Introduction:
Two years ago in an article about the Dutch conference ‘Feminism and Multiculturalism’, I criticized the restricted meaning multiculturalism and feminism most of the time has in western countries (Poldervaart 2002). In dominant western debates multiculturalism is limited to the integration of non-white and Islamic people into the dominant male, white, heterosexual and middle class culture, as if multiculturalism isn’t more than differences in colour and religion. In this way the cultures of gay/queer and of protest groups criticizing dominant culture, disappear from the picture of multiculturalism. Feminism was defined by the conference-organisation as ‘striving for recognition of equality, of equal opportunities and equal rights’. This is, however, a very limited definition: most feminists want more! Moreover, such ‘equal-rights’-feminism stimulate in practice the idea that only non-white people have to struggle for feminism because ‘we, women in the west’ have equal rights already. Both restricted meanings (of feminism and multiculturalism) strengthen the difference between ‘we’ (white, supposed to be progressive) people against the ‘other’ (coloured or Islamic), make affiliation-politics between both groups very difficult, forget all other diversities between people and don’t criticize the dominance of neo-liberal politics.
In this paper I will elaborate the contemporary connections between different protest movements that criticize dominant western culture. I want to show that, just because these movements are influenced by postmodern notions (like rejecting uniformity and essentialistic identities and taking ‘responsibility for “otherness”’(White 1991))i, their members really try to bring multiculturalism into practice. Multiculturalism means simply: different cultures within a society. Physical characteristics or nationality have nothing to do with it (Nottelman 1996: 3). Every society has to be considered as multicultural, because within all societies there are different cultures (between classes, hetero-homo’s, rural and urban cultures, different –interpretations of- religions etc.). Also without coloured people a discussion about multiculturalism is important.ii Because this conference is about ‘new social movements and sexuality’, I restrict myself to three contemporary movements that criticize dominant culture: the squatters, queers and alterglobalists. I will start with the squatters’ movement, because for a part this movement is the oldest one.
1. The squatters’ movement.
When the important role of the student movement and the autonomous women’s movement diminished in the 1980’s in Europe –from this time on the feminist (and gay and lesbian) movements became more and more institutionalised -, the role of the squatters movement increased. Marxist ideas disappeared and anarchists’ notions got the upper hand. Especially in the Netherlands, the government bought different squat buildings after 1982, by which the threat of eviction disappeared and all kinds of alternative cultural and political initiatives could arise (Duivenvoorden 2000). Projects, little industries and services started which form the basis of the typical squat subculture: grocery stores, bookshops, clothes shops, hairdressers, tool rentals, bike repair shops, health projects, feminist centres, galleries, music studios, free radios etc. ‘Back then it was no problem at all to live in what might be called a squatted zone for almost 24 hours a day; even on holiday you could travel to squats in other European countries’ (Kallenberg, 2001: 92-93). But by the end of the 1980s things changed. Because of new ‘anti-squat’ legislation, from this time on house owners could easily evict the squatters, and so nowadays a lot of squats exist for a few months only. Therefore it is harder to create concert halls, restaurants, shops and other provisions. Some groups choose to move into legalized squats, organizing in these their cooperative of the ‘Volkskeuken’ (People’s Kitchen, vegan food for a few euros), their squatting consulting centres, info café’s etc. Another reason why most of the workshops and other provisions quitted or chose a legal format is that the social services no longer tolerate extended unemployment, nor useful or pleasant voluntary work being done on full unemployment benefit. Squatters are idealistic but also ‘strategic’: in order to survive, they constantly have to use the possibilities the system unintentionally offers them.
The Dutch squatters movement was a big movement between 1976 and 1984. Squatters were large in numbers and well organized into neighbourhood groups; they had political impact and staged spectacular riots and because of that, gained a lot of media attention. The squatters’ movement disappeared as a media event after 1984 (after the eviction of their biggest building Weyers), but the (legalized) squats and networks survived and turned out to be fertile soil for other initiatives and experimental ways of life (ibid: 95). Out of the squatters’ movement sprang ‘the’ movement: a network of squats, communally owned houses, food co-ops, Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS: doing ‘work’ for each other without money), music bands, festivals, action groups, research groups, mobile kitchens, groups helping refugees etc. Within this movement, a few thousand people are nowadays on the move in Holland. Some of them out of political motives, others because they want to live their life the way they want to. They want to express and realize their desires outside of the main ideology of the market and the state, their own ways of life and living together (ibid).
