Europeanization as Civilizational Transition from East to West: Racial Displacement and Sexual Modernity in Ukraine

Abstract

Drawing on an empirical study of LGBT politics in Ukraine, this article foregrounds the civilizational and yet unspoken racialization characterizing Europeanization projects in the context of EU enlargement. Our starting point is that the boundaries of Europeanness coincide with civilizational boundaries of whiteness. We make the case that Europeanization is a profoundly racialized project, where racial whiteness is unmarked as a ‘natural’ adjacency of the West. We treat this dual mechanism of marking and unmarking as an instance of racial displacement, arguing that the predicaments of this dual mechanism are particularly forceful in the context of EU enlargement. More specifically, the article interrogates the ways in which subtle racialized power mechanisms intersect with - while at the same time being obscured by -political instrumentalization of LGBT (lesbian-gay-bi-trans) rights and freedoms in ‘transitioning’ processes involving Ukraine.