NADZEYA HUSAKOUSKAYA AND RANDI Intersections.EEJSP  6(3): 74–96. GRESSGÅRD DOI: 10.17356/ieejsp.v6i3.634 Europeanization as Civilizational Transition from East to West: http://intersections.tk.mta.hu Racial Displacement and Sexual Modernity in

 [[email protected]] (Amnesty International, London); [[email protected]] (Centre for Women’s and Gender Research, SKOK, University of Bergen)

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) and in ‘transitioning’ processes involving Ukraine.1

Keywords: Europeanization, civilizational whiteness, racial displacement, sexual modernity, Ukraine.

1 We owe a note of gratitude to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Husakouskaya’s research project, on which this paper is based, was funded by Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen.

INTERSECTIONS. EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 6(3): 74–96. EUROPEANIZATION AS CIVILIZATIONAL TRANSITION FROM EAST TO WEST 75

1. Introduction

In the context of (EU) enlargement, linked to the vocabulary of ‘transition’, Ukraine has routinely been designated an East European or post- Soviet state with a ‘European perspective’. The so-called transition towards democracy, or rather ‘transitional diffusion of democracy’ (D’Anieri, 2015: 235), is often associated with ‘democratic revolutions’, such as the Ukrainian in 2004 and the (or Revolution of Dignity) ten years later. In connection with the latter event in 2014, the newly elected president, , proclaimed that Ukraine intends to move towards , describing it as ‘a civilizational choice’: crossing the Rubicon to Europe, while leaving the Soviet past behind.2 The then interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov, similarly stressed that one of the priorities of Ukraine is to return to the course of European integration, ‘return to the family of European countries’.3 In a meeting in May 2019 with the Commissioner for the European Neighborhood Policy and Extension, the newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenkyy, reasserted that ‘Ukraine’s European choice is uncontested’ and that he will ‘defend the path chosen by the citizens of Ukraine’.4 Long before Ukrainian state leaders declared that Ukraine belongs to Europe, Anikó Imre (2005: 84) established that the ‘return to Europe’ has become an indispensable slogan for East European political campaigns: the idea and desire to return home to Europe which was once theirs and they rightfully belong. In the present article, we are concerned with what Imre describes as East European nations’ unspoken insistence of their whiteness, which she sees as ‘one of the most effective and least recognized means of asserti