At the end of the 1980’s when the squatters movement was declared death by the media, another important change occurred: activists in ‘the’ movement explicitly rejected the idea of one shared ideal with one common political program, one shared utopia. Yet, like Lyotard has pleaded for, the desire to create something different here and now (White, 1991) still remains. There is an ongoing discussion about the necessity of creating an alternative economy, how life can be de-economized, how you can help other people and have a good life yourself, how the street can be used for more than just traffic, also for fun, dance, laughter, social contacts and love. Using the Do-it-Yourself (DiY)-culture of the punk movement, ‘the’ movement shows that everyone can make music, records, make ‘zines. Just do it. There are enough places to live in; you only have to occupy them. Today’s movement is relatively open and because of that it also lacks the pressure for uniformity what was characteristic of the squatters movement (also of the women’s and gay movements) before. In their network of friendships the contemporary squatters undermine the prevailing relations of production, society, politics, family, the body and sex. You can’t locate ‘the’ movement permanently, but it manifests itself in the occupation of public spaces that they temporarily give the meaning of non-commercialized meeting places. Lacking a single clear goal or program, we see a multitude of struggles.
As said, in the eighties the squatters’ movement not only became ‘the’ movement by the involvement of all kinds of networks, also a fierce feminist struggle took place. ‘In no other movement feminism has played such a big role as in the squatters movement’ (Huijsman, 1989, p. 221). Feminist activists organised themselves in autonomous women’s groups within the squatters’ movement; at the same time they criticized the male squatters continuously for their attitude and behaviour. ‘In the squatters’ movement the men in particular are changed by the feminist women’ (ibid, p. 250). In the journals of the squatters’ movement much was written about feminism, but the regular media didn’t give attention to this aspect of the movement. Therefore only a few people know that half of the squatters have been and are women. Like in feminism, in the squatters’ movement the slogan ‘the personal is political’ became central and also the notion ‘politics start in daily life’ (Kallenberg 2001, Van Tricht 1995). In this way the alternative, but mostly male squatters’ culture changed in a culture that was more open for other experiences in daily life.
In the eighties the squatters’ movement had some active lesbian and gay groups too. Because the unconventional way of life and dressing of the squatters, in the movement to dress in all kinds of gender bending clothes was never a problem, or boys with make-up and girls with bold heads. In the 1990’s these gay groups seemed to have disappeared, replaced by queers. But this didn’t happen before the end of the 1990s. One interviewed squatter-queer told the researcher Van Ree (2004): ‘For a long time sexuality wasn’t a hot discussed item in the squatters’ movement, but nowadays it is. (..) We queers are the needed colour for the scene. Now the word queer is on the lips of everybody, but in the years before sexuality was considered in a more conservative way. Last year I was involved in radicalizing Dutch sexual minorities by organizing special parties. Othes have the idea that this isn’t political enough and organize something for people on a more philosophical queer levell’. And another squatter told: ‘Queer is an effort to make the struggle more playful’ (ibid).
In his research about ‘the’ contemporary (squatters) scene in the Netherlands, Van Ree sees many similarities between this scene and the radical gay scene of the 1970’s in the U.S, described by Patrick Moore (2003). Moore shows the role of pleasure in the rising homosexual culture in New York and San Francisco in these days. Similarities with the contemporary squatters scene are, according to Van Ree, the pleasure to do things together (listening to music, cooking, dancing and drinking) and the use of old buildings and dark, scarcely lightened places. Van Ree states that with these, both movements protest against the normalising culture and cleaned surroundings. With this critiques on dominant culture, I consider both movements as parts of the multicultural discussion.
