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Here is what they are teaching in the English Department at the University of Haifa (guest lecturer from Tel Aviv University). The following was sent in an internal mailing to the Segel-Plus list of faculty members at University of Haifa:

Please join us next Wednesday for this year's last meeting of the English Department Seminar.

Amalia Ziv (Tel Aviv University) will present "Transgressing Gender, Betraying Nationality: The Performative Politics of Black Laundry" (see abstract below).

Migdal Eshkol, room 1620; 23/7 at 12:15

Abstract:

“Transgressing Gender, Betraying Nationality: The Performative Politics of Black Laundry”

The Israeli queer activist group “Black Laundry” emerged in 2001 following the outbreak of the second Intifada. Black Laundry effected a two-fold shift in Israeli LGBT politics both in its move from identity politics narrowly defined (i.e. a politics focused solely on the interests of the LGBT community) to a politics of identification concerned with the occupation as well as with other types of oppression, and in its style of activism that favored performative strategies.

Situating the group in relation to mainstream LGBT politics on the one hand and traditional Israeli left politics on the other, the talk explores the implications of its performative practices vis--vis hegemonic constructions of citizenship and political subjectivity. It also examines the links between political performativity and the performative construction of queer identities, and asks about the relation between performative practices and a politics of identification, and the ways in which sexual and gender dissidence translates into identification with other oppressed groups.