Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights intertextuality in identity performance, conceptualisation and theorisation in spaces of policy formation and government-civil society engagement. We see how LGBT identities are politicised, and their occupation of specific political spaces in public policy development and contention.

Paper long abstract:

Forms of 'empowered participatory' decisionmaking have been a part of Portoalegrense and Riograndense local government exercise since redemocratisation, and recently these have extended to engagement with identity-based ('new') social movements. This paper explores how (multiple) LGBT identities are produced and utilised in civil society-government interaction and, importantly, both how they are oriented-to and spoken of in discourse. Through analysis of accounts (e.g. Wooffitt, 1993), repertoires in action (Potter and Wetherell, 1987) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (Sacks, 1974), the conflict between essential and anti-essentialist concepts of identity can be drawn out from talk highlighting the general messiness of identity work and talk. It will show, too, how despite serving as a space for particular identity-based politics, other intersecting identities are invoked both as a complement (e.g. gender) or as a counterpoint or 'other' (e.g. religious) are brought into play defining a conceptual landscape of identity-based (local) politics.

The purpose of the paper, then, is to explore the political performance of identity in policy development and resource mobilisation, defining the limits of 'LGBT's, how they conceive and are conceived, which political spaces they occupy and how are they limited in political space. It will argue, too, that an understanding of cross-frame identity-based political alliances and competition are essential for an understanding of the current political landscape and public policy development.