Queering the Pashtun: Afghan sexuality in the homo-nationalist imaginaryстатья из журнала
Аннотация: AbstractA certain, pathologised image of the Afghan man now dominates the mainstream Western imaginary. This article interrogates representations of Pashtun males in Anglophone media, arguing that these representations are embedded in an Orientalist, homo-nationalist framework. Through a specific focus on the construction of the Taliban as sexually deviant, (improperly) homosexual men, the paper underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in the hegemonic narrative of 'Pashtun sexuality'. It also revisits the debate about homosexuality as a 'minority identity', arguing that the act versus identity debate is deployed in this context simultaneously to make the Pashtun Other legible and to discredit his alternate ways of being.Keywords: Afghanistanhomo-nationalismOrientalismrepresentationsexuality AcknowledgementsI am grateful to Tarak Barkawi, Duncan Bell, James Eastwood, Helen Hester, Paul Kirby and Chris Rossdale for comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in San Francisco and at the International Feminist Journal of Politics Conference in Sussex. Initial research for the article was supported by the Cambridge Political Economy and Society Trust.Notes1. Butler, Gender Trouble, xxii.2. Foucault uses the word differently as a noun and a verb, although the two meanings are intricately interconnected in his formulation.3. Said, "Orientalism Reconsidered," 89.4. Said, Orientalism, 103.5. In particular, excellent recent work has been done that examines the counterinsurgency discourse: the construction of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan as the source of disorder and chaos that can only be corrected by the current intervention, which penetrates into the 'heart of darkness'. See, for instance, Barkawi and Stanski, Orientalism and War, especially the chapter by Gusterson, "Can the Insurgent Speak?"6. Puar, "Rethinking Homonationalism."7. Pal Singh "The Afterlife of Fascism."8. 'Skewed' is used here in its original sense as 'asymmetrical' or lop-sided, not to mean 'distorted' or necessarily misrepresented.9. Owens, "Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism."10. Meyda Yegenoglu takes exactly this as her point of departure and analyses how these concerns are always already overlapping. For her, 'representations of the Orient are interwoven by sexual imageries, unconscious fantasies, desires, fears, and dreams. In other words, the question of sexuality cannot be treated as a regional one; it governs and structures the subject's every relation with the other.' Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies, 25. For other works that take the overlap between race and gender as their point of departure, see Abu-Lughod, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?"; Ong Flexible Citizenship; and Butler Frames of War. While much lip-service is paid to this mutual implication of race and gender, a thorough analysis of difference as inescapably and inseparably raced and gendered remains a rarity.11. The colour of skin is less important here than the subject's positionality. A light-skinned Afghan man could be metaphorically saved by Oprah Winfrey.12. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, xiii.13. For instance, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 posters appeared in Manhattan with an image of Osama bin Laden with the words: 'The Empire Strikes Back…So you like skyscrapers, huh bitch?'. Owens, "Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism. " There is also the famous South Park episode where Obama bin Laden is depicted as having a small penis. For other instances of caricatures of al-Qaeda as a band of homosexuals, see Puar, 2007.14. Owens, "Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism," 1042. It is important nevertheless to recognise the fact that 'fag' is now used as a pejorative label encompassing more than sexuality, while continuing to rely on an entrenched bias against homosexuals for much of its force.15. Cited in Puar, 56.16. Rashid, Taliban, 111.17. L. Tiger, "Osama Bin Laden's Man Trouble," Slate Magazine, September 28, 2001.18. Butler, "Sexual Politics, Torture and Time", explores how this sort of paradoxical reasoning is integral to the way the 'West' wages modern war by 'framing' certain populations as existential threats in an often contradictory manner.19. M. T. Luongo, "Gay Afghanistan: Homoeroticism among Kabul's Warriors," GlobalGayz.com, January 1, 2009. http://www.globalgayz.com/asia/afghanistan/gay-afghanistan-homoeroticism-among-kabul-s-warriors/.20. L. Chibbaro, "New Afghan Rulers Better for Gays." Washington Blade, December 21, 2001; and Varnell, "Why Gays should Support the War on Terror."21. