Boy dancers and men on horses: Post-colonial identity and gender policy in modern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

Abstract

This paper addresses the interactions between the process of constructing national identity in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and contemporary gender policy in both states. Despite trying to establish unique post-Soviet and anti-colonial national identities, modern politicians are forced to use the borders, identities, and narratives manufactured by the Soviet Union, creating historical dis/continuities and blurring the line between pre-colonial, Soviet, and post-Soviet in each of the republics. Both countries have turned to their history of Islam to make up a central part of their self-image, and modern discourses around LGBTQ rights often use a dichotomy between “Western” and “Muslim” to justify their positions. However, strategies for ignoring queerness and social “deviance” in Central Asian cultural heritage have more similarities to Soviet practice rather than wholly religious influence. For these Central Asian republics, identity construction cannot truly rely on a true idea of a “pre-Soviet” Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. In their attempts to build independent, unified national identities in the void left by the fall of the Soviet Union, politicians and civilians find themselves (intentionally or unintentionally) unable to create an image of their pre-colonial history without relying on the definitions generated by the Soviet colonial project — and LGBTQ individuals and communities in both countries are taking the hit.