Memo 2/28/2012

Memo Group (Sunjay Kumar, Alexander Dickinson, Robin Berryman)

2/28/2012

Summary:

Coco Fusco’s “A Field Guide for Female Interrogators” contains both the actual field guide (consisting of short instructions accompanied by illustrations describing various torture methods in a tongue-in-cheek tone) and an essay, “An Invasion of Space by a Female” in which she discusses the implications of the use of sexual torture by female interrogators on male detainees. She shows how the military establishment manipulates the mainstreamed feminist impulse for gender equality and feminine empowerment to create non-empathetic sexual aggressors in the form of female interrogators, and how mainstream and feminist discourse avoids the ethics of sexual torment by focusing on the plight of female military personnel accused of torture. Fusco also problematizes feminist discourse (including that of the “fairy godmother of feminism” Virginia Woolf) that argues that women have the ability and responsibility to prevent war, pointing out the crucial place of female military officers in the use and perpetuation of torture.

In order to better understand the mindset of military interrogators, Fusco and a group of women undergo military interrogation training through which she concludes that interrogators are taught methods designed to create emotional distance over which torture techniques could be meted. Using this training, along with information about various torture techniques, Fusco created a “field guide” which uses pictures and short statements to effect a satire of interrogation techniques using female sexuality as a weapon.

Qureshi’s article posits the controversial book The Arab Mind as having contemporary influence vis-a-vis Abu Ghraib. In the tradition of Orientalist discourse, the book presents a caricatured picture of Muslim culture, consisting of the following themes: “‘One, that Arabs only understand force, and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation’” (Qureshi, 1). Although Qureshi admits that some readers may find ideas such as the sexual emphasis on the rearing of boys and the reality distorting influence inherent in Arabic absurd, he points out the contemporary relevance of The Arab Mind in “diplomatic and military circles” and its influence on Abu Ghraib commentary (Qureshi, 1).

Investigating the cultural logic surrounding the U.S. response to Abu Ghraib, Jasbir Puar examines the relationship between those responses and discourses of U.S. sexual exceptionalism. Arguing that the U.S. is reliant upon instances like Abu Ghraib to support its sexual exceptional narrative, Puar states that state of exception discourses are formed on three planes: “the rarity of [a] particular form of violence,” “the sanctity of ‘the sexual’ and of the body,” and “the transparency of abuse” (Puar 81). She goes on to state that these “state of exception discourses” are then used to solidify notions of homonationalism.

In support of her argument, Puar first delineates the ways in which the Muslim body has been represented and conceptualized as an object of torture, using the long history of Orientalism as her starting point. Writing that the torture of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib was made legible through Orientalist notions that Arab Muslim men’s sexual deviance would rise to the surface once their sexual repression was lifted, Puar illustrates the significance that torture had in reinforcing thoses Orientalist notions. She then goes on to analyze the ways in which Western feminists and gay men reacted to the presence of female torturers at Abu Ghraib arguing that their reaction (distress at the “loss of the liberal feminist subject”) points to the way in which violence is a “circulatory system whereby no woman is strictly an insider or outsider” (Puar, 90). She continues by drawing attention to the limitations that the “gay sex” narrative imposes on the conversation about Abu Ghraib. By referring to the contents of the photos as gay sex instead of referringas rape, or sexual violence, the conversation is constrained to various notions of homophobia, homosexuality and specific moral narratives that do not explicitly address rape. Finally, Puar concludes by discussing the theatricality of the Abu Ghraib images, examining the ways in which the consumption of these images further illustrates the ways in which particular gendered, sexualized torture is central to U.S. patriotism.