2. The queer movement.
There are similarities and differences between queer theory and the queer movement. Both are developed from gay theoretical and political priorities, are inclusive in scope, incorporating not only gays and lesbians, but also bisexuals, transsexuals, transgenders and, indeed, anyone or anything not one hundred percent conventionally heterosexual. However, whereas queer theory seeks to destabilize all identities, queer politics often becomes an affirmation of identity, mobilized for strategic purposes. Queer identity is thus provisional and contingent, defined in relation to the heterosexual presumptions it seeks to unsettle. ‘Those who knowingly occupy a marginal location, who assume a de-essentialized identity that is purely positional in character, are properly speaking not gay but queer (Jackson, 2003: 70). This emphasis on de-essentializing identities shows already that queer theory (and for a part queer practices) hinges on some important aspects of postmodernism (Turner 2000: 30). In queer theory and movement common beliefs and traditional theories about gender and sexuality are contested and considered as constructions that can be deconstructed. Queer theory is oppositional to all binary categories (female-male, gay-straight) and wants to change the fixed character of these categories.
Queer was originally a word of abuse for gays. But William S. Burroughs, the famous beat writer in the years 1950-1960, took back this word as a title of honour for all sexual minorities (Kosman, 2004, p. 17). In 1991 the term ‘queer theory’ was used by Teresa de Lauretis, a feminist film theorist. Later Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick have theoretically worked out the concept.
Queer theory also has its critics. For example Jackson (2003: 70) and Storr, 2003: 157) state that queer theory is limited to the extent that it takes place at the level of culture and discourse, paying little attention to social structures and material social practices; in queer theory the material conditions of society and culture have been lost. And Jackson adds (p. 80-81) that Judith Butler’s ideal, a world of multiple genders and sexualities, does not envisage the end of gender hierarchy or the collapse of institutional heterosexuality. Other critiques on queer theory, for example of Max Kirsch (2000), are the same as those of some feminists against postmodernism, stating that social action couldn’t take place without a clear (female or gay/lesbian) identity: because of a destabilization of queer identity, collective action and organization are hardly possible.
Yet, nowadays a big international queer movement exists (just as the feminist movement hasn’t died when it criticized the fixed female identity). However, it took years before the gay and lesbian movement could accept transsexuals, transgenders and drag queens etc. in their movement; they were largely treated as embarrassments in their “legitimate” fight for tolerance, acceptance and equal rights. Aaron Devor and Nicholas Matte (2004) give a clear description of this struggle in the United States from the 1970s till the 2000s. In particular in the lesbian and feminist movement hotly contested battles have taken place over the question of whether or not male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals are women for the purposes of inclusion in women-only organizations. ‘Transgendered and transsexed people have posed the greatest challenges to gender definitions at a historical moment when women in general, and lesbians in particular, have begun only recently to feel that they exist as political players in their own right’ (Devor/Matte, 2004: 181). Many lesbian-feminist organizations insisted on a definition of womanhood that leaves no room for women who were born male. For example at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a five-day women-only event run every year since 1976, from 1991 on till 2003 trans-women tried to be allowed into the festival and set up an informational and protest ‘Camp Trans’ outside the gates of the festival. Eventually the organizers of the festival bowed to the pressure and said that anyone self-defined as a ‘womyn-born-womyn’ would be allowed into the festival.
Also the combined gay and lesbian movement has proved resistant to aligning itself with transgendered and transsexual people. Not before 1997 more consistent progress toward unity had been made, with various gay and lesbian organizations expanding their mandate to include transgender perspectives. In September 1997 the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. The same happened in 1998 with the ‘Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays’ and in April 2000 trangendered activists were allowed to speak at the Millennium March for Equality in Washington, DC. In March 2001 the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself ‘America’s largest gay and lesbian organization’ amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. In their article Devor and Matte try to explain the important contributions of transgendered and transsexual people to the queer movement by showing the historical relationships between transgender and homosexual groups in the U.S. According to them much of the recent growth of gay and lesbian pride was built on an ethnic-like gay identity that necessarily defined inclusion by the exclusion of others. This pride has been created at least partly to counteract a society that taught gays and lesbians to be ashamed of who they are. But as they have found their pride, many have retreated in shame from the transgendered and transsexual people who had always been among them. Their idea of ‘You’re Strange and We’re Wonderful’ remains a dark corner in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Transgendered and transsexual people have understood the need for alliances and have made many important contributions to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights (Devor/Matte, 2004: 202).
