Date: Wednesday 25 March 2009
Time: 5 pm
Venue: Helmore 252

Speaker: Dr Erez Levon, Queen Mary University London

Despite significant legal enfranchisements over the past twenty years, lesbians and gays in Israel remain largely marginalized and excluded from full participation in society. This marginalization can be traced to a perceived incompatibility between gay or lesbian identity on one hand and the values that normatively define belonging in Israeli society on the other. Gays and lesbians in a certain sense exist outside of and in conflict with the dominant discourse of what it means to "be Israeli" and, as such, a crucial component of the construction and performance of a lesbian or gay subjectivity in Israel involves negotiating this sexual/national tension.

In this talk, Dr Levon will investigate some of the various ways in which people who identify as both gay/lesbian and Israeli understand the relationship between these two opposing affiliations, and how they use language to construct identities for themselves that attempt to reconcile this conflict. Data is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, where Dr Levon spent twelve months observing various gay/lesbian activist associations ranging across the Israeli political spectrum, including everything from a centrist political lobby to a queer anarchist group.

All welcome.

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