Notable Quotes:

“Here’s how the implicit argument goes: How bad can torture really be if performed by a member of the ‘weaker sex’? … If torture involves women doing things to men of a sexual nature, which has been the case in numerous interrogations in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, can it even be called torture?” -- Coco Fusco, “Invasion of Space by a Female”, page 39, paragraph 2

“[...] two themes predominated: “One, that Arabs only understand force, and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation”--Emram Qureshi, “Misreading ‘The Arab Mind’ The Dubious Guidebook to Middle East Culture That’s on the Pentagon’s Reading List”, page 1, paragraph 1

“Torture is neither antithetical nor external to the project of liberation; rather, it is part and parcel of the necessary machinery of the civilizing mission. [...] Any civilizing mission is marked precisely by this paradox: the civilizing apparatus of liberation is exactly that which delimits the conditions of its possibility. Thus torture is at the very least doubly embedded in sociality: it is integral to the missionary and savior discourse of liberation and civilizational uplift, and it consitutes apposite punishment for terroists and the bodies that resemble them.” -- Jasbir Puar, page 81/82

“in the metonymic chain linking torture, citizen production, and national-normative sexualities, torture surfaces as an integral part of a patriotic mandate to separate the normative-national genders and sexualities form the antinational ones.” --Jasbir Puar, page 100, paragraph 2

Discussion Questions:

In what ways does Fusco expand our discussion on the interactions between gender, sexuality, Islam and torture?

What is the relationship between Patai’s book, “The Arab Mind” and the nation-state? How is the sexuality employed in “The Arab Mind” used by the state ( vis a vis the the U.S. military)?

How does the gendered nature of torture in the context of Abu Gharib interact with the popular (Western) "feminist" empowerment narrative? Should this be viewed as a call for reevaluation of feminist ethics, or the way certain feminist ethics are internalized particularly by working class or minority youths?

Week 9

I enjoyed Cynthia Enloe's "Updating the Gendered Empire" piece that examined women's liberation and status in Iraq and Afghanistan in the context of the US invasions. Her work tied in closely with some of the previous works we have read that problematize the concept of women's suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan as justification for invading these countries. Unlike the previous writers we read, she does discuss the advantages of international alliances among women, as examining patriarchal structures elsewhere might help women in "imperially minded countries" (303) better understand their government's expansionist actions and hopefully question these tactics. I also enjoyed reading about the changing political and social structures in Iraq and Afghanistan and how they have impacted women's rights. For example, she talked about the Baathist party as a secular political party that encouraged women's education, voting, and paid work, but under economic sanctions during the Gulf War sought support from Islamic nations and thus "diluted its secular ideology" (296). The political systems in Iraq and Afghanistan, as shared by Enloe, as well as Iran when discussed by Sartrapi, do not follow a linear model of "progress" that we often imagine in the US. Thus, "women's liberation... rarely follows a simple path 'onward and upward'" (297). Enloe complicates the simplistic progression of women's liberation that we hope to achieve by liberating a country to democracy and thus its women.

Puar criticizes the US' homonationalism, arguing that queer people of color are left out in the discourses of nationalism and gay pride in the US. Her work ties into Enloe's work in its discussion of the particular case of the war on terror, which furthered American exceptionalism, yet led to the inclusion of queers in order to achieve better nationalism. Thus emerges the idea of homonationalism, in which the overlapping of sexuality with national identity built a structure that could not be accommodated for individuals who are both Muslim and queer.

wk 9

Long’s “Unbearable witness: how western activists (mis) recognize sexuality in Iran” unveils the social power of misinterpretation and hidden agenda of the West in publicizing violence. Publicizing executions as homosexual hate crimes creates the illusion that the West is a safe haven for homosexuals. In other words, by publicizing and spreading word about Iranian executions, the West is able to contrast itself to a “backwards” oriental east. Such depictions make the West seem progressive, hiding the homosexual oppression in its own homeland. I thought Long raised an interesting point when he showed that the media sources stressed the sexuality of the victims over the young age. I think this extends the importance of the West’s view of sexuality as an identity marker. Somehow the wrongful execution of a homosexual appeals more than an execution of a young teenager. Long concludes by saying “What if they were gay? What if it is true, what if all the frenetic speculation astonishingly corresponds to fact? They died for it terribly and unjustly. But should that fragile connection then be turned into a vehicle for other ends, for promoting fear or engendering division or intimidating immigrants or selling the idea of war? (p. 133). Here, he reminds us that ALL information through a Western perspective of the “other” fits into a wider Western agenda. Nothing is ever simply informative. Many of the mainstream media articles/photos we read, perpetuate Western ideologies, whether the author intended to do so or not.

One critique of Long’s piece is that he heavily cites the source Outrage and unpacks the falsehood of it. But Long may be narrowing in on one resource as a larger representative of the West. Outrage, in its title alone, seems to be a source that exaggerates its stories to stir the “outrage” that it aims to produce. While Long does a fascinating critique of the piece and seems to have done an incredible amount of research on it, Outrage does not represent all Western sources.

Puar’s piece, although complex and at times difficult to understand, highlighted the regulatory standards of a non-heteronormative subject. For example, the Western notion of queer is often considered to be a white homosexual male. There is little space in the West for the non-white homosexual male. While there may be Middle Eastern organizations and LGBT communities, there is no space in the US for the Middle Eastern homosexual to incorporate both identity markers as a marginalized Middle Eastern and homosexual male. While this space does not exist in the US, the US intervention in the Middle East, eliminates any potential for that space in other countries.

Week 9 Readings

I found Enloe's piece very informative - it was interesting to contemplate the role of women in empire-building as something that happens on multiple levels, many of the unconscious and therefore easily missed. I appreciated the multiple real-life examples she presented to bolster her argument and make it accessible to the reader. Sometimes, in our readings, I get a little lost as to what the actual argument is and Enloe articulated everything quite clearly, which was nice.

Puar's piece, on the other hand, was incredibly dense and difficult to get through. I could see how it tied into Enloe's piece, in that notions of gender and sexuality (in this case, homosexuality) can influence empire and exceptionalism by the emphasis on a new homonormativity, one that is very racialized, make the norm white, and that produces an "other" that America can than consider itself superior to. While these concepts are interesting, I'm not entirely sure I grasped more than Puar's broad points because a lot was lost to me while trying to navigate the density of the language and really understand Puar's terms, like "sexual exceptionalism," which I'm not entirely sure I get.

I found this week's readings very interesting. Although Puar's argument got confusing at some points (dense is a better description), I enjoyed her argument about the State of Israel as well as Don't Ask Don't Tell in the US.

However, I was attempting in making connections between Puar's argument and the other two articles - I could see a connection Long's article but not a direct one with Enloe. I think the summary that one need to employ this week (a common denominator between the three articles) is still the lack of context when the West speaks of oppression in the East, as well as the West self positioning better/modern/liberal to justify their actions (Eg. US invasions, Israel's occupation).

I would like to raise some ideas here:

First, these articles shed light on how, over the course of history, the West or countries justify their acts with the notion "white man saving brown woman/queer from brown man." The never ending narrative that is sickening. However, the West through that narrative neglects to mention that they still have inequalities within its borders towards women and queers.

Second, in light of the argument above, it would be very interesting to apply Puar's method of homonationalism within feminism (the terminology would change). Nevertheless, women in the States do still face challenges and are not fully emancipated. There wouldn't still be feminists around fighting for gender equality if women were equal to men.

Third, I found the argument of where are the women quite interesting especially in how private female homosocial areas are not separate from the political world just as Enloe says "A feminized space is not the opposite of a political place" (p 296).

Overall, I enjoyed this week's reading especially in that they employed cases studies rather than just presenting theories (perhaps that was why I sort of understood what Puar was trying to say).

Week 9

I had a hard time navigating Puar's truly inaccesible jargon, and therefore elect not to discuss that article in this post. Enloe and Long's pieces, however, were accesible and interesting, and also had an overarching connection that is a continuation upon what we have discussed in class this quarter. 

