August 12, 2023 • 42 mins
Hear from Dr. Samuel Ritholtz, a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute and specialist in queer experiences of conflict, crisis, and displacement, as they talk about their research into anti-LGBT violence during Colombia's civil war. We explore the violence's impact on LGBT communities, the dynamics of paramilitaries, and the concept of queer peacebuilding. Let's dive in!
In this episode, we discuss:
- The logic behind anti-LGBT violence by paramilitaries during Colombia's civil war.
- Paramilitaries' history, including their connection to narco-trafficking and role in the conflict.
- The concept of queer peacebuilding and its relevance in post-conflict settings.
- The ontology of cruelty in civil war and the perception of different forms of violence.
Thanks to Sam for offering their insights into the intersection of conflict, violence, and queer experiences. Connect with them here:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Laura May (00:11):
Welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast from Mediate.com.
The podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May,and today I have with me Dr.
Samuel Ritholtz.
They are a Max Weber fellow at theEuropean University Institute, a
specialist in queer experiencesof conflict, crisis, and
displacement, and they are currentlyin Bogota conducting research.
(00:36):
So welcome, Sam.
Samuel Ritholtz (00:38):
Thank you so much for having me, Laura May.
I am thrilled to be here.
Laura May (00:42):
I am so excited to have you here because I have so
many questions because you haveproduced seemingly endless number
of papers and book chapters already.
And so we have a lot to talk about.
But let's just jump straight in though,because you defended your doctoral thesis
reasonably recently or earlier this year.
And I wanna start off talking aboutthat and getting to understand
(01:03):
a bit about what that was.
The subtitle at least was "paramilitaryviolence against LGBT people in Colombia".
What is that all about?
Most open question ever.
What is that all about?
What was your thesis?
Samuel Ritholtz (01:18):
Yeah, so my thesis looked basically at the logic of what I
call anti LGBT violence by paramilitariesin Colombia during the country's
civil war or internal armed conflict,there's big debates about whether
you classify it as one or the other.
And basically I was interested inthis dynamic of like, why would
armed actors the center of a conflictspend time, resources, energy
(01:42):
going after people at the margins.
And so I wanted to look at this idea ofanti LGBT violence and Colombia was a
really interesting case study because whenI first started my PhD, which you know,
many years ago there was there had justbeen this peace deal with the FARC and
this peace deal had this massive genderinclusive, LGBT inclusive component to
(02:03):
the construction of peace in the country.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
The fact that there was such a strongelement of LGBT inclusion made me think
that there was a logic of violenceagainst LGBT communities in the country.
So as I started to do this researchin Colombia and I started to do some
initial trips, speak to contacts,I'd been working in Latin America,
mostly in Venezuela on human rightstopics, but had some work at the Un.
(02:25):
So I had was able toconnect to my contacts here.
I learned to quickly that there wasa very long history of victimization
of LGBT populations during war.
And I also learned that the dynamics werevery different between the FARC and other
guerilla groups and the paramilitaries.
And so I made a kind of a gut checkdecision based on me being in Colombia,
(02:45):
which was that there was a lot of timeand energy and focus on the guerillas,
which made sense, because there wasthis peace deal that just happened.
But, given that I was focused notexactly on uncovering what happened,
because there's so many LGBT rightsNGOs that are doing that type of work.
There's the national system of historicmemory that was doing that work.
There's transitional justice andcourts that were doing that work.
(03:05):
I would say it's not my job to tryand uncover, I'm not, I'm not gonna
come in with this like, colonialIndiana Jones mentality of like,
let's discover what really happenedbecause like, it's already being done.
It's being done by people with much bettercontacts, experience, knowledge than me.
And so I realized quickly that my role wasto try and be slower and more analytical
and think more theoretically about whatis the logic of it, of this violence?
(03:26):
How does it relate to the dynamics of war?
And so I ultimately chose to studythe paramilitaries for my dissertation
because the paramilitaries,though there are, neo forms of
paramilitarism in the country today.
They have different names , Clan delGolfo; Aguilas Negras, the Black Eagles.
These are all like differentways to just say the new form
of paramilitarism, which are muchmore aligned with narco trafficking
and dynamics of the drug trade.
(03:48):
The paramilitaries formallydemobilized around 2005.
Some demobilized earlier.
Some demobilized a few years later,no one will say that was the end
of paramilitarism in the country,but it was the end of what I call
formal paramilitarism, which was aparamilitarism that was extremely
state aligned, with state objectivesof trying to rid the country of Marxist
Leninist or communist insurgency.
(04:10):
And so in doing that, I was able tostudy a group that formally no longer
existed, even though, of course, again,there's successor elements everywhere.
Formally no longer existed.
It was already in the process verydeep, like, 10 years into, at the
time, a transitional justice property.
A lot of their worst crimeswere already have been like
admitted in the public sphere.
(04:30):
So I didn't feel like there wasthis element that I was gonna
be, revealing things or makingpeople feel uncomfortable.
That in interviewing them, theywere going to reveal things.
It had a bit of a distance of history.
It still was very tied to the present,but the paramilitaries were one of
the groups that really took it onas a political project to rid the
country of what they called subversion.
Subversion was guerillas, perceivedallies, trade unionists, but it
(04:53):
was also socially marginalizedgroups, sex workers, drug users.
People experiencing homelessnessand LGBT populations.
And so I focused predominantly onLGBT populations because I just felt
in the range of a PhD, it would bea lot to take on all the groups.
And I wanted to look specifically atlike how genders, structures of gender
and sexuality, kind of relate tothese ideas of marginality and more.
(05:16):
And I wanted to study one singlegroup because I thought that if I
could study one single group, it'dbe easier to identify their logic.
I could see how they'reexploring this phenomenon.
And so to just look at a group that wasreally performative and public about
going after LGBT populations, these groupswould come into towns, they'd give out
pamphlets - if you've ever read GabrielGarcia Marquez, where sometimes he talks
about pamphlets-, they'll be, like, bangedto the front of a church or to the city
(05:40):
hall, or just thrown from helicopters.
These lists of people, these aresubversives, they do not belong,
they're not part of the people,leave now or suffer the consequences.
And sometimes they would just belike, these are the types of groups
they are, or it would be like a listof names and a list of quote unquote
sins and it'd be like for beinggay drug users, things like that.
And so I thought this performativeelement also made it quite easy to
(06:02):
understand, that this was a logic,this is target, this isn't just the
exacerbation of existing heteronormativeor, cis sexist patriarchal gender and
sexual regimes or social structures.
This is something they havecommitted to as a strategy of their
war and they're gonna go after it.
Laura May (06:20):
So when you're talking about people dropping pamphlets
out of helicopters and things.
I think the only time i've encounteredthat in my lifetime is in old school
documentaries and maybe the occasionalcartoon so when actually is this we're
talking about, is it recent did ithappen throughout the armed conflict?
Samuel Ritholtz (06:41):
So yes and no.
The form of paramilitarism that Istudy is what they call the second
generation of paramilitarism, which wasearly eighties to early two thousands.
So it was like a 20 year rangethat we're talking about here.
The pamphlets that I'm talking about fromthe helicopter happened in the nineties
late nineties, early two thousands.
It's a bit of a gray zone, but itwas like turn of the millennium.
Before that in the first generationof paramilitarism, -paramilitarism
(07:04):
a really complicated phenomenon.
It's incredibly decentralized,very autonomous within the country.
But when they started to adopt thisnational commitment to subversion,
against subversion rather, thatwas when they kind of became a
federation in the early nineties.
And so it's really in the early ninetiesthat you start seeing these schools.
You see these educational camps, traininginstitutions where they're learning
like, going after LGBT populations ishow you produce social order in a town.
(07:28):
The thesis being focusing on likedifferent forms of this violence.
But that strategy reallyreached its fever pitch in the
nineties and early two thousands.
Laura May (07:36):
Just for our listeners and a little bit for
me, where do the paramilitariesactually fit into the conflict?
Samuel Ritholtz (07:43):
So they have a really interesting history, and for English
speaking populations, probably theclosest you'll see to them in media would
probably be the show Narcos on Netflix.
So in the seventies and eighties,what the guerillas started doing to
finance, but also like get politicalconcessions, so they started kidnapping.
And they started kidnappingupper class people.
And then when they realized they canget like money from it, they started
going after middle class people.
(08:05):
When they started goingafter middle class people.
That's kind of when large swaths ofpopulation started turning against them.
Once you started victimizing in a quiterandom way from your own community, it's
really hard to like, stay fans of that.
The perceived intelligibilitygets a lot harder.
So a bunch of paramilitary groupsstarted being raised by like a
conglomeration of business elites,but also narco traffickers.
(08:28):
So like Muerte a Secuestradores,like Death to Kidnappers, was a thing
that shows up in, you know, Narcos.
It has ties to different narcotrafficking group, including Pablo Escobar
was involved at one point, and what'shappening is, in Medellin and in Cali,
in the two central and western citiesof Colombia, they they started raising
these like proclaimed militias to go afterkidnappers, which were the guerillas.
(08:51):
Then as they started getting a lot moremoney and a lot more force, they started
having some tacit behind the scenesendorsement from the local political
elites and the local the state really.
And it was just cuz it was really hardto go after guerillas, these guerillas.
It wasn't a conventional war likewhat you're seeing in Ukraine
and Russia right now, where likeyou see where the fronts are.
These are people that were in the jungle.
They were in certain urban areas of a citythat maybe didn't have as much of a state
(09:14):
presence, that were poorer in nature.
They were drawing a lot ofsupport from certain populations
who felt forgotten by the state.
And so the way they kind of followedthis, almost like Maoist idea of to
catch a fish, you have to drain the sea.
And so they practiced a lotof civilian victimization.
And the civilian victimization happenedin certain regions of the country
that were perceived to be hotbedsof support for this population.
(09:38):
And so, it became thisreally messy, dark beast.
Could you say, was there adefinitive moment when the state
and the paramilitary is united?
I mean, I wouldn't be able to say thatsome paramilitary scholars might, but
you know, you do have a lot of history ofcounterinsurgency strategy from America,
particularly in Vietnam, where they saylike, one way to go after insurgents is to
(10:00):
raise urban militias or to raise militias.
