Organizational Practices and Prefigurative Spaces in European Queer Festivals

Abstract

Social movement scholars have been actively debating the importance of organizational structures for solidarity and new social movements. This article investigates how queer festivals build on the horizontal structure legacy of those movements, constructing their own prefigurative models through a set of specific organizational practices. Queer festivals constitute a dynamic repertoire of action of queer politics in Europe, expanding across the continent. Based upon their belief in the limits of strict identity politics of gender and sexuality, queer festivals attempt to construct new identities, based upon their anti-identitarian ethos. Beyond their discursive frames, queer festivals, as prefigurative spaces, attempt to build their new identities through specific practices, reflected among others on their organizational choices. The article posits three key elements for the prefigurative model that queer festivals attempt to build: (1) Squats as the spaces in which queer movement actors build their anti-authoritarian identity; (2) the organizational choice based on horizontality; (3) the role of the Do-It-Yourself model for festivals' deployment. Insight into queer festivals is based on ethnographic research conducted in five European capitals, including semi-structured interviews.

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