Werk the motherland : nationalism and queerness in the Philippines

Abstract

This thesis expands the analytical and theoretical conception of homonationalism beyond its imperial and neoliberal version through the case of the Philippine queer rights and welfare movement. Drawing from social movement theories, it conceptualizes the movement as a network of organizations and actors, bound by shared identifications and goals, who collectively engage in political and cultural activities to demand reforms for the improvement of queer citizens’ lives. Drawing also from broader nationalism studies, it treats homonationalism as a discourse, a project, and ethics of queer national belonging. The thesis, then, centers on the varying forms of homonationalism that activists mobilize and encounter as they make demands and deploy particular tactics. To make sense of these demands and tactics, it combines insights from the political process model, ideological framing, resource mobilization theory, resistance studies, and queer mess. Grounded on ethnographic observations of movement events and in-depth interviews with 36 activists conducted from February 2022 to February 2023, the analysis centers on the different political, cultural, and material conditions that generate varying forms of nationalist discourses around queer issues. Four significant findings emerged. First, activists employ an assemblage of ideologies to produce collectivist homonational demands and to model queer progress not only after the West but also other Southern societies. Second, as advocates translate demands into policy advocacy, they encounter patronage homonationalism that admits politically loyal queer clients while suppressing militancy. To navigate this condition, advocates employ amiable tactics to appear obedient while seeking to reform patronage structures through demanding policy reforms. Third, when lobbying for policies and conducting organizing activities, advocates also confront religious nationalism that seeks to expel queerness from the nation. To counter it, they deploy narration tactics that borrow moral, religious, and historiographic language to insist on the national belonging of queer citizens. Finally, activists face imperial and neoliberal discourses under the transnational nonprofit industrial complex as they seek to sustain funding for their organizations or network. They strategically mobilize the same discourses to access needed resources and mobilize them to sustain movement activities that contribute to broader political demands. Altogether, these tactics constitute forms of resistance conceivable as queer weapons of the weak as they mobilize the same structures and discourses they seek to resist. Hence, following the impulse to interrupt Western knowledge gleaned from decolonial approaches and queer theories, this thesis makes a timely contribution in at least three ways. First, the study accounts for homonational aspirations that not only transcend imperial and neoliberal forms but also productively imagine queer belonging beyond the West. Second, it shows that varying local forms of nationalism are not disconnected from the imperial form. After all, these local forms emerged in social and political conditions linked with the Philippines’ history of Western colonization. Finally, the study reveals the agency of queer activists in the South to navigate and resist exclusionary forms of homonationalism as they insist on imaginaries of genuine national belonging.