This conference is part of the LGBTI+ Junior Laboratory project, launched in January 2022 in response to a twofold observation: the growing institutionalization of LGBTI+ research on the one hand, and the sometimes persistent isolation in which young researchers working on these issues find themselves on the other. To support the growing interest in LGBTI+ studies, one of the challenges is to federate and promote research from one of its margins, young researchers.
Faced with the growing diversification of approaches and objects of LGBTI+ study, it seems important to maintain collective spaces that escape the hyperspecialization of research and enable us to think together about sexualities and gender. Indeed, it is one of the aims of the junior laboratory to encourage cross-fertilization between work on gender and sexuality, which represents a particularly fertile research perspective in today’s scientific landscape. Dialogue between different disciplines on LGBTI+ subjects also remains a challenge for improving the cumulative nature of knowledge in this field.
During the exchanges that have taken place during the Junior Laboratory’s activities since its creation (interdisciplinary workshops, social events, congress sessions, etc.), the question of “LGBTI+ resistances” has emerged as a cross-cutting theme in many of the works presented. Taken as a central object of study or present in the background of empirical work, oppositions to forms of power, domination, oppression, minorization, inequality, normalization or even stigmatization, linked to heterocisnormativity, irrigate LGBTI+ knowledge. Resistance has thus been studied through the analysis of collective and historical dynamics of mobilization and activism, but it also refers to forms of creativity, strategies and negotiation of norms, as well as support and care… This conference therefore aims to highlight
current studies that address the forms, modalities and stakes of LGBTI+ resistance in the face of the plurality of dominations. The question of resistance is precisely what enables us to bring together work from a variety of perspectives and on different scales, both collective and individual. It allows us to analyze what may be common to all LGBTI+ people and experiences, but also to shed light on their great diversity. The general theme of the conference on LGBTI+ resistance can be broken down into three main areas, around which proposals for papers can be developed.
Whatever the chosen focus, papers are expected to cover a wide range of historical periods and geographical areas, extending well beyond contemporary France. Proposal focusing on methodological or epistemological aspects will be particularly welcome. In addition to the LGBTI+ resistances observed in the field and which emanate from the daily lives of those involved, these resistances are also apparent in the investigative practices of young 19 researchers working in the field of LGBTI+ studies. Positionality and reflexivity on the social characteristics of the investigator, innovative methodologies, reflections linked to categorizations and ethical issues in research run through the axes of analysis (Rault and Trachman, 2023; Martínez, Velázquez and Schwend, 2021; Pignedoli and Faddoul, 2019;
Vincent, 2018).