Queerying the Public Administration in Italy: Local Challenges to a National Standstill

Abstract

Given the orientation to silence non-heterosexual experiences that informs centralised Italian legislation and policies, and following a European trend towards decentralisation, local administrations have taken on a fundamental role in LGBT policies, and developed partnerships with local LGBT organisations. Our analysis of these policies confirms the presence of a national as well as a more global trend, namely the fact that the ‘urban safety’ discourse has become a main source of legitimation for public intervention on LGBT issues, creating discursive boundaries that allow little space for a positive public representation of queer subjects and for the recognition of their agency. In looking at these boundaries, we draw upon the concept of ‘speakability’ which Cooper proposes in analysing local LGBT policies in the UK ‘to identify a cluster of normative and epistemological practices’ including ‘the urge and capacity to speak, the extent to which a topic or field renders itself utterable, what can be legitimately said, and a talent for speaking’ (2006: 928). In this chapter we show how the changes in the terms of speakability towards a discourse on ‘urban safety’1 imply a shift in the role of local administrations, from promoting rights, to meeting the needs of a victimised, normalised and individualised subject (Pitch and Ventimiglia, 2001). It also corresponds to a redefinition of the role assigned to the actors of civil society as partners of local governance: from bearers of claims, based upon conflictual political views, to shared interest groups.