Master Thesis Defense: Serkan İlarslaner

ONUR:

EMOTIONAL HABITUS OF LGBTI ACTIVISM IN TURKEY

Serkan İlarslaner
Cultural Studies, M.Sc. Thesis, 2015

Thesis Jury
Ayşe Gül Altınay (Thesis Supervisor), Ayşe Parla,  Sinan Birdal

Date &Time: September,2nd  2015 – 13:30

Place: Karaköy Minerva Han

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the generation of various emotions around Pride activism in Turkey.

Analysing the in-depth, semi-structured interviews with people who have been part of LGBTI

activism in Turkey, this study investigates the how feelings and emotions are becoming sites of

political activism and how they generate discourses of equality, justice and humaneness that

enables people politically. What is ‘emotional habitus’? What is this thing that we call LGBTI

Pride? How it is emotionally charged through political activism? What kind of emotions Pride

Parades invokes in people participating in the organization of this event? How does Pride

activism transform feelings such as shame, fear, anxiety, loneliness and vulnerability into anger,

motivation, courage, joy, enthusiasm, solidarity and empowerment? How are these altered

through the changing social political and economic conjuncture of Turkey? Are there any

limitations to these emotional practices? Through posing these questions, this research examines

Deborah Gould’s conceptualization of ‘Emotional Habitus’ in terms of the ‘ambivalent’ feelings

and emotions attributed to being LGBTI by the heteronormative sociality and argues that the

ambivalence created by the simultaneous existence of feelings can bolster political action and

confrontational activism. Pride Parade as a site to investigate relations of emotions and activism,

has been a focal point because of it’s being a physical outcome of the workings of emotions with

activism, because of its associations to various forms of emotional states starting with pride itself.

This study aims to articulate a new perspective to the LGBTI studies and literature in Turkey in

its early stages by discussing the possibilities and openings, emotional habitus can provide to the

formation of political action.