Queer Italy: Contexts, Antecedents and Representations

355 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006.This study is a qualitative, multi-methodological inquiry about the historical, political and representational contexts behind the current plea for civil unions that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and queers are advocating in Italy. The dissertation expands current scholarship concerned with the links between identity, subjectivity and sexuality in Italy. A guiding hypothesis is that long-rooted political and religious ideologies, practices and institutions are being challenged (a) in everyday life, in actual relationships (cohabitation, partnerships, families) even if they are not legitimated by the State; (b) at the level of representation, in queer films; and (c) at the level of international policies, by the concern of the European Union's Parliament to assure equal rights to minority groups in Italy. This study includes auto ethnographic passages intended to problematize the applicability of the notion of queer and queer politics in Italy, which the author sees interrelated with issues of class, language and race. This dissertation exemplifies these issues by expanding the notion of gay and lesbian activism in Italy to embrace the personal experience of borderland identities (immigrants, intersex, queers, etc.). The author demonstrates that to embrace queer politics, the current gay and lesbian activism in Italy needs to move from the mere advocacy of civil rights to the inclusion of radical, non-violent politics that create new social and human rights, which are all-inclusive and respectful of the radical diversity at the heart of humanity.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD