LGBT Act · Minority politics, social movements and equal rights: the Italian inter-associative LGBT activism

Which sort of politics the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activism (LGBT) promotes within the context of a country still highly homophobic? Which sort of discourses, collective actions, strategies and dilemma are underlying the emergence and the organisation of LGBT movements within the Italian society’s historical configuration of democracy? These are the questions this research will seek to answer in an empirically-based approach to LGBT politics. It is to build a multidimensional model of LGBT activism. Thus, the proposed research is threefold. First, the project proposes to study – through qualitative researches in the associative field – the “moments” of emergence and organisation of collectives, groups and associations of homosexuals, since the end of World War II until the creation of inter-associative LGBT networks in the 2000s in the light of historical and political transformations of society and the democratic configuration of Italian politics. Secondly, it is to analyse the discursive strategies, the collective actions and the alliance networks that contribute to the promotion of LGBT politics such plural as queer dissidence or equality rights. Thirdly, it is to problematise notions such as “identity” and “subjectivity”, “minority”, “recognition”, “justice”, “equality”, “visibility”, “autonomy”, and to propose a socio-historical approach to LGBT politics in Italy that permits to enrich current models and paradigms in political studies. Both in its empirical dimension as in its theoretical dimension, the project LGBT Act fills a real void, since no comprehensive scientific and methodical studies exist on the Italian LGBT movement, and the existing literature in political studies usually ignores the empirical conditions of the emergence and organisation of these groups.