"The Struggle for LGBT Equality Goes On": Ladlad's Cruel Optimism in the Aftermath of Loss

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-14 - Queer of Color Critique as a Critical and Postfoundational Perspective in Educational Research

Abstract

This paper analyzes the cruel optimism of Ladlad, the first LGBT political party in the Philippines and the only existing LGBT political party in the world. Founded in 2003, it has participated in national elections three times unsuccessfully. In 2007, the Commission of Elections (COMELEC) denied its accreditation for supposedly lacking regional members. In 2010, the COMELEC denied its accreditation on the basis of moral grounds because Ladlad goes against the religious teachings of the dominant Catholic church. Although the Supreme Court issued a restraining order which allowed Ladlad to participate, the party had a month to campaign. In the recent 2013 elections, Ladlad did not garner enough votes to clinch a seat in Congress. The paper builds on the author’s previous exposition of Ladlad’s activism as a form of public pedagogy (Author 2, 2013), and makes sense of its persistence in the aftermath of loss. It suggests that Berlant’s (2011) notion of cruel optimism – which is a relational double-bind in which one’s attachment to an object sustains one’s life, at the same time as that object actually threatens one’s flourishing – may provide significant insights into political organizing. Through cruel optimism, Ladlad’s attachment to mainstream recognition and representation not only becomes its source of injury and unbearability, but also serves as its condition for hope and resilience.

Author

• Roland Sintos Coloma, Northern Kentucky University