Adi Kuntsman

Double homecoming: sexuality, ethnicity, and place in immigration stories of russian lesbians in israel

Abstract This article challenges the heteronormative assumptions of most immigration research and problematizes the cultural origins of queer homecoming. Based on interpretative analysis of personal narratives of immigrant lesbians and the authors autobiography, the study reveals the complex relations between sexuality, ethnicity, and place at the intersection of two homecoming narratives: the Zionist narrative of Jewish immigration to Israel as repatriation ( Aliya or ascent) and the Western narrative of queer ‘coming out’ as ‘coming home’. The study addresses the racialization and ethnicization of Russian immigrants and discusses the ways immigrant lesbians escape this othering by adopting a lesbian identity. This marks them as white middle class Israelis rather than stigmatized newcomers. The article also examines the ways Russia, Israel, and the immigration journey are constructed in terms of space and place by showing how lesbian immigrants mark spaces and places as homophobic, a-sexual, liberatory, or queer. I suggest that this marking is always ethnicized, opposing ‘homophobic Russianness’ to ‘queer/liberal Israel’. My interpretation of immigration narratives suggests that simultaneously becoming ‘queer’ and ‘Israeli’ at the same time subverts and re-establishes the two homes—the Zionist–Israeli and the Western queer.

Between Gulags and Pride Parades: Sexuality, Nation, and Haunted Speech Acts

Shadow, know thy place!’ And your place was, and is, by the latrine.”1 Boris Kamyanov, a Russian-speaking immigrant living in Israel, wrote these words in an article published in September 2002 in one of the many Russian-language newspapers appearing in the country. He was addressing the group of immigrants who identified as gay, lesbian, and bisexual and who spoke out in Vesti, one of the leading newspapers of Russian Israelis, protesting against homophobia and demanding respect for same-sex relations. So what kind of queer migrations — broadly understood as movements of people, meanings, feelings, and names — are at stake here? And what kinds of words are employed to capture queer sexualities that are sometimes, but not always and not necessarily, framed as identities, such as gay or lesbian? How do these words travel, change, or collapse into each other? “A place by the latrine” is a Russian idiom describing someone’s subordinate and voiceless position. Its origins lie in Soviet criminal jargon. Located inside a prison cell but at a distance from the bunk beds, the latrine was not only used for excrement but also marked a place of social subordination. The person at the bottom of the criminal hierarchy had to sleep closest to the latrine. In the men’s cells the place by the latrine was reserved for the inmates who were seduced or forced into a passive homosexual role. These men were often called opuschennye, or “those who were put down,” sexually and hierarchically. Once put down, they served as slaves and as targets for beating and sexual abuse. Putting down was often accomplished through an act of rape (sometimes real and sometimes sym-

Webs of hate in diasporic cyberspaces: the Gaza War in the Russian-language blogosphere

This article looks at ways in which a military conflict can produce circuits of hatred in online social spaces. Ethnographically, the article is based on the analysis of selected discussions of Israeli warfare in Gaza in 2008 and 2009 as they took place in the Russian-language networked blogosphere. Bringing together Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective economies, Avtar Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’, Judith Butler’s idea of ‘frames of war’ and Eyal Weizman’s notion of ‘elastic frontiers’, the author addresses the disorienting similarity between anti-Jewish and anti-Arab hatred as it emerged in discussions of the conflict. The article examines online circulation of hatred as an integral part of cyber-diasporic connections and ruptures, on the one hand, and of digital circulation of affect, on the other.

Introduction: Whose Selfie Citizenship?

In the introductory chapter, Adi Kuntsman presents the concept of ‘selfie citizenship’: claims made by ordinary citizens via their networked self-portraits, created, distributed and consumed at the times of algorithmic visibility, large-scale dataisation, globalised participatory politics and biometric governance. Kuntsman argues that both ‘selfie’ and ‘citizenship’ need to be understood not as a given but as a field of potential violence and contestation. Approaching selfie citizenship as a visual, networked and social phenomenon, the introduction asks: What are the conditions in which a selfie can do political work? Who are the selfies made for? By whom? How are they consumed? Who, when and how has the ability – and the safety – to star in a selfie, and when is such ability impossible?

Written In Blood

This paper brings together three distinct bodies of scholarship: feminist and critical race reading of cybercultures and on-line identities; feminist analysis of gender and racial passing, and scholarship on racism and nationalism as gendered and sexualised. The paper is part of a larger project on sexuality, immigration and nationalism in Israel/Palestine and in cyberspace and is based on cyberethnography of on-line bulletin board of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel. At the centre of my discussion is an ambiguous figure, a participant with nickname “Daughter of Palestine” who appeared in one of the discussions and immediately caused waves of suspicion. Was she a Palestinian woman passing as a Russian? Russian-Jewish? Russian-Israeli? Or was she neither? And most importantly, does it matter? This paper approaches on-line passing and outing as performance of borders. I look at the ways imagined borders between Israel and Palestine and identity categories of “Jew” and “Arab,” “straight” and “queer” are questioned and reinforced, and how passing becomes the very tool of constituting the borders it aims to cross. I address sexual, racial and national borders as threateningly ambivalent, showing that Daughter of Palestine functions as a figure that makes both easy crossing and unproblematic protection of borders impossible.

Review: Review: Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius and Angela Phillips (eds) Transnational Media Events: The Mohammed Cartoons and the Imagined Clash of Civilizations (Research Anthologies and Monographs) Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2008. 290 pp. ISBN 978 91 89471641

Transnational Media Events: The Mohammed Cartoons and the Imagined Clash of Civilizations takes on the exciting and challenging task of focusing on one single event and the political controversies and media spectacles it generated. The book follows the publication of 12 cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in Denmark in 2005 and the waves of political protest, debate and controversy this generated and continues to generate. The collection of 14 chapters explores these issues from different geo-political locations (for example, by looking at the ways the cartoons resonated with, affected and were affected by local politics in different countries in Europe and in the Muslim world) and multiple disciplinary perspectives (such as image and discourse analysis, journalist practice, media politics and so on). At the same time, the book aims to retain unity by adopting the shared framework of exploring the cartoons as a ‘global news event’ and as a form of transnational media. By doing so, the author uses the controversy surrounding the Danish cartoons as a prism through which to understand and explore more broadly the relations between transnational media, politics and social research. As the editors note in their Introduction:

Written in Blood: Contested Borders and the Politics of On-line Passing

This paper brings together three distinct bodies of scholarship: feminist and critical race reading of cybercultures and on-line identities; feminist analysis of gender and racial passing, and scholarship on racism and nationalism as gendered and sexualised. The paper is part of a larger project on sexuality, immigration and nationalism in Israel/Palestine and in cyberspace and is based on cyberethnography of on-line bulletin board of Russian-speaking queer immigrants in Israel. At the centre of my discussion is an ambiguous figure, a participant with nickname “Daughter of Palestine” who appeared in one of the discussions and immediately caused waves of suspicion. Was she a Palestinian woman passing as a Russian? Russian-Jewish? Russian-Israeli? Or was she neither? And most importantly, does it matter? This paper approaches on-line passing and outing as performance of borders. I look at the ways imagined borders between Israel and Palestine and identity categories of “Jew” and “Arab,” “straight” and “queer” are questioned and reinforced, and how passing becomes the very tool of constituting the borders it aims to cross. I address sexual, racial and national borders as threateningly ambivalent, showing that Daughter of Palestine functions as a figure that makes both easy crossing and unproblematic protection of borders impossible.