Queer Politics of History: On Progress Narratives and its Outcasts

Abstract

Thinking of LGBT rights means, among other things, thinking about various trajectories which are at once historical and geographical, as news about laws and policies often takes the shape of roads to or from somewhere – from darkness to light, from primitiveness to modernity, from East to West. Every now and then, as we hear that another country has entered the realm of LGBT rights, we are told that it has finally emerged from the past “dark ages” and entered the present – or the future – where it can join many other countries that preceded it. Some states “include” new subjects and collectives, as they broaden the spectrum of subjectivities protected by their legislation, while others are portrayed as lagging behind in this inevitable tide forward. It is seems difficult to even think of LGBT rights without drawing a line which positions us in specific historical, political, and geographical sites, which are relative to those of other subjects and countries, and relative to our own past and future.