You have lines in the field manual,like "militias can use selective terror
for aims, but it should be controlled".
And so, you know, you can seekind of the writing on the wall in
terms of where this is coming from.
But, you know, the formal,like how mixed it was.
There was a huge scandal inColombia in the early two
thousands called Parapolitica.
(10:20):
Every scandal in Colombiahas a title, which I love.
So they had this huge scandalthat just showed how connected
they were with elected officials.
A very common finding in conflictstudies is that violence happens
a lot during election years.
Huge correlation between the two.
And in Colombia, what you could seewas that when you were tied to local
political elites, they would exerciseselective forms of violence that
(10:41):
benefited them in terms of voting.
And so people didn't realize the extentof that until it all came to the fore.
So yeah, that's basically likethe foundings: it was tied to
narco trafficking, then kind ofsplit from narco trafficking.
Then there was like this reallyintense like "we are gonna do what
the state can't, we are gonna belike the next frontier of the state".
The Colombian army has five columns orpillars, and they always talked about
(11:03):
the paramilitaries as the sixth pillar.
And so because of that, there was avery big, like, we're gonna do a lot
of illegal stuff in terms of civilianvictimization, but it's gonna be through
the context of war and perhaps morejustifiable, and we're not gonna do things
that would morally degrade our project.
And then when the paramilitariesconfederated in the mid 1990s, they
(11:23):
basically had a big discussion amongthe, the elites about whether they
would get in bed with narco trafficking.
And they ultimately decided toget in bed with narco trafficking,
because they thought that it wouldgive them more leverage if there
was ever a peace negotiation betweenthe paramilitaries and the state.
They'd have more control overinsecurity in the country.
That ended up being a very divisivedecision that kind of put a hole
(11:45):
in the boat of that process becauseit just meant that a lot of people
didn't ever wanna demobilize becausethey were making so much money.
Like in the early eighties, it was notaffiliated with narco trafficking.
And then in the nineties it becamelike very much part of the project.
What the central Junto de saidwas like, it's each front's
decision about how engaged theywanna be with narco trafficking.
Laura May (12:03):
So I understand the paramilitaries were out
there calling people, includingLGBT people, subversives.
And i want to know was this onesided where the gorillas doing the
same thing in the same way or wasthere something different going on?
Samuel Ritholtz (12:20):
Yes and no.
The guerillas weren't using the wordsubversive cuz subversive became this
kind of catchall against communism.
And obviously the guerillas identifiedas communist or at least Lenin
Marxists, and they had this obsessionwith purity, and this purity obsession
was ideological and strategic.
On the one hand, it was if we're gonnabuild a new nation, if we're gonna
build a new country, we can't havethose who aren't ready for the project.
(12:44):
This is something that, I think it'sLinda GTA in writing on Cuba calls
revolutionary homophobia, which was thisidea that like, a new nation has a very
classic idea of what is a male, whatis a woman, what they should be doing.
And so like, these weak men needto be gotten rid of or changed.
So, you know, one thing the paramilitariesdidn't do but the guerillas did
(13:04):
was used a lot of forced labor.
So there were a lot of like forcedlabor camps, gay men type of stuff.
But this purity had this otherassociation which was like, a
lot of these guerilla communitieswere very removed from the state.
They're very removed frominstances of public health.
And so, they were extremelyparanoid about HIV.
And so what happened was if you werefound out to be gay, or if you found
out to be HIV positive, you wouldbe HIV tested and everyone around
(13:28):
you would be HIV tested all yourfriends, family, network basically.
And anyone who was HIV positive was eithertold like, get out now or be killed.
And so those are actuallysome of the hardest people.
There's a lot, there's a lot ofefforts in Colombia being done
to research these populations.
Fernando Serrano-Amaya at Uni Andesas well as the LGBT organization,
Caribe Afirmativo had a reporton this called "Truncated Lives".
(13:50):
But they're like, it's a double burden.
These people were kicked outof a community for being gay
and for being HIV positive.
So there's this double stigma.
So that was very likeguerilla specific, really.
And so it shows basically what my thesisargues, which is like the intertwining
of ideology and strategy had a bigeffect about what this violence looked
like, whether this violence happens tobegin with, but what it looked like.
Laura May (14:12):
So you've just said there's some great research being
done already on LGBT people and theireviction from the state in Colombia.
So what actually sets your research apart?
What makes it special?
Samuel Ritholtz (14:26):
One of the things about this project that I thought was really
important was like I came to Colombia.
And and I did what I called a listeningtour where I met with all the different
activists, academics institutionalorganizations, working on the subject
matter kind of to understand like therange of the phenomenon through their
eyes, but also to be like, where doI fit in as this foreign researcher?
And some people handle that delicatelyand some people were like, what the hell
(14:47):
can you do that we're not already doing?
And you know, I think there was a strongreaction to this idea that I could go
slower, look at something historical,and theorize like deeper in a sense.
And I think like what this dissertationdid and does and how it kind of
connects to the broader landscape inColombia, which is that in Colombia
there were very strong explanationsof why this violence happened.
(15:08):
The two big debates are whetherit was a form of social control
through the perpetration of aprejudice based violence, kind of
like this exacerbation of existingsocial structures of exclusion,
homophobia, transphobia, et cetera.
Or whether like these paramilitaries aretrying to put in a moral order and this
is a very moral form of violence, that isa social control through this imposition
of a new regime, this moralized regime.
(15:30):
And what this dissertation did wasit kind of said like, well it's both.
And the answer that thisdissertation puts forward is not
necessarily a why it happened, butwhy it happened the way it did.
So an explanation of how it happened.
And I think that was really importantbecause I think, if you look at the
existing debate in Colombia now, likethere is obviously people who have
(15:50):
nuance between what the guerillasdid and what the paramilitaries did.
But what this dissertation does is itreally creates this theoretical frame
to understand why the paramilitaryviolence against LGBT populations
looked so different than the guerillaviolence against LGBT populations.
So it's not to say that one did itworse or not to compare in terms of
like, level of severity, but to lookat almost like the characteristics
(16:11):
of it, as I call it, or the patternsof it were really different and it's
because they were attempting differentthings with different ideologies.
Laura May (16:20):
And given the way that queer and trans people were treated during
the more violent parts of the conflict,is there still an ongoing effect today?
I mean how does it continue to impactthe lives of LGBT people in Colombia?
If at all, of course.
Samuel Ritholtz (16:36):
I mean, it's hard.
It's very complicated, the LGBTexperience in Colombia today.
I mean, it's obviously we'rein a very different place.
There's just been a massive amountof change in the lives of the LGBT
populations really since the '91constitution came into effect, which
really launched the modern form of theLGBT rights movement here in Colombia.
You know, obviously Colombiahas a lot of regimes or laws on
paper that are very supportive.
We have marriage equality here.
(16:56):
There's a lot of protectionagainst discrimination.
There's protectionagainst people with HIV.
But the reality is, is that, thisis still probably like one of the
top three countries in Latin Americawith the most reported incidents of
violence against LGBT populations.
Now whether that's in the context orthe framework of war or that's just the
society with a lot of intercommunalviolence, those are different debates.
In terms of the logics of war, the warlooks very different in Colombia today.
(17:19):
You know, there are still guerilla groups.
There are still FARC dissident groupsand, you know, I'm not as familiar
with their current patterns of LGBTvictimization, but I will say that, in
certain areas where I work, at least,despite this horrific history, there
are thriving and really resilient LGBTpopulations, putting on drag shows
(17:39):
and, doing marches and pride marches.
They're still here.
They're still mobilizing and existing.
One of my sites is a site thathas a very strong presence of Clan
del Golfo, which is this narcogroup that's very tied to Mexico.
And it's because it's a drugcorridor to the Caribbean Sea.
And, when I spoke to the LGBT populationin this town, they would say like,
(18:01):
we know they're here, but they'releaving us alone for the most part.
The last time I did interviews,that was the big narrative.
More recently, there has been a threatmade against a trans sex worker.
So I think the community is a littlemore on edge and I'll be traveling this
summer and finding out more detail.
But, in that community, the LGBTcommunity felt like they could really
thrive in a way they couldn't, obviouslyduring this late nineties, early two
(18:22):
thousands period, when the violence wasreally extreme with the paramilitaries.
But I also spoke to women socialleaders, which is the Colombian term
for like community activists or leaders.
And these women social leaderswere still threatened every day.
And so there is still a genderedlogic to violence in conflict prone
parts of Colombia or insecure parts ofColombia where, today it's easier in
(18:44):
some sense, and there's still massiveamounts of employment discrimination,
but in terms of like targeting duringwar, LGBT people feel a lot less
targeted and there's not necessarilya target on their back, whereas women
social leaders don't feel that way.
And so, what is that logic haschanged or the dynamic has changed,
but I do wonder how it exists tothis logic that I'm putting forward.
(19:04):
What's the tolerable spaceof community dissent?
What makes feminists mobilizingso threatening to these groups,
they feel the need to squash it?
I think it's tied to reportingcases of domestic violence to
local government authorities.
Cuz I think what happens is when youreport cases of domestic violence,
if predominantly these men are beingreported and they're affiliated with
(19:25):
the Clan del Golfo, they're going tobe basically taken off the street.
They're gonna be put in jail orat least tied up in court action.
And that makes them less able to work.
And so it's kind of athreat to business logic.
That's just a theory.
I don't have any proof of that.
Laura May (19:40):
That's really interesting though, that you bring it up.
I mean, I do think of Colombia as fairlyvisibly gendered in a broader sense.
For example, one of my good friendswas married a couple of years ago
and she's currently facing a lotof social pressure from her family.
From her friends, evencolleagues, to have children.
(20:01):
She doesn't want kids, butit's a gendered expectation.
And now you've mentioneddomestic violence.
I mean, the first time I was inColombia was about 10 years ago.
And even then I remember signsin the street basically being
like, don't hit your wife.
And so there is this currentof gendered expectations and
(20:21):
potentially gendered violence.
Even beyond the normal typesof gender based violence we
associate with violent conflict.
And it does make me wonder what thefuture is in that regarding Colombia,
especially in light of these reallyvisible international debates and
discourses over whether certain peopleare even allowed to exist, for instance.
(20:43):
But my experience with the Colombia hasalways been that, on the other hand,
people are so friendly and so welcomingand so accepting of one another.
And perhaps this is projection, butit's always seemed to me that there
has been maybe a sense of overcomingthis huge thing together and this
huge heritage of trauma and violenceand kidnappings, as you mentioned.
(21:08):
And so it kind of feels like it couldgo either way, but I mean, maybe I'm
pessimistic, because I did a recordinga couple of months ago with Solveig
Richter and Laura Camila Barrios, and.
I'm like oh my god everything's goingto fall apart so maybe this is really
more a reflection of my own head space.
Samuel Ritholtz (21:26):
It's an extraordinarily complicated question that I'll do my
best, but I don't know if I could answer.
I mean, listen, I think one of the thingsthat we're seeing in Colombia that we're
seeing now in Europe, and we're seeingit in the United States, It's becoming
a global phenomenon, is this backlashagainst gender inclusion, gender and
LGBTQ inclusion, feminist mobilization,like queer causes, and it's largely
(21:46):
being framed around this idea of likegender ideology, anti gender ideology.
And for those of you who haven't beenfollowing Colombia, it was actually a
really big reason for the failure of theplebiscite of the peace deal was that
there was this massive politicizationof the gender component of the peace
deal, which they said was gonna likebe teaching kids to be gay, showing gay
porn in schools, like ridiculous stuff.
(22:07):
But you know, that tactic, that mobilizingframe of like, we need to protect
our children, we need to protect thesanctity of family, and as a result we
need to sink this entire peace deal.
Jamie Hagan obviously does a lot ofwork on this with her work on queering
the women peace and security agenda.
But you know, that frame the factthat it sunk a peace deal where
of a country really hungry forpeace just kind of shows you, how
(22:28):
effective these mobilizing frames are.
That's something that you sawin Peru with Con mis hijos no te
metas, don't mess with my children.
Previously in Colombia sunk aneducational minister who was trying
to put forward a more inclusiveeducational program at the national level.
And, we see it in many places.
I mean, part of me is like, I dothink this mobilizing frame of anti
gender ideology comes from LatinAmerica and has been exported.
(22:51):
But I also think a lot of this, theefficacy of these initiatives have been
funded by American radical, and likefundamentalist religious organizations.
So it's quite global in, its inits prominence and provenance
Laura May (23:05):
it does make me think about the Russian case.
I said before we started recordingthat it was only a Master's.
But, I did research this idea ofgayness as a civilizational threat
as it was discussed by Russianpoliticians in what, like 20 14, 20 15.
And whether this became from some kindof, of, underscoring belief or whether
(23:25):
it was really cynical mobilization.
And I mean, my conclusion was, well,no, no, they did this on purpose.
And I mean, a big part of it wasPutin and his regime needed the
support of the Orthodox Church tocrush all of the different protests
against that happened at that time.
And the Orthodox Church apparentlywas like, all right, but you need
to be anti-sex workers and anti-gay.
(23:47):
And so then they startedactually portraying this
as a civilizational threat.
That Europe was trying to turn Russiagay, so they wouldn't have children
so the civilization would collapse.
And so yeah, it was that really, likethere was that religious element,
there was that strategic element and Idon't know, like ontological anxiety.
I don't really know what was goingon there but it is fascinating that
(24:08):
whether it's backlash as you justput it, or whether there's just.
It's something that's, it's a storythat's there and politicians and elite
are just really cynically using it forattention and to crush some people.
So everyone else feels morepowerful by comparison.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, again, this is, this is not myfield, but does fascinate me, obviously,
(24:30):
which is why I wanted to have you here.
Samuel Ritholtz (24:33):
Yeah, it's a very big chicken or the egg situation cuz
I think like this type of rhetoricalframe has to be resounding or it has
to resound in a public, for the publicto accept it and not challenge it.
And one of the things in Colombia, soColombia is a country with a history
of violence, which you've properlydenoted, is an extraordinarily open and
welcome, welcoming, and resilient society.
You know how they try and counter theselike really intense theories of violence?
(24:56):
They always also try and narrate anddocument histories of resistance.
Which I think is a really powerfulmove to be like, this has happened,
but also this happened despite this.
And I think to take that to anotherlevel higher of abstraction, if
you look at these broader effortsof anti, gender ideology or anti
gender, anti feminism, anti queermobilization, where did they fail?
(25:18):
And so, you know, when you had thesemovements in Peru, in Colombia,
succeed, Around the same timeyou had an election in Costa Rica
between basically two candidates.
And the person who was infavor of feminist and LGBT
mobilization, won in Costa Rica.
And so it's a success story and itkind of shows that it can be done,
but Costa Rica is a special case.
(25:39):
The InterAmerican court ofHuman Rights is based there.
It doesn't have an army, itis more teachers than police.
It has a long history of peace building.
You know, it has championed onthese, quite progressive causes.
And so maybe that framewas more effective there.
But basically like , thesethings can't come outta nowhere.
And so that's why there is alwaysthis question of like, the feminist
studiers of war that for decades havesaid basically that war exacerbates
existing social structures of exclusion.
(26:01):
But you know, when does that tipinto becoming a salient cleavage
or a salient, rhetorical framing Ithink really depends on our time.
You said ontological anxiety and there'sa really interesting anthropologist of
predominantly Colombia, but elsewherein Latin America or predominantly
South America, really called MichaelTaussig, and Michael Taussig has this
argument in his book, "the Devil andCommodity Fetishism in South America".
(26:25):
That like people really doubledown and commit to witchcraft
and, believing in mysticism duringtransitions of economic regimes.
And so there is this insecuritywhich he identifies as an economic
insecurity, but you know, definitelyextends to an ontological range where
people become much more likely tocommit to something that's spiritual
(26:46):
or mythical or sounds explanation.
I'm not saying that this is a new form ofmysticism, but I'm saying that there is
a type of anxiety that can be unlocked.
We are in an era of late capitalism,of growing inequality, of in increasing
political and elite capture ofadvanced democracies , and non advanced
democracies as well, obviously.
But it just becomes, it does becomethis kind of perfect mix where, you
(27:10):
know, it's easy to commit to a rhetoricthat simplifies a glory, a gloried, but
unattainable past or non-existent past.
So if for that reason, yes.
Yes.
It's hard and it's a scary time.
I still remain to be an optimist.
And I think there can be momentsof success or moments where that
kind of rhetoric is fractured oryou know, when it goes too far.
(27:32):
And so I think, what I always try andsay in general about broader claims of
my research is that, it goes way beyondLGBT populations because it becomes
a justification for broader action.
And in Colombia activists have thistheory, which I kind of label the
canary in a coal mine theory, whichis they say like a lot of times LGBT
people are clamped down on firstbefore, like broader paramilitary
(27:53):
crackdowns or things of that nature.
It starts with one marginalized group.
It's kinda like establish a frame,but then that's kinda like a
gateway to a lot broader crackdown.
And I'm, I actually wanna do moreresearch on this and I'm planning on
doing more research with a scholarin Germany, a scholar in Amsterdam.
Hopefully this fall
.Laura May: I mean, wasn't it that famous quote about Hitler's
Germany and first they came forwhomever, then they came, so when we
(28:16):
tolerate this culture of intolerance,it's so easy for it to expand.
So yeah, maybe it starts with thequeer and trans people, and then
maybe women and people of color, andyeah, I mean, it's just, it's a good
way to control population and tosay, all right, you are the bad ones.
You are the good ones.
Throw out the bad ones.
We need to fight against thembecause otherwise we will collapse.
(28:39):
Our civilization willcollapse, whatever it might be.
But that's a whole other, I thinkI need to get someone on here who
can rant with me about like, Marvelmovies and the problems of society.
But that's a whole other topic, I think.
Because I wanna ask, I wannaask you as well about this
idea of queer peace building.
You've written a paper, "underconstruction: toward a theory and
(28:59):
praxis of queer peace building".
What does queer peace building refer to?
And please tell me I get to wearrainbows a hundred percent of the time.
I would love that.
That sounds like the best kindof peace building, but I'm
sure it's much more serious.
Like what?
What is that?
What are you working on?
It's a great question.
Uh, It's a challenging question.
Obviously, nothing's easy whenthe word's queer in front of it.
(29:21):
So basically that project is a kindof a project between four scholars
who approach this idea of like LGBTlives at war from different angles.
So it was Fernando Serrano-Amaya at theUniversidad de los Andes here in Colombia.
It was me.
And then it was Jamie Hagan atthe Queens University of Belfast.
And then it was Melanie Judgeof University of Cape Town.
(29:42):
And basically all of us wereinterested in the insecurity of
LGBT lives during war and after war.
And we were studying itfrom different angles.
Me and Fernanda were reallylooking at, LGBT lives in conflict.
Melanie Judge did a lot about the PostApartheid Truth Commission, and the new
constitution of this rainbow South Africa.
And then Jamie works on queering womenpeace and security agenda at the UN.
(30:04):
And so we were all really interested andkind of brought together from our own
research, but also from this phenomenonin Colombia of championing and cherishing
this, the LGBT inclusivity of the peacedeal, the 2016 peace deal with the FARC.
And we were wondering like, you know,what does peace mean in this context?
When, you know what I imagine withyour previous conversations in the,
and why you're having a bit of adark or pessimism of the future in
(30:28):
Colombia's, like, there's been a lotof unmet promises of the peace deal.
And that particularly relates to like,these promises of security of, no more
violence against women social leaders orLGBT activists, these types of things.
So we're like, well if this, is thisreally a country at peace, like what
does a post peace Colombia mean?
So, we had similar interests, we hadsimilar questions, we had no answers.
(30:49):
But we also had similar like ideas andcommitments, which was, you know, we felt
strongly that this type of question anddiscussion should be based in Colombia,
because Colombia is really the firsttransitional justice process that went
the extra mile in terms of incorporatinga queer and trans perspective.
And so, you know, there's a veryfamous line that people, activists will
say, which is like, we went from onesentence in the South African Apartheid
(31:12):
Post Apartheid Truth report to 500pages in the Colombian Truth Report.
And so, there was this massiveadvancement, but this massive
advancement was not necessarilytaken for granted, but it, no one
really sat with what this meant.
And so we put together a special issuebased out of a a bilingual, a trilingual
actual special issue based out of theUniversidad de los Andes' "Revista
(31:34):
de los estudios sociales", so, solike their Journal of Social Studies.
And we basically just said like, who'sworking on queer peace building and what
does queer peace building mean to them?
What does queer peace buildingmean in these contexts?
And so the answer is that,there is no answer is that queer
peace building is like the titleitself, under construction.
We know people have a feeling of whatit feels like and what it looks like.
(31:56):
It means peace for populationswith non hegemonic sexual
orientation gender identities.
But can it extend beyond thesepopulations and does it always have
to be in post-conflict settings?
And the biggest tension in understandingwhat that is, is just this idea of like,
you might have a country at peace likeBrazil, but Brazil's probably the most
violent country in the Western hemisphere,if not the world, for LGBT populations.
(32:19):
And so, is there peace there?
Does that mean somethingto the LGBT population?
Does a peace still mean anythingwhen you're still being threatened?
And so it's regrettably oneof those papers that asks more
questions than it gives answers.
But I think what that paper and broaderspecial issue did was rise to this moment
to be like, this is a narrative thatisn't fully challenged or sat with yet.
(32:40):
And if we're going to find peacefor these communities, we have
to sit with, what does this meana lot more than we already have.
Laura May (32:49):
Fascinating.
Fascinating.
I wanna ask you about your paper as well,the ontology of cruelty in Civil War.
Firstly, great title.
Secondly, what does it mean?
Samuel Ritholtz (33:01):
It came from my research in Colombia, which was that one of the
key ways that academics and scholars ofviolence understand dynamics and logics
of violence is through what we callrepertoire, which is looking at, what
are the types of violence that happening?
Is it sexual violence?
Is it threats?
Is it murder?
Is it displacement?
Kind of like putting out a toolkitof political forms of violence and,
documenting when it happens where.
(33:23):
My issue was when I started my researchwas that I very quickly noticed that
in these hotspots of paramilitaryviolence against LGBT populations,
the repertoires were all the same.
It was sexual violence sometimes,but it was predominantly murder
threats, forced disappearance,which is a very Latin American
style type of repertoire violence,which is basically people disappear.
(33:45):
And I guess displacement.
So I was realizing that like, eventhough I recognized these case study
sites had such different experiences ofviolence, if I looked at the standard
analytical frames of repertoire, itwasn't going to capture this difference.
And so I felt like I had to go deeper.
And so what I did was, this paperactually, this ontology of cruelty
(34:09):
was looking at, despite very similarrepertoires, despite the fact that
homicide was being used, despite thefact that, displacement and threats
are being used in one of the casestudy sites, the violence was just
understood to be so much more horrific.
It was so much morelike whisper campaigns.
It's what everyone knows, eventhough they were both quite
horrific forms of violence.
And it was because the violence therewas perceived to be a lot more cruel.
(34:32):
It was perceived to be a lot moretransgressive of, sociocultural norms.
So more brutal in that sense, butalso that it was really charged with
inflicting suffering in a way thatthis other case study site, despite the
brutality of the violence, despite theamount of murder that was happening,
it wasn't viewed to be as cruel.
It was also because itwas so intelligible.
It was very intelligible, the violencein one of my case study sites.
(34:55):
And because it was so intelligible,because there was so clear, this is why it
happened, this is how it's gonna happen.
It's gonna follow a very standardsocial cleansing campaign
of disappearance, of murder.
Like it wasn't viewed as crueland it wasn't viewed as illogical.
It was very perceptible.
Whereas in the second site, it wasviewed as so illogical, so unpredictable.
No one understood why.
The very famous case from thatsecond site was a boxing match
(35:18):
organized by paramilitaries betweengay men and trans women to quote
unquote restore their masculinity.
And so these public spectacles ofhumiliation use of sexual violence when
someone transgressed social norms, butno one understand what the social norms
were, it just became so unpredictable,so illogical that it kind of created
this like, real form of repressiveatmosphere in the town where a lot of
(35:38):
people talked about like the death ofa social life, or a very common frame
that I heard a lot in my interviewswas like, this is a town that had a
very strong social fabric, that thesereally cruel forms of violence ripped.
And so it made me realize thatthis perception of cruelty, which,
cruelty is a very socially perceptivephenomenon or subjective phenomenon.
It mattered a lot to these populations.
(35:59):
And so it was beyond repertoire.
It was the characteristics ofthis violence that really started
to color how these communitieswere interpreting this violence.
And so that's what that paper does.
The paper actually doesn't mention LGBTpopulations, and that's because of another
tragedy of the academy, but it comesfrom my work on LGBT populations, and it
basically says that like, if we're reallygoing to understand the sociopolitical
(36:20):
effects of violence, we need to go beyondrepertoire and we need to understand
the characteristics of this violence.
Because it is not just therepertoires that these populations are
interpreting, they are interpreting,the broader characteristics of how
these repertoires happen, kind oflike the metadata of these actions.
Laura May (36:36):
And so what's next for you?
What are you working on now?
Samuel Ritholtz (36:40):
I continue with like a few streams of research.
So right now I'm in Colombia predominantlyto do this, the transition of dissertation
to monograph, collect more stories andcontinue working in my case study sites.
In addition to that, I have a lot of workon LGBT refugee studies, which with those
LGBT refugee studies, what I'm focusingon is basically like what don't we know
(37:01):
about the experience of LGBT refugees?
And from trying to understand what wedon't know or to understand the real
queer difference of what it meansto be displaced and LGBTQI plus.
What does that mean forthe broader refugee regime?
So I'm working with a colleague,Rebecca Buxton, who's a political
philosopher at the University of Bristol.
And we're working on this book calledToward a Queer Theory of Refuge.
(37:23):
We're basically like following themigrant journey or the journey of
the displaced from home to sanctuary.
And then every step of the journey,instead of applying what we know about
displacement and this specific steptowards this population, looking to see
how this population experiences thatstep to kind of reconceptualize what
we know or what does sanctuary mean?
(37:43):
That when you can be given asylumin a country and then put in a very
homophobic community, or if you getasylum, but put with the community
that you came, but you were fleeinggeneralized social homophobia.
You can't be placed inyour same community.
And so it challenges questions ofobligations and duties of states
and, Rebecca's a moral philosopher.
So it's been a very happy marriageactually of queer theory and moral
(38:05):
philosophy and that they bothhave these questions of demands
and obligations and challenging.
So that's that.
My, what's next is I'd like to actuallyexpand my research on, marginalization
in war, to look at this logic oftargeting other marginalized groups, the
kind that I mentioned earlier, whetherit's sex workers, people experiencing
(38:25):
homelessness, the neurologically diverse,this is these targeting of like, you
know, what the Nazis called a socials,what the francoists called anti socials.
What paramilitaries inColombia called subversives.
There's a long history of this idea ofwhat some scholars call social cleansing,
it is a lot of history in the Cold War.
It happened in the kno sword inArgentina and their dictatorship
in Chile and all these things.
And so I'm, my next project will be whatI'm calling basically a political history
(38:49):
of the concept of social cleansing.
Laura May (38:52):
You've written so much and even just now you've talked about
these other things you're gonna write.
I mean, where does your drivecome from to produce so much,
especially in the face of what is,I guess so emotionally challenging
as far as material goes as well?
Like how do you keep going?
Samuel Ritholtz (39:09):
I mean, the second one, there's a cop out answer, which
is like, just from a very young age Ijust knew I was gonna be like a genocide
scholar, and so I have an emotionalcapacity to handle the subject matter.
It's really weird.
I can study it.
I'm really motivated to redresswhere these absences lie.
And I feel very powerfully about that.
But at the same time, like I can't watchhorror movies and I can't watch any type
(39:32):
of television with gratuitous violence.
And so it's weird that I can lookat pictures of massacres and I can
analyze 'em politically and work atit in front of a project, but I can't
like, the last Hunger Games movie wastoo violent for me, like Hunger Games,
even though I love Jennifer Lawrence.
So, I don't know.
I guess that's how I process it.
And I think I'm really motivated bywhat I felt when I started my career
(39:52):
as a real absence in the academyof taking seriously queer and trans
lives as it relates to conflict.
People were doing this work andthey were just marginalized.
Like I'm very much not the first personto do it, but what I did was I kind
of stood on their shoulders and doubleddown and saying, I'm gonna use the
language of classic political scientists.
I'm gonna use the language ofclassic scholars of conflict.
(40:14):
And I'm going to, you know, show them thatlike what they've maligned for decades is
actually relevant to the logics of war.
And, you know, it took a while and I hadto really reframe and reframe and reframe,
but I think that's the end result.
And so, we talked about this previously,but I ended up, even though this is a
quite interpretive, humanist or postmodernspace in terms of LGBT and gender studies
of conflict, like, I doubled down touse critical realist language because I
(40:37):
wanted the critical realist and even thepositivists to at least listen to me,
even if they don't necessarily follow me.
And there's, I'm not the firstperson to do that obviously.
I mean, Libby Wood with her work sinceearly two thousands has been doing that.
Lee Ann Fuji's work was doing that.
Like, again, there's a lot ofscholars already doing this.
I just kind of did it from ana queer vantage, if you will.
Laura May (40:56):
Amazing.
So thank you so much forjoining me today, Sam.
And for those who are interestedin learning more about your
work, where can they find you?
Samuel Ritholtz (41:06):
So I have a website.
It's my name dot com.
Samuel Ritholtz.
I'm also on Twitter.
I'm on, yeah, I guess I'm just onTwitter, but feel free to email me.
I mean, I'm, I'm I guessI'm on Threads, but I haven't
really done anything on Threads.
So.
Yeah, you can follow my workthere and you can always email me.
I particularly love getting emailsfrom people debating going to graduate
(41:30):
school, early career researchers.
I'm happy to talk about the challengesand the opportunities in the academy.
And so there's always thatform of informal mentoring
that I benefited so much from.
And so I'm happy for people to bein touch and also policy makers.
I, I do sometimes get asked policyquestions and I think my work
obviously is policy research,and so I'm happy to be in touch.
Laura May (41:49):
Amazing and also heartwarming, you're out there helping the next
generation scholars, which is fabulous.
Well, look, again, thank you somuch Sam, and until next time,
this is Laura May with The ConflictTipping podcast from mediate.com.
Welcome to the Conflict Tipping podcast from Mediate.com.
The podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May,and today I have with me Dr.
Samuel Ritholtz.
They are a Max Weber fellow at theEuropean University Institute, a
specialist in queer experiencesof conflict, crisis, and
displacement, and they are currentlyin Bogota conducting research.
(00:36):
So welcome, Sam.
Samuel Ritholtz (00:38):
Thank you so much for having me, Laura May.
I am thrilled to be here.
Laura May (00:42):
I am so excited to have you here because I have so
many questions because you haveproduced seemingly endless number
of papers and book chapters already.
And so we have a lot to talk about.
But let's just jump straight in though,because you defended your doctoral thesis
reasonably recently or earlier this year.
And I wanna start off talking aboutthat and getting to understand
(01:03):
a bit about what that was.
The subtitle at least was "paramilitaryviolence against LGBT people in Colombia".
What is that all about?
Most open question ever.
What is that all about?
What was your thesis?
Samuel Ritholtz (01:18):
Yeah, so my thesis looked basically at the logic of what I
call anti LGBT violence by paramilitariesin Colombia during the country's
civil war or internal armed conflict,there's big debates about whether
you classify it as one or the other.
And basically I was interested inthis dynamic of like, why would
armed actors the center of a conflictspend time, resources, energy
(01:42):
going after people at the margins.
And so I wanted to look at this idea ofanti LGBT violence and Colombia was a
really interesting case study because whenI first started my PhD, which you know,
many years ago there was there had justbeen this peace deal with the FARC and
this peace deal had this massive genderinclusive, LGBT inclusive component to
(02:03):
the construction of peace in the country.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
The fact that there was such a strongelement of LGBT inclusion made me think
that there was a logic of violenceagainst LGBT communities in the country.
So as I started to do this researchin Colombia and I started to do some
initial trips, speak to contacts,I'd been working in Latin America,
mostly in Venezuela on human rightstopics, but had some work at the Un.
(02:25):
So I had was able toconnect to my contacts here.
I learned to quickly that there wasa very long history of victimization
of LGBT populations during war.
And I also learned that the dynamics werevery different between the FARC and other
guerilla groups and the paramilitaries.
And so I made a kind of a gut checkdecision based on me being in Colombia,
(02:45):
which was that there was a lot of timeand energy and focus on the guerillas,
which made sense, because there wasthis peace deal that just happened.
But, given that I was focused notexactly on uncovering what happened,
because there's so many LGBT rightsNGOs that are doing that type of work.
There's the national system of historicmemory that was doing that work.
There's transitional justice andcourts that were doing that work.
(03:05):
I would say it's not my job to tryand uncover, I'm not, I'm not gonna
come in with this like, colonialIndiana Jones mentality of like,
let's discover what really happenedbecause like, it's already being done.
It's being done by people with much bettercontacts, experience, knowledge than me.
And so I realized quickly that my role wasto try and be slower and more analytical
and think more theoretically about whatis the logic of it, of this violence?
(03:26):
How does it relate to the dynamics of war?
And so I ultimately chose to studythe paramilitaries for my dissertation
because the paramilitaries,though there are, neo forms of
paramilitarism in the country today.
They have different names , Clan delGolfo; Aguilas Negras, the Black Eagles.
These are all like differentways to just say the new form
of paramilitarism, which are muchmore aligned with narco trafficking
and dynamics of the drug trade.
(03:48):
The paramilitaries formallydemobilized around 2005.
Some demobilized earlier.
Some demobilized a few years later,no one will say that was the end
of paramilitarism in the country,but it was the end of what I call
formal paramilitarism, which was aparamilitarism that was extremely
state aligned, with state objectivesof trying to rid the country of Marxist
Leninist or communist insurgency.
(04:10):
And so in doing that, I was able tostudy a group that formally no longer
existed, even though, of course, again,there's successor elements everywhere.
Formally no longer existed.
It was already in the process verydeep, like, 10 years into, at the
time, a transitional justice property.
A lot of their worst crimeswere already have been like
admitted in the public sphere.
(04:30):
So I didn't feel like there wasthis element that I was gonna
be, revealing things or makingpeople feel uncomfortable.
That in interviewing them, theywere going to reveal things.
It had a bit of a distance of history.
It still was very tied to the present,but the paramilitaries were one of
the groups that really took it onas a political project to rid the
country of what they called subversion.
Subversion was guerillas, perceivedallies, trade unionists, but it
(04:53):
was also socially marginalizedgroups, sex workers, drug users.
People experiencing homelessnessand LGBT populations.
And so I focused predominantly onLGBT populations because I just felt
in the range of a PhD, it would bea lot to take on all the groups.
And I wanted to look specifically atlike how genders, structures of gender
and sexuality, kind of relate tothese ideas of marginality and more.
(05:16):
And I wanted to study one singlegroup because I thought that if I
could study one single group, it'dbe easier to identify their logic.
I could see how they'reexploring this phenomenon.
And so to just look at a group that wasreally performative and public about
going after LGBT populations, these groupswould come into towns, they'd give out
pamphlets - if you've ever read GabrielGarcia Marquez, where sometimes he talks
about pamphlets-, they'll be, like, bangedto the front of a church or to the city
(05:40):
hall, or just thrown from helicopters.
These lists of people, these aresubversives, they do not belong,
they're not part of the people,leave now or suffer the consequences.
And sometimes they would just belike, these are the types of groups
they are, or it would be like a listof names and a list of quote unquote
sins and it'd be like for beinggay drug users, things like that.
And so I thought this performativeelement also made it quite easy to
(06:02):
understand, that this was a logic,this is target, this isn't just the
exacerbation of existing heteronormativeor, cis sexist patriarchal gender and
sexual regimes or social structures.
This is something they havecommitted to as a strategy of their
war and they're gonna go after it.
Laura May (06:20):
So when you're talking about people dropping pamphlets
out of helicopters and things.
I think the only time i've encounteredthat in my lifetime is in old school
documentaries and maybe the occasionalcartoon so when actually is this we're
talking about, is it recent did ithappen throughout the armed conflict?
Samuel Ritholtz (06:41):
So yes and no.
The form of paramilitarism that Istudy is what they call the second
generation of paramilitarism, which wasearly eighties to early two thousands.
So it was like a 20 year rangethat we're talking about here.
The pamphlets that I'm talking about fromthe helicopter happened in the nineties
late nineties, early two thousands.
It's a bit of a gray zone, but itwas like turn of the millennium.
Before that in the first generationof paramilitarism, -paramilitarism
(07:04):
a really complicated phenomenon.
It's incredibly decentralized,very autonomous within the country.
But when they started to adopt thisnational commitment to subversion,
against subversion rather, thatwas when they kind of became a
federation in the early nineties.
And so it's really in the early ninetiesthat you start seeing these schools.
You see these educational camps, traininginstitutions where they're learning
like, going after LGBT populations ishow you produce social order in a town.
(07:28):
The thesis being focusing on likedifferent forms of this violence.
But that strategy reallyreached its fever pitch in the
nineties and early two thousands.
Laura May (07:36):
Just for our listeners and a little bit for
me, where do the paramilitariesactually fit into the conflict?
Samuel Ritholtz (07:43):
So they have a really interesting history, and for English
speaking populations, probably theclosest you'll see to them in media would
probably be the show Narcos on Netflix.
So in the seventies and eighties,what the guerillas started doing to
finance, but also like get politicalconcessions, so they started kidnapping.
And they started kidnappingupper class people.
And then when they realized they canget like money from it, they started
going after middle class people.
(08:05):
When they started goingafter middle class people.
That's kind of when large swaths ofpopulation started turning against them.
Once you started victimizing in a quiterandom way from your own community, it's
really hard to like, stay fans of that.
The perceived intelligibilitygets a lot harder.
So a bunch of paramilitary groupsstarted being raised by like a
conglomeration of business elites,but also narco traffickers.
(08:28):
So like Muerte a Secuestradores,like Death to Kidnappers, was a thing
that shows up in, you know, Narcos.
It has ties to different narcotrafficking group, including Pablo Escobar
was involved at one point, and what'shappening is, in Medellin and in Cali,
in the two central and western citiesof Colombia, they they started raising
these like proclaimed militias to go afterkidnappers, which were the guerillas.
(08:51):
Then as they started getting a lot moremoney and a lot more force, they started
having some tacit behind the scenesendorsement from the local political
elites and the local the state really.
And it was just cuz it was really hardto go after guerillas, these guerillas.
It wasn't a conventional war likewhat you're seeing in Ukraine
and Russia right now, where likeyou see where the fronts are.
These are people that were in the jungle.
They were in certain urban areas of a citythat maybe didn't have as much of a state
(09:14):
presence, that were poorer in nature.
They were drawing a lot ofsupport from certain populations
who felt forgotten by the state.
And so the way they kind of followedthis, almost like Maoist idea of to
catch a fish, you have to drain the sea.
And so they practiced a lotof civilian victimization.
And the civilian victimization happenedin certain regions of the country
that were perceived to be hotbedsof support for this population.
(09:38):
And so, it became thisreally messy, dark beast.
Could you say, was there adefinitive moment when the state
and the paramilitary is united?
I mean, I wouldn't be able to say thatsome paramilitary scholars might, but
you know, you do have a lot of history ofcounterinsurgency strategy from America,
particularly in Vietnam, where they saylike, one way to go after insurgents is to
(10:00):
raise urban militias or to raise militias.
You have lines in the field manual,like "militias can use selective terror
for aims, but it should be controlled".
And so, you know, you can seekind of the writing on the wall in
terms of where this is coming from.
But, you know, the formal,like how mixed it was.
There was a huge scandal inColombia in the early two
thousands called Parapolitica.
(10:20):
Every scandal in Colombiahas a title, which I love.
So they had this huge scandalthat just showed how connected
they were with elected officials.
A very common finding in conflictstudies is that violence happens
a lot during election years.
Huge correlation between the two.
And in Colombia, what you could seewas that when you were tied to local
political elites, they would exerciseselective forms of violence that
(10:41):
benefited them in terms of voting.
And so people didn't realize the extentof that until it all came to the fore.
So yeah, that's basically likethe foundings: it was tied to
narco trafficking, then kind ofsplit from narco trafficking.
Then there was like this reallyintense like "we are gonna do what
the state can't, we are gonna belike the next frontier of the state".
The Colombian army has five columns orpillars, and they always talked about
(11:03):
the paramilitaries as the sixth pillar.
And so because of that, there was avery big, like, we're gonna do a lot
of illegal stuff in terms of civilianvictimization, but it's gonna be through
the context of war and perhaps morejustifiable, and we're not gonna do things
that would morally degrade our project.
And then when the paramilitariesconfederated in the mid 1990s, they
(11:23):
basically had a big discussion amongthe, the elites about whether they
would get in bed with narco trafficking.
And they ultimately decided toget in bed with narco trafficking,
because they thought that it wouldgive them more leverage if there
was ever a peace negotiation betweenthe paramilitaries and the state.
They'd have more control overinsecurity in the country.
That ended up being a very divisivedecision that kind of put a hole
(11:45):
in the boat of that process becauseit just meant that a lot of people
didn't ever wanna demobilize becausethey were making so much money.
Like in the early eighties, it was notaffiliated with narco trafficking.
And then in the nineties it becamelike very much part of the project.
What the central Junto de saidwas like, it's each front's
decision about how engaged theywanna be with narco trafficking.
Laura May (12:03):
So I understand the paramilitaries were out
there calling people, includingLGBT people, subversives.
And i want to know was this onesided where the gorillas doing the
same thing in the same way or wasthere something different going on?
Samuel Ritholtz (12:20):
Yes and no.
The guerillas weren't using the wordsubversive cuz subversive became this
kind of catchall against communism.
And obviously the guerillas identifiedas communist or at least Lenin
Marxists, and they had this obsessionwith purity, and this purity obsession
was ideological and strategic.
On the one hand, it was if we're gonnabuild a new nation, if we're gonna
build a new country, we can't havethose who aren't ready for the project.
(12:44):
This is something that, I think it'sLinda GTA in writing on Cuba calls
revolutionary homophobia, which was thisidea that like, a new nation has a very
classic idea of what is a male, whatis a woman, what they should be doing.
And so like, these weak men needto be gotten rid of or changed.
So, you know, one thing the paramilitariesdidn't do but the guerillas did
(13:04):
was used a lot of forced labor.
So there were a lot of like forcedlabor camps, gay men type of stuff.
But this purity had this otherassociation which was like, a
lot of these guerilla communitieswere very removed from the state.
They're very removed frominstances of public health.
And so, they were extremelyparanoid about HIV.
And so what happened was if you werefound out to be gay, or if you found
out to be HIV positive, you wouldbe HIV tested and everyone around
(13:28):
you would be HIV tested all yourfriends, family, network basically.
And anyone who was HIV positive was eithertold like, get out now or be killed.
And so those are actuallysome of the hardest people.
There's a lot, there's a lot ofefforts in Colombia being done
to research these populations.
Fernando Serrano-Amaya at Uni Andesas well as the LGBT organization,
Caribe Afirmativo had a reporton this called "Truncated Lives".
(13:50):
But they're like, it's a double burden.
These people were kicked outof a community for being gay
and for being HIV positive.
So there's this double stigma.
So that was very likeguerilla specific, really.
And so it shows basically what my thesisargues, which is like the intertwining
of ideology and strategy had a bigeffect about what this violence looked
like, whether this violence happens tobegin with, but what it looked like.
Laura May (14:12):
So you've just said there's some great research being
done already on LGBT people and theireviction from the state in Colombia.
So what actually sets your research apart?
What makes it special?
Samuel Ritholtz (14:26):
One of the things about this project that I thought was really
important was like I came to Colombia.
And and I did what I called a listeningtour where I met with all the different
activists, academics institutionalorganizations, working on the subject
matter kind of to understand like therange of the phenomenon through their
eyes, but also to be like, where doI fit in as this foreign researcher?
And some people handle that delicatelyand some people were like, what the hell
(14:47):
can you do that we're not already doing?
And you know, I think there was a strongreaction to this idea that I could go
slower, look at something historical,and theorize like deeper in a sense.
And I think like what this dissertationdid and does and how it kind of
connects to the broader landscape inColombia, which is that in Colombia
there were very strong explanationsof why this violence happened.
(15:08):
The two big debates are whetherit was a form of social control
through the perpetration of aprejudice based violence, kind of
like this exacerbation of existingsocial structures of exclusion,
homophobia, transphobia, et cetera.
Or whether like these paramilitaries aretrying to put in a moral order and this
is a very moral form of violence, that isa social control through this imposition
of a new regime, this moralized regime.
(15:30):
And what this dissertation did wasit kind of said like, well it's both.
And the answer that thisdissertation puts forward is not
necessarily a why it happened, butwhy it happened the way it did.
So an explanation of how it happened.
And I think that was really importantbecause I think, if you look at the
existing debate in Colombia now, likethere is obviously people who have
(15:50):
nuance between what the guerillasdid and what the paramilitaries did.
But what this dissertation does is itreally creates this theoretical frame
to understand why the paramilitaryviolence against LGBT populations
looked so different than the guerillaviolence against LGBT populations.
So it's not to say that one did itworse or not to compare in terms of
like, level of severity, but to lookat almost like the characteristics
(16:11):
of it, as I call it, or the patternsof it were really different and it's
because they were attempting differentthings with different ideologies.
Laura May (16:20):
And given the way that queer and trans people were treated during
the more violent parts of the conflict,is there still an ongoing effect today?
I mean how does it continue to impactthe lives of LGBT people in Colombia?
If at all, of course.
Samuel Ritholtz (16:36):
I mean, it's hard.
It's very complicated, the LGBTexperience in Colombia today.
I mean, it's obviously we'rein a very different place.
There's just been a massive amountof change in the lives of the LGBT
populations really since the '91constitution came into effect, which
really launched the modern form of theLGBT rights movement here in Colombia.
You know, obviously Colombiahas a lot of regimes or laws on
paper that are very supportive.
We have marriage equality here.
(16:56):
There's a lot of protectionagainst discrimination.
There's protectionagainst people with HIV.
But the reality is, is that, thisis still probably like one of the
top three countries in Latin Americawith the most reported incidents of
violence against LGBT populations.
Now whether that's in the context orthe framework of war or that's just the
society with a lot of intercommunalviolence, those are different debates.
In terms of the logics of war, the warlooks very different in Colombia today.
(17:19):
You know, there are still guerilla groups.
There are still FARC dissident groupsand, you know, I'm not as familiar
with their current patterns of LGBTvictimization, but I will say that, in
certain areas where I work, at least,despite this horrific history, there
are thriving and really resilient LGBTpopulations, putting on drag shows
(17:39):
and, doing marches and pride marches.
They're still here.
They're still mobilizing and existing.
One of my sites is a site thathas a very strong presence of Clan
del Golfo, which is this narcogroup that's very tied to Mexico.
And it's because it's a drugcorridor to the Caribbean Sea.
And, when I spoke to the LGBT populationin this town, they would say like,
(18:01):
we know they're here, but they'releaving us alone for the most part.
The last time I did interviews,that was the big narrative.
More recently, there has been a threatmade against a trans sex worker.
So I think the community is a littlemore on edge and I'll be traveling this
summer and finding out more detail.
But, in that community, the LGBTcommunity felt like they could really
thrive in a way they couldn't, obviouslyduring this late nineties, early two
(18:22):
thousands period, when the violence wasreally extreme with the paramilitaries.
But I also spoke to women socialleaders, which is the Colombian term
for like community activists or leaders.
And these women social leaderswere still threatened every day.
And so there is still a genderedlogic to violence in conflict prone
parts of Colombia or insecure parts ofColombia where, today it's easier in
(18:44):
some sense, and there's still massiveamounts of employment discrimination,
but in terms of like targeting duringwar, LGBT people feel a lot less
targeted and there's not necessarilya target on their back, whereas women
social leaders don't feel that way.
And so, what is that logic haschanged or the dynamic has changed,
but I do wonder how it exists tothis logic that I'm putting forward.
(19:04):
What's the tolerable spaceof community dissent?
What makes feminists mobilizingso threatening to these groups,
they feel the need to squash it?
I think it's tied to reportingcases of domestic violence to
local government authorities.
Cuz I think what happens is when youreport cases of domestic violence,
if predominantly these men are beingreported and they're affiliated with
(19:25):
the Clan del Golfo, they're going tobe basically taken off the street.
They're gonna be put in jail orat least tied up in court action.
And that makes them less able to work.
And so it's kind of athreat to business logic.
That's just a theory.
I don't have any proof of that.
Laura May (19:40):
That's really interesting though, that you bring it up.
I mean, I do think of Colombia as fairlyvisibly gendered in a broader sense.
For example, one of my good friendswas married a couple of years ago
and she's currently facing a lotof social pressure from her family.
From her friends, evencolleagues, to have children.
(20:01):
She doesn't want kids, butit's a gendered expectation.
And now you've mentioneddomestic violence.
I mean, the first time I was inColombia was about 10 years ago.
And even then I remember signsin the street basically being
like, don't hit your wife.
And so there is this currentof gendered expectations and
(20:21):
potentially gendered violence.
Even beyond the normal typesof gender based violence we
associate with violent conflict.
And it does make me wonder what thefuture is in that regarding Colombia,
especially in light of these reallyvisible international debates and
discourses over whether certain peopleare even allowed to exist, for instance.
(20:43):
But my experience with the Colombia hasalways been that, on the other hand,
people are so friendly and so welcomingand so accepting of one another.
And perhaps this is projection, butit's always seemed to me that there
has been maybe a sense of overcomingthis huge thing together and this
huge heritage of trauma and violenceand kidnappings, as you mentioned.
(21:08):
And so it kind of feels like it couldgo either way, but I mean, maybe I'm
pessimistic, because I did a recordinga couple of months ago with Solveig
Richter and Laura Camila Barrios, and.
I'm like oh my god everything's goingto fall apart so maybe this is really
more a reflection of my own head space.
Samuel Ritholtz (21:26):
It's an extraordinarily complicated question that I'll do my
best, but I don't know if I could answer.
I mean, listen, I think one of the thingsthat we're seeing in Colombia that we're
seeing now in Europe, and we're seeingit in the United States, It's becoming
a global phenomenon, is this backlashagainst gender inclusion, gender and
LGBTQ inclusion, feminist mobilization,like queer causes, and it's largely
(21:46):
being framed around this idea of likegender ideology, anti gender ideology.
And for those of you who haven't beenfollowing Colombia, it was actually a
really big reason for the failure of theplebiscite of the peace deal was that
there was this massive politicizationof the gender component of the peace
deal, which they said was gonna likebe teaching kids to be gay, showing gay
porn in schools, like ridiculous stuff.
(22:07):
But you know, that tactic, that mobilizingframe of like, we need to protect
our children, we need to protect thesanctity of family, and as a result we
need to sink this entire peace deal.
Jamie Hagan obviously does a lot ofwork on this with her work on queering
the women peace and security agenda.
But you know, that frame the factthat it sunk a peace deal where
of a country really hungry forpeace just kind of shows you, how
(22:28):
effective these mobilizing frames are.
That's something that you sawin Peru with Con mis hijos no te
metas, don't mess with my children.
Previously in Colombia sunk aneducational minister who was trying
to put forward a more inclusiveeducational program at the national level.
And, we see it in many places.
I mean, part of me is like, I dothink this mobilizing frame of anti
gender ideology comes from LatinAmerica and has been exported.
(22:51):
But I also think a lot of this, theefficacy of these initiatives have been
funded by American radical, and likefundamentalist religious organizations.
So it's quite global in, its inits prominence and provenance
Laura May (23:05):
it does make me think about the Russian case.
I said before we started recordingthat it was only a Master's.
But, I did research this idea ofgayness as a civilizational threat
as it was discussed by Russianpoliticians in what, like 20 14, 20 15.
And whether this became from some kindof, of, underscoring belief or whether
(23:25):
it was really cynical mobilization.
And I mean, my conclusion was, well,no, no, they did this on purpose.
And I mean, a big part of it wasPutin and his regime needed the
support of the Orthodox Church tocrush all of the different protests
against that happened at that time.
And the Orthodox Church apparentlywas like, all right, but you need
to be anti-sex workers and anti-gay.
(23:47):
And so then they startedactually portraying this
as a civilizational threat.
That Europe was trying to turn Russiagay, so they wouldn't have children
so the civilization would collapse.
And so yeah, it was that really, likethere was that religious element,
there was that strategic element and Idon't know, like ontological anxiety.
I don't really know what was goingon there but it is fascinating that
(24:08):
whether it's backlash as you justput it, or whether there's just.
It's something that's, it's a storythat's there and politicians and elite
are just really cynically using it forattention and to crush some people.
So everyone else feels morepowerful by comparison.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, again, this is, this is not myfield, but does fascinate me, obviously,
(24:30):
which is why I wanted to have you here.
Samuel Ritholtz (24:33):
Yeah, it's a very big chicken or the egg situation cuz
I think like this type of rhetoricalframe has to be resounding or it has
to resound in a public, for the publicto accept it and not challenge it.
And one of the things in Colombia, soColombia is a country with a history
of violence, which you've properlydenoted, is an extraordinarily open and
welcome, welcoming, and resilient society.
You know how they try and counter theselike really intense theories of violence?
(24:56):
They always also try and narrate anddocument histories of resistance.
Which I think is a really powerfulmove to be like, this has happened,
but also this happened despite this.
And I think to take that to anotherlevel higher of abstraction, if
you look at these broader effortsof anti, gender ideology or anti
gender, anti feminism, anti queermobilization, where did they fail?
(25:18):
And so, you know, when you had thesemovements in Peru, in Colombia,
succeed, Around the same timeyou had an election in Costa Rica
between basically two candidates.
And the person who was infavor of feminist and LGBT
mobilization, won in Costa Rica.
And so it's a success story and itkind of shows that it can be done,
but Costa Rica is a special case.
(25:39):
The InterAmerican court ofHuman Rights is based there.
It doesn't have an army, itis more teachers than police.
It has a long history of peace building.
You know, it has championed onthese, quite progressive causes.
And so maybe that framewas more effective there.
But basically like , thesethings can't come outta nowhere.
And so that's why there is alwaysthis question of like, the feminist
studiers of war that for decades havesaid basically that war exacerbates
existing social structures of exclusion.
(26:01):
But you know, when does that tipinto becoming a salient cleavage
or a salient, rhetorical framing Ithink really depends on our time.
You said ontological anxiety and there'sa really interesting anthropologist of
predominantly Colombia, but elsewherein Latin America or predominantly
South America, really called MichaelTaussig, and Michael Taussig has this
argument in his book, "the Devil andCommodity Fetishism in South America".
(26:25):
That like people really doubledown and commit to witchcraft
and, believing in mysticism duringtransitions of economic regimes.
And so there is this insecuritywhich he identifies as an economic
insecurity, but you know, definitelyextends to an ontological range where
people become much more likely tocommit to something that's spiritual
(26:46):
or mythical or sounds explanation.
I'm not saying that this is a new form ofmysticism, but I'm saying that there is
a type of anxiety that can be unlocked.
We are in an era of late capitalism,of growing inequality, of in increasing
political and elite capture ofadvanced democracies , and non advanced
democracies as well, obviously.
But it just becomes, it does becomethis kind of perfect mix where, you
(27:10):
know, it's easy to commit to a rhetoricthat simplifies a glory, a gloried, but
unattainable past or non-existent past.
So if for that reason, yes.
Yes.
It's hard and it's a scary time.
I still remain to be an optimist.
And I think there can be momentsof success or moments where that
kind of rhetoric is fractured oryou know, when it goes too far.
(27:32):
And so I think, what I always try andsay in general about broader claims of
my research is that, it goes way beyondLGBT populations because it becomes
a justification for broader action.
And in Colombia activists have thistheory, which I kind of label the
canary in a coal mine theory, whichis they say like a lot of times LGBT
people are clamped down on firstbefore, like broader paramilitary
(27:53):
crackdowns or things of that nature.
It starts with one marginalized group.
It's kinda like establish a frame,but then that's kinda like a
gateway to a lot broader crackdown.
And I'm, I actually wanna do moreresearch on this and I'm planning on
doing more research with a scholarin Germany, a scholar in Amsterdam.
Hopefully this fall
.Laura May: I mean, wasn't it that famous quote about Hitler's
Germany and first they came forwhomever, then they came, so when we
(28:16):
tolerate this culture of intolerance,it's so easy for it to expand.
So yeah, maybe it starts with thequeer and trans people, and then
maybe women and people of color, andyeah, I mean, it's just, it's a good
way to control population and tosay, all right, you are the bad ones.
You are the good ones.
Throw out the bad ones.
We need to fight against thembecause otherwise we will collapse.
(28:39):
Our civilization willcollapse, whatever it might be.
But that's a whole other, I thinkI need to get someone on here who
can rant with me about like, Marvelmovies and the problems of society.
But that's a whole other topic, I think.
Because I wanna ask, I wannaask you as well about this
idea of queer peace building.
You've written a paper, "underconstruction: toward a theory and
(28:59):
praxis of queer peace building".
What does queer peace building refer to?
And please tell me I get to wearrainbows a hundred percent of the time.
I would love that.
That sounds like the best kindof peace building, but I'm
sure it's much more serious.
Like what?
What is that?
What are you working on?
It's a great question.
Uh, It's a challenging question.
Obviously, nothing's easy whenthe word's queer in front of it.
(29:21):
So basically that project is a kindof a project between four scholars
who approach this idea of like LGBTlives at war from different angles.
So it was Fernando Serrano-Amaya at theUniversidad de los Andes here in Colombia.
It was me.
And then it was Jamie Hagan atthe Queens University of Belfast.
And then it was Melanie Judgeof University of Cape Town.
(29:42):
And basically all of us wereinterested in the insecurity of
LGBT lives during war and after war.
And we were studying itfrom different angles.
Me and Fernanda were reallylooking at, LGBT lives in conflict.
Melanie Judge did a lot about the PostApartheid Truth Commission, and the new
constitution of this rainbow South Africa.
And then Jamie works on queering womenpeace and security agenda at the UN.
(30:04):
And so we were all really interested andkind of brought together from our own
research, but also from this phenomenonin Colombia of championing and cherishing
this, the LGBT inclusivity of the peacedeal, the 2016 peace deal with the FARC.
And we were wondering like, you know,what does peace mean in this context?
When, you know what I imagine withyour previous conversations in the,
and why you're having a bit of adark or pessimism of the future in
(30:28):
Colombia's, like, there's been a lotof unmet promises of the peace deal.
And that particularly relates to like,these promises of security of, no more
violence against women social leaders orLGBT activists, these types of things.
So we're like, well if this, is thisreally a country at peace, like what
does a post peace Colombia mean?
So, we had similar interests, we hadsimilar questions, we had no answers.
(30:49):
But we also had similar like ideas andcommitments, which was, you know, we felt
strongly that this type of question anddiscussion should be based in Colombia,
because Colombia is really the firsttransitional justice process that went
the extra mile in terms of incorporatinga queer and trans perspective.
And so, you know, there's a veryfamous line that people, activists will
say, which is like, we went from onesentence in the South African Apartheid
(31:12):
Post Apartheid Truth report to 500pages in the Colombian Truth Report.
And so, there was this massiveadvancement, but this massive
advancement was not necessarilytaken for granted, but it, no one
really sat with what this meant.
And so we put together a special issuebased out of a a bilingual, a trilingual
actual special issue based out of theUniversidad de los Andes' "Revista
(31:34):
de los estudios sociales", so, solike their Journal of Social Studies.
And we basically just said like, who'sworking on queer peace building and what
does queer peace building mean to them?
What does queer peace buildingmean in these contexts?
And so the answer is that,there is no answer is that queer
peace building is like the titleitself, under construction.
We know people have a feeling of whatit feels like and what it looks like.
(31:56):
It means peace for populationswith non hegemonic sexual
orientation gender identities.
But can it extend beyond thesepopulations and does it always have
to be in post-conflict settings?
And the biggest tension in understandingwhat that is, is just this idea of like,
you might have a country at peace likeBrazil, but Brazil's probably the most
violent country in the Western hemisphere,if not the world, for LGBT populations.
(32:19):
And so, is there peace there?
Does that mean somethingto the LGBT population?
Does a peace still mean anythingwhen you're still being threatened?
And so it's regrettably oneof those papers that asks more
questions than it gives answers.
But I think what that paper and broaderspecial issue did was rise to this moment
to be like, this is a narrative thatisn't fully challenged or sat with yet.
(32:40):
And if we're going to find peacefor these communities, we have
to sit with, what does this meana lot more than we already have.
Laura May (32:49):
Fascinating.
Fascinating.
I wanna ask you about your paper as well,the ontology of cruelty in Civil War.
Firstly, great title.
Secondly, what does it mean?
Samuel Ritholtz (33:01):
It came from my research in Colombia, which was that one of the
key ways that academics and scholars ofviolence understand dynamics and logics
of violence is through what we callrepertoire, which is looking at, what
are the types of violence that happening?
Is it sexual violence?
Is it threats?
Is it murder?
Is it displacement?
Kind of like putting out a toolkitof political forms of violence and,
documenting when it happens where.
(33:23):
My issue was when I started my researchwas that I very quickly noticed that
in these hotspots of paramilitaryviolence against LGBT populations,
the repertoires were all the same.
It was sexual violence sometimes,but it was predominantly murder
threats, forced disappearance,which is a very Latin American
style type of repertoire violence,which is basically people disappear.
(33:45):
And I guess displacement.
So I was realizing that like, eventhough I recognized these case study
sites had such different experiences ofviolence, if I looked at the standard
analytical frames of repertoire, itwasn't going to capture this difference.
And so I felt like I had to go deeper.
And so what I did was, this paperactually, this ontology of cruelty
(34:09):
was looking at, despite very similarrepertoires, despite the fact that
homicide was being used, despite thefact that, displacement and threats
are being used in one of the casestudy sites, the violence was just
understood to be so much more horrific.
It was so much morelike whisper campaigns.
It's what everyone knows, eventhough they were both quite
horrific forms of violence.
And it was because the violence therewas perceived to be a lot more cruel.
(34:32):
It was perceived to be a lot moretransgressive of, sociocultural norms.
So more brutal in that sense, butalso that it was really charged with
inflicting suffering in a way thatthis other case study site, despite the
brutality of the violence, despite theamount of murder that was happening,
it wasn't viewed to be as cruel.
It was also because itwas so intelligible.
It was very intelligible, the violencein one of my case study sites.
(34:55):
And because it was so intelligible,because there was so clear, this is why it
happened, this is how it's gonna happen.
It's gonna follow a very standardsocial cleansing campaign
of disappearance, of murder.
Like it wasn't viewed as crueland it wasn't viewed as illogical.
It was very perceptible.
Whereas in the second site, it wasviewed as so illogical, so unpredictable.
No one understood why.
The very famous case from thatsecond site was a boxing match
(35:18):
organized by paramilitaries betweengay men and trans women to quote
unquote restore their masculinity.
And so these public spectacles ofhumiliation use of sexual violence when
someone transgressed social norms, butno one understand what the social norms
were, it just became so unpredictable,so illogical that it kind of created
this like, real form of repressiveatmosphere in the town where a lot of
(35:38):
people talked about like the death ofa social life, or a very common frame
that I heard a lot in my interviewswas like, this is a town that had a
very strong social fabric, that thesereally cruel forms of violence ripped.
And so it made me realize thatthis perception of cruelty, which,
cruelty is a very socially perceptivephenomenon or subjective phenomenon.
It mattered a lot to these populations.
(35:59):
And so it was beyond repertoire.
It was the characteristics ofthis violence that really started
to color how these communitieswere interpreting this violence.
And so that's what that paper does.
The paper actually doesn't mention LGBTpopulations, and that's because of another
tragedy of the academy, but it comesfrom my work on LGBT populations, and it
basically says that like, if we're reallygoing to understand the sociopolitical
(36:20):
effects of violence, we need to go beyondrepertoire and we need to understand
the characteristics of this violence.
Because it is not just therepertoires that these populations are
interpreting, they are interpreting,the broader characteristics of how
these repertoires happen, kind oflike the metadata of these actions.
Laura May (36:36):
And so what's next for you?
What are you working on now?
Samuel Ritholtz (36:40):
I continue with like a few streams of research.
So right now I'm in Colombia predominantlyto do this, the transition of dissertation
to monograph, collect more stories andcontinue working in my case study sites.
In addition to that, I have a lot of workon LGBT refugee studies, which with those
LGBT refugee studies, what I'm focusingon is basically like what don't we know
(37:01):
about the experience of LGBT refugees?
And from trying to understand what wedon't know or to understand the real
queer difference of what it meansto be displaced and LGBTQI plus.
What does that mean forthe broader refugee regime?
So I'm working with a colleague,Rebecca Buxton, who's a political
philosopher at the University of Bristol.
And we're working on this book calledToward a Queer Theory of Refuge.
(37:23):
We're basically like following themigrant journey or the journey of
the displaced from home to sanctuary.
And then every step of the journey,instead of applying what we know about
displacement and this specific steptowards this population, looking to see
how this population experiences thatstep to kind of reconceptualize what
we know or what does sanctuary mean?
(37:43):
That when you can be given asylumin a country and then put in a very
homophobic community, or if you getasylum, but put with the community
that you came, but you were fleeinggeneralized social homophobia.
You can't be placed inyour same community.
And so it challenges questions ofobligations and duties of states
and, Rebecca's a moral philosopher.
So it's been a very happy marriageactually of queer theory and moral
(38:05):
philosophy and that they bothhave these questions of demands
and obligations and challenging.
So that's that.
My, what's next is I'd like to actuallyexpand my research on, marginalization
in war, to look at this logic oftargeting other marginalized groups, the
kind that I mentioned earlier, whetherit's sex workers, people experiencing
(38:25):
homelessness, the neurologically diverse,this is these targeting of like, you
know, what the Nazis called a socials,what the francoists called anti socials.
What paramilitaries inColombia called subversives.
There's a long history of this idea ofwhat some scholars call social cleansing,
it is a lot of history in the Cold War.
It happened in the kno sword inArgentina and their dictatorship
in Chile and all these things.
And so I'm, my next project will be whatI'm calling basically a political history
(38:49):
of the concept of social cleansing.
Laura May (38:52):
You've written so much and even just now you've talked about
these other things you're gonna write.
I mean, where does your drivecome from to produce so much,
especially in the face of what is,I guess so emotionally challenging
as far as material goes as well?
Like how do you keep going?
Samuel Ritholtz (39:09):
I mean, the second one, there's a cop out answer, which
is like, just from a very young age Ijust knew I was gonna be like a genocide
scholar, and so I have an emotionalcapacity to handle the subject matter.
It's really weird.
I can study it.
I'm really motivated to redresswhere these absences lie.
And I feel very powerfully about that.
But at the same time, like I can't watchhorror movies and I can't watch any type
(39:32):
of television with gratuitous violence.
And so it's weird that I can lookat pictures of massacres and I can
analyze 'em politically and work atit in front of a project, but I can't
like, the last Hunger Games movie wastoo violent for me, like Hunger Games,
even though I love Jennifer Lawrence.
So, I don't know.
I guess that's how I process it.
And I think I'm really motivated bywhat I felt when I started my career
(39:52):
as a real absence in the academyof taking seriously queer and trans
lives as it relates to conflict.
People were doing this work andthey were just marginalized.
Like I'm very much not the first personto do it, but what I did was I kind
of stood on their shoulders and doubleddown and saying, I'm gonna use the
language of classic political scientists.
I'm gonna use the language ofclassic scholars of conflict.
(40:14):
And I'm going to, you know, show them thatlike what they've maligned for decades is
actually relevant to the logics of war.
And, you know, it took a while and I hadto really reframe and reframe and reframe,
but I think that's the end result.
And so, we talked about this previously,but I ended up, even though this is a
quite interpretive, humanist or postmodernspace in terms of LGBT and gender studies
of conflict, like, I doubled down touse critical realist language because I
(40:37):
wanted the critical realist and even thepositivists to at least listen to me,
even if they don't necessarily follow me.
And there's, I'm not the firstperson to do that obviously.
I mean, Libby Wood with her work sinceearly two thousands has been doing that.
Lee Ann Fuji's work was doing that.
Like, again, there's a lot ofscholars already doing this.
I just kind of did it from ana queer vantage, if you will.
Laura May (40:56):
Amazing.
So thank you so much forjoining me today, Sam.
And for those who are interestedin learning more about your
work, where can they find you?
Samuel Ritholtz (41:06):
So I have a website.
It's my name dot com.
Samuel Ritholtz.
I'm also on Twitter.
I'm on, yeah, I guess I'm just onTwitter, but feel free to email me.
I mean, I'm, I'm I guessI'm on Threads, but I haven't
really done anything on Threads.
So.
Yeah, you can follow my workthere and you can always email me.
I particularly love getting emailsfrom people debating going to graduate
(41:30):
school, early career researchers.
I'm happy to talk about the challengesand the opportunities in the academy.
And so there's always thatform of informal mentoring
that I benefited so much from.
And so I'm happy for people to bein touch and also policy makers.
I, I do sometimes get asked policyquestions and I think my work
obviously is policy research,and so I'm happy to be in touch.
Laura May (41:49):
Amazing and also heartwarming, you're out there helping the next
generation scholars, which is fabulous.
Well, look, again, thank you somuch Sam, and until next time,
this is Laura May with The ConflictTipping podcast from mediate.com.
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