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure. Through her reading of popular culture, especially animated film, Halberstam imaginatively reclaims the concept of 'failure' and in so doing provides an account of 'the queer' not as a singularity but 'as part of an assemblage of resistant technologies that include collectivity, imagination, and a kind of situationist commitment to surprise' (p 29). The documents analysed use 'queer' in its original derogatory sense, preserving its association with 'depraved' and 'degenerate' sexual acts.22. Dworzak Taliban.23. Devji, "Foreword," 30.24. Mazumder, The Indian Army and the Making of Punjab, 99, 105.25. Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul.26. See, for instance, Fassinger and Miller, "Validation of an Inclusive Model."27. Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet.28. Baer, "Closely Watched Pashtuns," 2.29. M. Reynolds, "Kandahar's Lightly Veiled Homosexual Habits," Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2002.30. Luongo, "Gay Afghanistan."31. B. Farmer, "Paedophilia Culturally Accepted in South Afghanistan," Daily Telegraph, January 13, 2011.32. http://www.examiner.com/article/afghan-pedophilia-a-way-of-life-say-u-s-soldiers-and-journalists.33. C. Smith, "Shh, It's an Open Secret: Warlords and Pedophilia," New York Times, February 21, 2002.34. C. Stephen, "Startled Marines find Afghan Men all Made up to See Them," Scotsman, May 24, 2002.35. Farmer, "Paedophilia Culturally Accepted in South Afghanistan."36. Joel Brinkley, "Afghanistan's Dirty Little Secret," San Francisco Chronicle, August 29, 2010.37. A. M. Cardinalli, "Pashtun Sexuality." HTT AF-6 Research Updates and Findings, 2009. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:znKX3soYgusJ:www.imagesoflife-online.co.uk/HTTAF6.doc+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiSZIeBiz7AsASvZJTIH23FgQ5B6laCMaNWwgIOnSlyRet97PILB5a5P8CngE6SDZGAQSWIjhVM1GYm7JEFohnc_sYQtTJWtzVW7GRakTBgfHVne38yiRnmFvFGWE0XMgQZXiBG&sig=AHIEtbQkkHkrBIEaY8ZXLYadp3aJPdRnRg.38. Ibid.39. Massad, Desiring Arabs, 162.40. Jalal al-Azm, "Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse," 26.41. Moreover, male affection and intimacy can just as easily be constructed as symptomatic of conflict-ridden environments as of salacious cultural traditions. For instance, in a different context it has been credibly proposed that: 'in Peru too, male veterans recounted experiences of transformation: Male tenderness...which is there, or at least I have experienced it with people, with whom we joined together in the early phases and also served time in prison. I believe that there develops a very, very strong feeling, which is beyond gender...being a militant and living in the underground makes you tough, but at the same time allows new forms of tenderness, a tenderness, which you would not express in a normal situation...there was a lot of affection between men...But it was not a gay thing. Not at all. It was masculine affection of support and of strength." See Ortega, "Looking Beyond Militarized Masculinities."42. This may be a tension that is reflective of the tension 'on the ground', as it were.43. Baer, "Western Reporting."44. This is an erasure that also often figures in discussions of Western homosexuality.45. See also Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire.46. M. Griffin, "Repressed Homosexuality?" The Times, October 5, 2001.47. Glazov, "The Sexual Rage behind Islamic Terror," Frontpage Magazine, October 4, 2001 (emphasis added).48. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure.49. Glazov, "The Sexual Rage."50. Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun president of Afghanistan has similarly had his dress commented upon on many occasions, including in the New York Times and the Guardian.51. J. L. Anderson, "After the Revolution," The New Yorker, January 28, 2002.52. 'Out there', ie in Afghanistan.53. Amar, "Middle East Masculinity Studies."54. Ibid.55. Mahmood, The Politics of Piety, 328.56. Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 1–2.57. The term 'repressive hypothesis' was coined by Michel Foucault and used for the (Victorian) West. In this instance I am merely referring to the argument that Islam is inherently repressive, something which has become common currency in the Western world, broadly defined.
Год издания: 2014
Авторы: Nivi Manchanda
Издательство: Taylor & Francis
Источник: Third World Quarterly
Ключевые слова: Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East, Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence, Turkey's Politics and Society
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 36
Выпуск: 1
Страницы: 130–146