LGBTQ+ activism in Azerbaijan: shifting queer (in)visibility regime through power–knowledge technologies

ABSTRACT

The queer (in)visibility regime in Azerbaijan has been historically structured through centralizing powers and the coloniality of knowledge(s) in their Russian/Soviet and contemporary Western manifestations. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this study shows how local queer activism arises through the appropriation of Western LGBTQ+ discourse and the use of the internet, with its novel spaces and digitally mediated discursive practices. In addition to its humanizing and normalizing effects, these organizations generate a new space for the realization of homosexual desire against the old Soviet subjectivity while preserving their didactic enlightener position towards Western/European pedagogy. Finally, this study argues that homosexuality has become a means of boundary-making practices both inside and outside the country, positioning on the borderline between symbolic Europe and national characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer (in)visibility regime
• LGBTQ+ activism
• power–knowledge technologies
• discourses
• coloniality of knowledge
• Foucauldian discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere gratitude to Cai Wilkinson, Jasmin Dall’Agnola and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable contributions to the development of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘Petukhi’ (cock) was considered the lowest caste in the Soviet prison hierarchy, based on the ‘thief-in-law’, who was usually isolated from all and exposed to all types of degradation, violence and a fatal end. ‘Goluboi’ (light blue), in turn, has an obscure etymology with various explanations (one is related to the Soviet labour camp) and began to be used in the 1970s in the Soviet Union.

2 Thanks to LGBTQ+ activist Vahid Aliyev for sharing the report and other resources with me, which he discovered at the Netherlands Archive.