracy of faggots and lesbians would destroy Croatia.”

Religious and Sexual Nationalism in the Western Balkans - Not only that religion justify discriminatory practices against sexual minorities but is closely tied up with, and inseparable from, ethnic recognition, national self-determination and struggles for social and economic justice in the post-conflict societies.

- The concoction of nationalism, ethnocentrism, religion, and anti-westernism targets homosexuality as an internally unifying enemy.

Explicit and Implicit Theology

Protection of traditional values and families.

The symbolic order of society shaped by the Christian religion (religious nationalism).

Gender demarcations (e.g. masculinity, traditional gender roles)

The Bible versus individual autonomy.

Sin and deviation of human nature

The Balkanization of Desire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvwth0eWKns