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Manipulating with Homophobia: Populism, Society, and Queer Resistance in Georgia

Start Date : 11 May 2023

Manipulating with Homophobia: Populism, Society, and Queer Resistance in Georgia
/Conference and Exhibition/
For attendance, please register on the following link: 
https://shorturl.at/hmzFS
10 years have passed since the infamous events of May 17, 2013. During this past decade, alongside larger socio-political processes, The LGBTQIA+ movement underwent a thorough and challenging
process of articulating political claims and strategies. At the same time, societal and institutional attitudes toward gender and sexuality have also changed shape.
Bearing in mind the difficult economic situation and the ongoing political crises, for the queer community, much like for other discriminated upon and marginalised groups, it is vital to establish
mobilizing, advocacy, and resistance strategies that will bring to the forefront the interlocked nature of social, economic, cultural, and ecological dimensions of oppression.
The research and critical analysis of these intersections is becoming increasingly relevant in activist and academic spaces that we position as essential to formulating queer-feminist politics for political emancipation. However, the dominant political groups continuously try to disregard these attempts and confine issues relating to gender and sexuality to one-dimensional analysis, easily
instrumentalised for inciting (geo)political or social conflicts.
The intentions and actions of hegemonic political actors are systematic and apparent within the context of the events that characterise the last ten years. On the one hand, the conservative populist State openly takes an anti-gender and queer stance to globally expand its network of allies, and, on the other, liberal populist political parties appeal to freedom and equality that is devoid of meaning and that disregards gender-based, racial, geographic, economic, and ecological dimensions of inequalities, oppressions and exploitations.
The conference— Manipulating with Homophobia: Populism, Society, and Queer Resistance in Georgia— taking place on 11 May, 2023, is an attempt to create an interdisciplinary space for discussion where we will critically and with a diachronic method analyse (1) the ways in which homophobic actors and their discourse have changed shape from Georgia’s independence to today; (2) what actors and systemic factors stand in the way of or create a ground on which queer-feminist politics can become an integral part to the fight for social justice.
The exhibition in the parallel space of the conference will be displayed until 19:30