However, although the struggle for rights remains important, I think the importance of queer theory and -movement is that it wants more. Like Foucault states: ‘Human rights regarding sexuality .. are not solved now, still I think we have to go a step further: the creation of new forms of life, relationships, friendships in society, art, culture and so on, through our sexual, ethical and political choices. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, not only affirm ourselves as an identity but as a creative force’ (Foucault 1989/1996: 383). You can see this ‘more’ already in the slogan on T-shirts of queers: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’. Perhaps you can say, as Gwen van Husen does (2004:13) that the aim of queer theory is to queer (the whole) culture. She concludes after her small research of the people visiting the Queeruption festival in Amsterdam (June 1-7, 2004), however, that the queer scene limits itself to (their own) queer culture and is unwilling to queer mainstream society. I will elaborate on this.
In April 1990 Queer Nation was set up by four gay men in New York, born out the radical action group ACT UP directed for the struggle against AIDS (Seidman 1997: 192). Their slogan was: ’We’re queer. We’re here. Get used to it’. In a leaflet Queer Nation states: ‘Queer means to fuck with gender. There are straight queers, bi queers, tranny queers, lez queers, fag queers, SM queers, fisting queers in every single street in this apathetic country of ours’ (Whittle 1996: 196). Within a short time many people became active in Queer Nation. They distribute leaflets in shopping centres with the slogan: ‘We’re here, we’re Queer, and we like to say hello’ and went to heterobars for kiss-ins.iii
Saying ‘I am queer’ means that you don’t agree with mainstream society’s categories, so you have added a new category, one that criticizes all existing, fixed, categories. This criticizing opens fresh perspectives, according to Beck (2003: 281): ‘It is impossible not to be inspired by the queer: the diversity of queer strategies and perspectives testifies to the enormous creativity and imagination of American “post-gay” undertakings in language, theory, art and actions’.
Besides Queer Nation similar organizations were set up. Most of them disappeared within some years. However, while most of these organizations are gone ‘it represented an important change in LGBT [lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender] activist politics and continues to influence how we organize and think about our struggles and communities’ (http://www.4edu.info/LGBT/ESL_16.1_queer.htm, 25-5-2004).
In the past few years years queer culture has become a global phenomenon. ‘The globalization of capitalism and the economic forces that sustain it have necessarily led to globalization of queer culture’ (Kirsch 2000: 77). Since 1998 in this international movement ‘Queeruption’ is organized, an annual festival of queer culture. While some queeruption gatherings have been more communal and others more spread out, some held in the city and others rurally, the overall effect is one of building radical queer community, both within the local scene and internationally. Ongoing discussions within the community include topics of race, class and cultural exclusivity, ableism [discrimination in favour of the able-bodied], gender binarism/transphobia and the reproduction of oppressive sexual norms within radical communities (http://www.queeruption.nl/index2.htm).
In 2004 Queeruption festival happened in Amsterdam and in their announcement the organisers state: ‘queeruption is for expression and exploration of identity, climbing over the artificial boundaries of sexuality, gender, nation, class, against racism, capitalism, patriarchy and binary gender repression’. And in line with ‘the’ (squatters) movement they add: ‘Queeruption is non-commercial! Queeruption is Do-it-Yourself! We draw no line between organisers and participants. We seek to provide a framework (space, co-ordination) which you can fill with your ideas’ (ibid).
Visiting this festival, Gwen van Husen describes (2004: 8): ‘The crowd wasn’t as diverse as I expected. Most people seemed to be from the squat or anarchist scene and dressed accordingly. There were more transgenders, transvestites and genderfuckers then one would normally see at a [Dutch] squat party (…) and it was a very international crowd though, especially from western countries. They were predominantly white, somewhere in their twenties and thirties, and all genders seemed to be quite evenly present’. Van Husen interviewed a dozen visitors and came to three important themes of these queers (p. 9-11):
1) The notion of outsiderhood. All interviewed queers expressed the feeling that in some stage of their life, they did not quite ‘fit in’ the neat categories of society at large or their local culture. When society deems an individual as deviant of abnormal, he/she can either opt for a process of adaptation or actively choose to reject society’s norms and take a certain pride in being an outsider. Then the search for those with a common identity or experience starts. So in a way this notion of being an outsider forms the glue that keeps gatherings like Queeruption together. However, Turner (2000: 8) states that since most individuals will experience a failure to fit precisely within a category, this experience opens up the possibility that we’re all queer. Many queers told Van Husen they also did not fit into the mainstream gay and lesbian culture because they either refused to identify as man or women or as gay or lesbian. Besides this, they consider the gay and lesbian scene as conservative and commercial. A lot of them connected their own position in relation to other oppressed groups. This feeling of solidarity seems to form one of the cornerstones in a community like Queeruption (Van Husen 2004:10).
2) Freedom. Closely connected to the sense of being an outsider is the need for freedom. ‘“The right to be oneself” thus becomes a mechanism for self-protection rather then a call for equality’ (Kirsch 2000:122). Van Husen diagnosed that a lot of visitors did not even venture out of the squat building in which Queeruption took place. Their aim seemed to be to create a –temporary- Free Place were queers had the freedom to be themselves. ‘The whole atmosphere at Queeruption to me was one of squatters on camp’ (p. 10). These queers showed an unwillingness to change mainstream society and preferred to stay in their self-created special place.
3) A close connection to the anarchist squatters’ movement. Van Husen was surprised to see how the two scenes, at least in Amsterdam, do overlap, although not all queers are part of the squatters’ subculture and not all squatters identify themselves as queer. Some queers told her they ended up in the squat scene through their taste of music, or by frequenting squat parties (for these parties see also the end of part 1 of this paper). Others explained this link through political affiliation; for them, being queer automatically means having a radical left political orientation because political right denies them their existence. And other queers stated that the personal freedom within the anarchist movement made it into the one scene where queers could express themselves. As I told in part I of this paper, in the end of the eighties the squatters’ movement expanded their ideals and became ‘the’ movement, criticizing all kinds of abuses in society (see also Poldervaart, 2004: 127). According to Van Husen both queer and the anarchist movement are cultures of resistance; they share the same rejection of sexism, racism and other inequalities in mainstream culture. The DiY (Do it Yourself) aspect in Queeruption comes directly from anarchistic ideals and some queers told her that anyone unwilling to participate in DiY wasn’t welcome in Queeruption.
This shows also a weak point of the whole multiculturalism discussion: how open the different (resistance) cultures have to be to people who belong more to the dominant culture?
Contemporary queer scene in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam in particular.
Queeruption is of course not the only queer activity in the Netherlands. Van Husen mentions 8 other gatherings and events:
-Queernight every Monday in the Vrankrijk squat in Amsterdam (www.vrankrijk.org)
- Ladyfest, organized by (he- and lesbian/queer) women, has taken place in ‘Amsterdam in 2002 and 2003 in different squats; next one will taken place in 2005 (www.ladyfest.org). Central concepts (from their program): festival, queer, punk, independent.
-The Pink Lighthouse organises various queer squat parties at various (mostly squatted) locations in Amsterdam (www.squat.net/pinklight).
-Kitty, a queer alternative music night held on the last Saturday every odd month at the ACU (a legalised squat) in Utrecht (www.acu.nl/kitty).
-Also in Utrecht there exists a small Queerguerilla group, connected with anarchist activities.
-The Planet: queer underground dance parties at the OCCI (connected with ‘the’ movement) in Amsterdam, organized by Spellbound productions (www.spellbound-amsterdam.nl)
-The Noodles: every third Sunday of the month they organize a Queer Café in Saarein in Amsterdam (www.NOOdles.nl)
-Artlaunch, a queer festival night held at the Melkweg (an alternative place, subsidized by the local government), 19th and 21ste May 2004. The focus lies on music, performance and visuals (www.artlaunch.nl).
Only the last two events mentioned haven’t a clear connection with ‘the’ (squatters)movement, all others have. Especially from 2003 on, many queer activities and initiatives arose, above all in Amsterdam (see Rianne Neering, 2004: 36). On the one hand you could state that the queer scene, in their expressed solidarity with all other oppressed groups, is open for all kinds of people. On the other hand: saying ‘I am queer’ excludes other people and goes against the destabilizing quality of queer theory. While queer theorists seem to be more open than the queer activists to the possibility that straight people could be queer as well, it seems moreover that queer activists (above all in Holland?) are especially connected with the anarchist (squatters) movement. In this way they exclude non-anarchist queers. At the same time, because in the queer movement ‘alternative social practices’ are very important, this movement is connected with (a part of) the alterglobalisation movement too.
