Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Sexual Politics in the European Periphery: a Multiscalar Analysis of Gay Prides in Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract

Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, has seen a sudden attempt to establish LGBT politics during the last 5 years, due to movement mobilization and favourable local and European opportunity structures. The article suggests a multiscalar analysis of Thessaloniki Prides, which takes into account politics articulated by a series of actors located in distinct scales. These actors include institutional and religious authorities, as well as the local LGBT movement. The analysis demonstrates that Thessaloniki Prides are shaped by conflicting discursive blocks articulated through the national, urban/local, and transnational scale. Prides, as the most visible outcome of the local LGBT movement, become a collective action, which is shaped and continuously challenged by its embeddedness in these scales. This analysis brings new insights into the geo-temporal politics of LGBT politics, reminding that European periphery’s sexual politics are located in a nexus of progressive cosmopolitanism and nationalist anti-modernity. In fact, the Thessaloniki case demonstrates that being part of the Western periphery places sexual politics between a globalist EU-ized discourse of modernity on the one hand and anti-secular views on heteronormative traditions on the other. Such a space is the setting where grassroots LGBTQ movements perform their politics.