As Berlin Queer
and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler's
decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride.
We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status
to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders,
police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in
openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers' closeness to
homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to
her openness for new ideas and her readiness to engage with our long
activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions
of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.
Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour
organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award
more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date.
Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de),
SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space
mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a
white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press
focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though
Butler herself was quite clear: 'I must distance myself from complicity
with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.' She notes that not just
homosexuals, but also 'bi, trans and queer people can be used by those
who want to wage war.'
The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have
difficulties pronouncing the award winner's name and grasping basic
aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five
minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of
presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan
Salloch and Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly
refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and
allies who had come out in Butler's support: 'You can scream all you
like. You are not the majority. That's enough.' The finale was an
imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor:
'Pride will just continue in its programme. . . . No matter what. . . .
Worldwide and here in Berlin. . . . This is how it's always been and
will always be.'
In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of
international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the
wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists Jasbir Puar and Amit
Rai's early critique of this in their 2002 article 'Monster, Terrorist, Fag'). In 2008, the Berlin
Pride motto was 'Hass du was dagegen?', which might translate as 'You
go' a problem or wha'?'. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as
the problems of youth of colour who apparently don't speak proper
German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don't
belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters
more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation
was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already
known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and
even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made
respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies
where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans
person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of colour,
and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic
altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know
already -- that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of
all, and that 'the homophobic migrants' are the main cause for this.
This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of
the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay
Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration
with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work
largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants
as 'archaic', 'patriarchal', 'homophobic', violent, and unassimilable.
Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public
funding in order to 'protect' people of colour from racism. The
'Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia' in the
gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor
with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what
more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour
also live -- especially at times of 'war on terror' and 'security, order
and cleanliness.'
It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of
solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of
criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler
scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of
colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for
this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.
Signed:
Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin
Haritaworn, Jen Petzen, Aykan Safoğlu and Cengiz Barskanmaz of SUSPECT
[SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants,
Black people, people of colour, and allies. Our aim is to monitor the
effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free
from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms. Click here to read the German version of the statement "Judith Butler lehnt Berlin CSD Zivilcouragepreis ab!"
See, also, Jin Haritaworn and Jennifer Petzen, "Invented Traditions,
New Intimate Publics: Tracing the German 'Muslim Homophobia' Discourse"
(forthcoming in Chris Flood and Stephen Hutchings, eds., Islam in
its International Context: Comparative Perspectives, Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010); and Georg Klauda, "With Islamophobia against Homophobia?" (MRZine,
12 November 2007).]