3. The alterglobalisation movement
In November 1999, after the big struggles in Seattle, a social movement came into the limelight that in the media was quickly labelled as the anti-globalisation movement and was described as something totally new. But it is a myth to think this movement suddenly descended from the sky in Seattle, just as it is a myth that the activists had suddenly discovered a new theme, that the movement only consists of people from the rich Western countries and that the activists are against globalisation (Van Stokrom 2002: 37). Before Seattle all kinds of action groups, started in the ‘developing’ world of the South (Kingsnorth 2003: 172-173; 312) and connected with movements in the North, were fighting against the global powers of the World Bank (Berlin 1988, Madrid 1994), the IMF, the European Union (1989-1992, 1997) etc. Older activists, particularly those mobilized around “Jubilee 2000” or affiliated with peace movement organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, traced their opposition back to the 1980s mobilizations around third-world debt and its relations to conflict and economic justice in Central America and other developing regions (Smith, 2001: 4).
Besides these more formal social movement organizations, all kinds of more informal groups became active. They started actions against the commercialising of practically every aspect of life in 1984, when in Canada and the United States adbusters (culture jamming) protested against the billboards in public spaces, and in 1995, when in England the ‘Reclaim the Street’-activists were demanding the streets back as public places. The rise of the Zapatistas has been an inspiration to the whole movement. This Mexican group sent their manifest against the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) into the world (via the internet) on 1 January 1994 and in the summer of that year (and again in 1996) invited ‘leftist activists, youngsters, women, gays and lesbians, people of colour, immigrants, workers, farmers around the world’ to discuss new ways of thinking about power, resistance and globalisation with them (Klein 2002: 177-188). The meeting of 1996 resulted in the foundation of the People Global Action (PGA) and many visitors of this meeting played a key role in Seattle in 1999.
The contemporary alterglobalization movement has different parts. You can roughly distinguish the Do-it-Yourself-activists, the more formal Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) and all kinds of socialists.iv In spite of the troubles between the three parts of the movement, till now they work together on a reasonable basis, in this way respecting diversity, which is really a new phenomenon in the history of social movements. However, because only the Do-it-Yourself (DiY) approach has clear connections with ‘the’ (squatters-) and queer-movement, I will concentrate on this part of the alterglobalization movement.
The Do-it-Yourself-activists try to realize their ideals in the here-and-now. Although the concept DiY is invented in the North, it appears that many poor groups of the South use the same strategy. The Zapatista activist Esteva has formulated this: ‘People has been disillusioned with the ballot box for a long time, here and all around the world. And yet they are disillusioned too with rebels who come with guns and say: “give us the state, we will do it better”. So what are we seeing in Chiapas? It is an alternative to both – a new notion of doing politics. You could call it radical democracy. People take their own destinies into their own hands’ (in: Kingsnorth 2003: 42-43). Nowadays the Zapatista’s ideas about ‘taking your own destinies in your own hands’ have influenced many other groups around the world. An activist from the town Durban (South Africa) told to Kingsnorth: ‘We feel it’s time for new approaches. As a movement we need doing things ourselves, you know, Zapatista-style. Taking it back: communities doing it themselves, instead of always reacting to whatever shit the government gives them’ (ibid: 102). And a women of the Brazil Landless Movement (MST) states: ‘People have to work for their own transformation, making their own answers’ (ibid: 257). In the North the DiY-activists emphasise the importance of ‘free places’: public spaces, not belonging to the commercial trade and industry (Klein 2002: 204). All these activists have in common that they create their own alternatives, protesting against the commodification of everything.
