On Cruel Optimism and the Struggles of LGBT Organizing

• In Event: 58.076 - From Verbal Aggression to Physical Violence: LGBTQI Experiences, Everyday Oppression, and Queer Battle Fatigue

Abstract

Objectives
This paper aims to document and analyze the central affective mode that compels LGBT leaders, activists, and educators to continue political and pedagogical work in spite, or perhaps because, of ongoing losses. It examined three case studies to illustrate the incessant drive that ironically inspires perseverance in their organizing and daily living even though what they seek has become harmful and damaging. The first case study focuses on Ladlad, the first LGBT political party in the Philippines and the only existing LGBT political party in the world, and its campaign to win a Congressional seat in the 2013 national election. The second case study addresses the 2014 killing of a Filipino transwoman and how a US Marine got away with murder. The third case study tackles the mainstreaming of LGBT politics in the Philippines and the historic victory of the first transgender woman elected to the House of Representatives in 2016.
Perspectives
The paper brings to bear affect theory to discursive and structural analysis in political and educational research. It employs Lauren Berlant’s (2011) concept of “cruel optimism” which suggests that people maintain fantasies of the “good life” with attachments to an “object of desire,” defined as “a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make to us and make possible for us,” which may or may not always feel optimistic (p. 23). These attachments to the good life fantasy enable individuals to “invest in one’s own or the world’s continuity” (13) and to persevere in their daily living even if it has become unlivable and untenable.
Methods
It utilizes a combination of archival research, qualitative interview, and text/document analysis as methodological approaches to capture the complex and multi-dimensional layers of cruel optimism in LGBT organizing in the Philippines.
Data sources
Data sources include: newspaper and other media articles in print and online formats; social media files, such as Facebook and Twitter; and individual interviews.
Results
Cruel optimism serves as an insightful analytic to help “track the affective attachment to what we call the ‘good life,’ which is for so many a bad life that wears out the subject who nonetheless, and at the same time, find their conditions of possibility within it” (27). For Ladlad, their conditions of possibility resided in the electoral process and winning a rightful seat in the Congressional halls of power. For Jennifer Laude’s family and supporters, theirs were placed in the judicial system and obtaining justice for her murder. For the LGBT community, theirs were situated in the public sphere and gaining respect, dignity, and protection. Yet all conditions of possibility were and continue to be embedded within mainstream heteronomative discourses that regulate the terms and draw the parameters for legibility and engagement.
Scholarly significance
This paper illustrates the utility of queer theory in educational research, and elaborates on and extends the panel’s focus on queer battle fatigue. It tackles LGBT events and activities outside of the global North context, and illustrates political work as crucial form of public pedagogy.

Author

• Roland Sintos Coloma, Northern Kentucky University