Towards Other Scenes of Speaking and Listening: Palestinian Anticolonial Queer Spatialities
Mikki Stelder, Visiting Scholar

In 2010, Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions called upon international queer communities to support the Palestinian calls for BDS. My dissertation emerged as one way to respond. First, I lay out the terms within which scholars and activists have engaged with PQBDS’ call and conditions of possibility within which responses emerged. Secondly, I discuss an event that undermined the logics of settler colonialism and sexual imperialism in Israel/Palestine: In 2011, three Palestinian queer groups engaged in email conversation with the International Gay and Lesbian Youth and Student Organization (IGLYO) about its decision to host its General Assembly in Tel Aviv. IGLYO went ahead with its plans, but invited the groups to a public debate with an Israeli LGBT group cohosting the GA. The Palestinian groups refused and then publicized their email correspondence with IGLYO. Viewing these decisions as a politics of refusal, I ask what other practices endure under Israeli occupation and alter the terms of Israel/Palestine engagement.

Mikki Stelder is a PhD Candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. She is a visiting scholar at UCSC in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Department under the auspices and guidance of Gina Dent. She also teaches Feminist and Postcolonial Critique to choreography students at the School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.