Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication

Major Professor

Sonia Ivancic, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Keith Berry, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Patrice Buzzanell, Ph.D.

Committee Member

David Rubin, Ph.D.

Keywords

autoethnography, organizational communication, queer identity, sexual normativity, social movements, sociomaterial theorizing

Abstract

Pride parades (“Pride”) are sites of communicative tension for the queer community. While the political origins of queer civil rights practiced widespread resistance to institutional heteronormativity and homophobia, Pride is a space where business owners, community stakeholders, and activists debate the political utility of queerness. This dissertation employs queer and sociomaterial theoretical traditions, and autoethnographic methodological approaches to explore the communicative strategies of Pride organizers—individuals who create, coordinate, and conceptualize the display of sexuality and gender in the public sphere. I draw on tension-centered approaches to organizational communication, feminist dilemmatic theorizing, and co-sexuality to investigate power-laden structures and decision-making in Pride spaces. This project occurs within the boundaries of a Pride nonprofit organization, “Gulf Pride,” and includes participant interviews (e.g., Board of Directors, parade volunteers, community stakeholders) and my ethnographic experiences at events (e.g., board meetings, planning committees, parade days). My fieldwork included 94 hours of participant observation, extensive fieldnotes, analysis of organizational documents, and 14 semi-structured interviews with Pride organizers. I used phronetic iterative analysis to package data into a layered autoethnographic narrative to explore how the organizing processes of Gulf Pride can speak to the sociomaterial dilemmas of queer politics, the embodiment of queer labor, and how people navigate systems of sexual normativity. In doing so, I argue that individuals make sense of various (non)human agencies, such as spatiotemporal uncertainties, nonprofit sociomaterialities, and neoliberal branding practices. Pride organizers practice what I call malicious compliance to conform to and subvert these dilemmas simultaneously. I also contend that individuals navigate the embodied dilemmas of Pride labor, problematizing dilemmas of tokenization, labor, emotion, and systems of organizational recognition. Finally, I argue that organizers engage in contracts of sexual citizenship, which promote belonging while also assimilating Pride into economic and securitized relationships. Organizers employ what I call homoventriloquism to distribute queer identity between myriad (non)human agencies. This strategy treats queerness as a puppet, lending adaptability and legitimacy to different participants in Pride contexts. This dissertation produces various theoretical, methodological, and practical insights.

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