Pinkwashing, Homonationalism, and Israel-Palestine: The Conceits of Queer Theory and the Politics of the Ordinary

This paper offers a critique of the theory of homonationalism, which has become virtually hegemonic in contemporary queer thought and activism. Some theorists have tried to distance homonationalism from its popular/activist manifestation of pinkwatching, which refers to the increasingly vocal efforts of queer anti-occupation activists to expose the Israeli government's efforts to pinkwash its treatment of Palestinians by touting its record on gay rights. The paper argues, however, that both suffer from fundamental conceptual flaws and ultimately have more to do with the contexts in which they circulategay cities in the US and Europethan Israel-Palestine. The paper suggests a political and analytical shift away from the totalizing theory of homonationalismand the simplistic critiques of pinkwashing inspired by itto a more complex and contextualized focus on the ways in which ordinary bodies are regulated in their movements through time and space.