Analysing their own publications, you can distinguish as characteristics of the DiY-part of the alterglobalization movement:
-the rejection of ‘collective identities’ because identity is considered as a process of creating and maintaining borders (between women and men, gays and hetero’s, black and white people etc.) and could encourage group conformity (Heckert 2002). The ideal is not to strive for one identity but for many identities. The concept of identity is changed into affinity (McDonald 2002). The most important thing is not to be something together, but to do something together, not where you come from, to which group you belong, but what your aim is (Holloway 2002). In this way they criticize the existing intentional communities, because in general most of these ‘communes’ don’t make much of a conscious effort to reach out to people who don’t share their political and/or counter-cultural views. Unlike these kinds of communities alterglobalists plea for ‘breaking out of the ghetto, to take up the challenge of putting into practice the importance of diversity, sacrificing the security, predictability and simplicity that come from relatively closed and homogeneous collective identities (Abramsky 2001: 554, my print in italics). Their ‘free places’ they see as alternative political and socio-economic spaces with room for differences and without precise boundaries and identities.
-personal change; politics starts in daily life. The rejection of collective identities doesn’t mean that identities are not important any longer. Is does matter whether you are a woman, a coloured person, homo or lesbian, what economic situation you have. Although the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ is used in the alterglobalization movement and DiY is described as ‘personal’ politics (Kingsnorth 2003: 327), till for a short time ago not so much attention is given to feminism and the gay-queer movement. Only some alterglobalist men recognize feminism as their forerunner: ‘The feminist movement tried to show us new insights and practices but we have generally managed to ignore them’ (de Marcellus, 2003: 6). But by the emphasis on personal politics, things are changing: ‘Self-criticism and personal change are not apolitical – refusing to be what the system requires you to be is a profound and powerful form of direct action’ (Subbuswamy and Patel 2001: 543). However, the activists recognize that they too are influenced by ‘the system’: ‘we have to eliminate all forms of oppression and domination within our own circles’ (Abramsky 2001: 562). Therefore they emphasis: politics starts in daily life.
-DiY-activism consists of networking and, because of that, of fluidity. John Jordan (2002) describes that what was emerging in the mid 90’s was a decentralized movement of movements held together by poetic stories and relationships, rather than programs and ideology, a complex web of inspirations rather than coordination. It is precisely the desire for self-organization and self-determination that is both means and ends of this movement of movements. The ideal is to be ungovernable.
-The movement is global and local. Never has a movement been so international while at the same time local initiatives are emphasised (Klein 2002). Because of this emphasis on local initiatives, DiY-activists reject the idea of one program as an alternative. They don’t construct social models for one future society, because in such a way they do the same as neo-liberalism (Klein 2002). They want to respect the autonomy of groups and that don’t fit in one universal model for everybody.
-The concept of revolution has got a different meaning. The DiY-part of the movement don’t strive for ‘unity’ and rejects power in its traditional meaning. ‘Revolution is not a moment in the future in which the power is taken from the ruling class, but is a social process that is lived daily in the here and now’ (Longo Mai 2002). Or, as the Dutch-Belgian Journal Mba-Kajera used as their slogan: ‘Revolution is not to overthrow the existing system, but the creation of something new’. ‘The starting point is not how to oppose capital, but how to build a better life beyond it’ (Jordan 2002). These ideals are expressed and brought into practice in ‘free places’ in many squatted buildings, more legalised ‘social centre’ (in Italy), in the communities organized by the Piquetero-movement in Argentine, by the Zapatistas in Mexico etc.
-The aim of the DiY-activists is to deepen the quality of relations between people by creating diversity. One of the means to do this is the narrative, story-telling structure of their actions to give the activists the possibility to tell their personal stories (McDonald 2002). The movement has learnt that a web of testimonies and experiences is more important to stimulate the imagination of people than to command them (Jordan 2002). In their story telling culture and in their rejection of the conquest of power, the movement gives much attention to language. Above all the Zapatistas have proven that it is possible to develop a new language of resistance, a language that is full of imagination, story-telling and speaking in riddles and paradoxes and not in securities (Holloway 2002). Another means to strive for better relations between people is the continually emphasis by the activists that people often show altruistic behaviour, that people will do things for each other from which they themselves don’t benefit (de Marcellus 2003). In this way they fight against the idea that people only are calculating citizens, a supposition brought forward by neo-liberalism.
