European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe

by Fatima El-Tayeb

European Others offers an interrogation into the position of racialized communities in the European Union, arguing that the tension between a growing nonwhite, non-Christian population and insistent essentialist definitions of Europeanness produces new forms of identity and activism. Moving beyond disciplinary and national limits, Fatima El-Tayeb explores structures of resistance, tracing a Europeanization from below in which migrant and minority communities challenge the ideology of racelessness that places them firmly outside the community of citizens. Using a notable variety of sources, from drag performances to feminist Muslim activism and Euro hip-hop, El-Tayeb draws on the largely ignored archive of vernacular culture central to resistance by minority youths to the exclusionary nationalism that casts them as threatening outcasts. At the same time, she reveals the continued effect of Europe’s suppressed colonial history on the representation of Muslim minorities as the illiberal Other of progressive Europe. Presenting a sharp analysis of the challenges facing a united Europe seen by many as a model for twenty-first-century postnational societies, El-Tayeb combines theoretical influences from both sides of the Atlantic to lay bare how Europeans of color are integral to the continent’s past, present, and, inevitably, its future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Politics, Theory, Germany, Gender, Sociology

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most complex books I've read on race and migrants in Europe...it's great! She talks about how racism structures European societies and how migrants are not necessarily caught in between romanticizing a homeland or resisting Europe, but have carved out their own space.

[i. · Rating 5 out of 5]

El-Tayeb challenges conventional thinking about race and race-making in her application of creoleization, queer-of-color, and Black diaspora literatures to Western Europe. In particular, her analysis of Europe's use of binaries through time and place as technologies of domination--and resistance against such technologies--is incredibly rich, offering both a critical analysis and an incredibly valuable case study of affective and ephemeral queer-of-color archives.