Gender and Queer Formations Under Authoritarianism in the Global South

Social and political forces of nationalism, racism, religious fundamentalism, and xenophobia come together and resonate across the authoritarian, anti-Western, populist, and ultra-right governmental regimes in the Global South. These governments manifest their toxic tendencies and anti-minority policies through discriminatory and exclusionary speech acts, ideological doctrines, and restraining practices. In the last decade, antifeminist, anti-gender, and anti-LGBTI discourses and implementations have emerged against feminist and queer social organizations, political formations, and sites of knowledge-production—in line with the historical gains of the feminist/women’s movement and queer liberation. This backlash against gender equality and sexual democracy has become more evident in countries such as Poland, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil while in many contexts activists and allies have been struggling without being under the spotlight. This session invites studies on women’s, feminist, gender, and queer social movements, academic traditions, and political endeavors that develop the ways to cope with and struggle against the resurgent authoritarian forms of governance and hostile policies from Southern contexts. Analyzing historically contextualized stories in a constellation would enable us to form a less universalized and more comparative, engaged knowledge against authoritarianism.