-Their emphasis on fun and the ‘struggle against the theft of the public by the private. (Kingsnorth 2003: 319). The importance of fun you can recognize in their language, their cloths (during actions mostly pink and silver, see Evans 2003) and their music playing. Tactival frivolity is considered by them as an important strategy. The importance of the public sphere you can already see in the actions of the adbusters who protested against the pollution of the public places by billboards and in those of the ‘Reclaim-the-Street’-activists who want to show that the street can be used for all kinds of activities. You can describe the alterglobalization movement as ‘a struggle to reclaim space’ (Kingsnorth, 2002: 319).-- In this way the alterglobalists plea for the same as Hekma (2004) does for the sexual culture: a public sexual culture would be pleasant and good for the safety of the citizens and for the integration of different groups.--
To sum up: The DiY-activists of the alterglobalization movement try to create something new themselves, independent from government institutions and without commercials, organized from below. They network between a multitude of projects in the North and the South, projects consisting of ‘free places’ in which non-capitalist ways of thinking and acting are stimulated by story telling, imagination building, helping each other, making fun, rejecting securities, reclaiming public spaces for more than traffic only and respecting the autonomy of the different groups. According to me this working in affinity groups in which unity is not prescribed, diversity and a plurality of alternatives are emphasised and personal politics are practicized, you can consider as an endeavour to be really multicultural, because they want to accept all kinds of ‘otherness’.
4. Conclusions
In this paper I have described how the squatters movement in Holland became ‘the’ movement in the eighties when they broadened their squat actions to other initiatives and experimental ways of life and when they rejected the idea of one shared ideal. It became a multitude of struggles in which the desire to create something different remained. In their network of friendships (affinity-politics) and their actions they show that the street can be used for more than just traffic, also for fun, dance, laughter, social contacts and love; with this they undermine the prevailing ideas of politics, family, the body and sex.
Yet the relationships between ‘the’ (squatters) movement and movements involved with sexuality for a long time was a rather diffuse one. After a fierce struggle with feminists and after some active lesbian and gay groups in ‘the’ movement, in the 1990s these gay groups seemed to have disappeared. Sexuality for a long time was not a hot topic in the movement, but in the end of the 1990s the queer movement arose, for a big part within ‘the’ movement themselves or (at least in Holland) with clear connections with the anarchist movement.
In the United States the queer movement started in 1990 with Queer Nation, after a long battle with the gay and lesbian movement to accept transsexuals and transgenders. This battle shows how important it is not to fight for tolerance, acceptance and equal rights for your ‘own’ (deviate) identity only and how important affinity politics is. The queer movement added a new category, one that criticizes all existing, fixed categories. With the globalization of capitalism, queer culture was globalized and late years all kinds of international queer festivals are organized.
In the publications of the DiY-part of the alterglobalization movement only recently much attention is given to the queer movement. Yet in their criticizing collective identities, in their emphasis of imagination, their struggle to reclaim public places for fun, the deepening of relationships between people, their pink and silver clothes during actions, their tactical frivolity and emphasis on personal politics, the alterglobalization movement shows all kinds of connections with the aims of the queer movement. And also the other way around, like the queer slogan: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’ and the description of Jackson (2003: 70): ‘Queer are those who knowingly occupy a marginal location’. The close connection is also expressed in the announcement of the international Queeruption festivals: queeruption is climbing over the artificial boundaries of sexuality, gender, nation, class, against racism, capitalism, patriarchy and binary gender repression; queeruption is non-commercial, is Do-it-Yourself!
In my opinion you can state that the queer movement and the alterglobalization movement have much in common, especially when the globalists started discussing sexuality and the queer movement started to criticize the social structures and material social practices and to express their feeling of solidarity with other oppressed groups. The question remains, however, whether the ‘free places’ of both movements are open enough to people unknown with anarchist ideas of ‘Do-it-Yourself’. If both movements really want ‘to queer the culture’ they have to accept all kinds of ‘otherness’ of people, to accept the many diversities of non-dominant cultures.v It seems the Zapatistas try to be as open as possible to these diversities. Therefore I want to end this paper with a repetition of their invitation of 1994 and 1996, directed to: leftist activists, youngsters, women, gays and lesbians, people of colour, immigrants, workers, farmers around the world. These invitation was not meant to unite them all, but to discuss new ways of thinking about power, resistance and globalization, to learn from each other and to respect their differences and autonomy.
Paper for the conference ‘New Social Movements and Sexuality’, Sofia University, 8-9 October 2004.
Resources: Bibliography and webography -->