Enloe's discussion of the woman's place in masculine power struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq was very interesting and eye opening for me. Last week in class I brought up a question about exploitation of women's rights movements, but this is another level of exploitation of women. I suppose before this class I just simply hadn't considered how interwoven gender and politics truly are. The domestication of women and the removal of their autonomy as tools for establishing and maintaining a power dynamic is both ingenious and also severely disturbing. Two passages from the article illustrate this best: "Women are deemed crucial by the rivals, but merely as symbols, subordinates, admirers or spectators" (285) and "Their ability to control the women in their provinces and to act as the guardians of "true" Afghan femininity had become a crucial component of their ability to mobilize their own male armies and to collect their own tax revenues" (285). How did this world become so patriarchal in just a few thousand years?!

Both Enloe and Long's pieces approached how activist and political attempts to help and liberate underrepresented or oppressed peoples abroad has led to more harm than good. I sort of feel like we have discussed this exact topic many many times in class before, and I'm sure we will discuss it again, but that is what I got out of these articles. Enloe touched on this by writing about Ismail Khan, and continues to complicate the issue in her conclusion. But Long's writings brought to light a new aspect of the problem. I really was interested by Long's discussion of western gay activists' misguided adoption of the Mouloudzadeh case and other similar cases for their cause, when in reality they're not so related. Their quickness to claim these cases as their own was completely counterproductive, seeing as it resulted in a retroactive "gay" label that did more harm than good and may very well have sealed Makwan's fate. 

These readings, and many others from this quarter, really make me question how much good any sort of western aid to the rest of the world does. But then, what is supposed to be done when injustice is abounding? It's a complicated line to tread and it definitely makes me skeptical of many human rights and activist groups. But that doesn't mean it's all bad, and I'm glad Enloe noted that at the end of her piece.

blog post feb 26

I think Jasbir Puar in his piece about “Homonationalism and Biopolitics” and Scott Long’s recount of Iran critically come to the same conclusion. Long brings home the purpose of his paper “But should that fragile connection then be turned into a vehicle for other’s ends, for promoting fear or engendering division or intimidating immigrants or selling the idea of war. ? “ (pg 133) This is in reference to the perpetuation of Islamic fear and its target on homosexuals. Whereas OutRage! and Gruppo Everyone appeal to the massed by finding the differences among our culture and target “Muslims” as everything that represents wrongness, we could embrace these differences and its richness to find common ground to exact and stop misrecognition of sexuality, which refers to Makwan. I found it enlightening to see how Long vouched for creating this unity among minorities, including Muslims who are victims of circumstance and fear.

In Long’s piece, he introduces us to the story of Makwan who is hung for raping a 13-year old. Throughout the narrative, it becomes obvious that the reason organization like NCRI and MKO changed the story was for their own personal agenda. They wanted to get as many people behind them in order to topple the Iranian government and create this aura of injustice, though according to Human Rights, injustice is prevalent. The fact here is simple, the story was not about a kid who got accused of rape instead of a charge of being homosexual because the government wanted to brush it off even though sodomy is illegal, it was an attempt by power players and organizations to advance their personal agenda at the risk of misrepresenting and re-accusing this boy for doing something he never did and eventually got prosecuted for. As an aspiring journalist, I find the dubious facts, which were reported about the boy incredibly disheartening. I feel as a journalist you have the duty to draw upon so many sources and verify the content of the story because the last thing you want to do is perpetuate a story that is untrue and that will just give way to negative backlash to communities that already suffer from injustices.

In addition, Puar demonstrates the interconnections of race and sex. He points to America’s view as sexually superior by producing heteronormativity, which accepts gays and lesbians but then postulates itself against the other as a place of non-normative sex and race. 

Week 9 Monday readings

Enloe's piece was interesting in her assertion of the U.S. acting as an empire through it's military occupations. I don't know if I would go so far as to say the U.S. is an empire, especially since so many of its military missions are massive failures, but I would argue that western capitalists have created a world order through economic-dominated global politics. Despite my disagreement with her empire argument, I really enjoyed her first-hand accounts of Afghan and Iraqi women who are affected mostly negatively by the U.S.-invasion. It shows just how western ideals can be easily swept away for military agreements.

Puar's piece was honestly pretty confusing to me. I just don't buy his evidence of an argument of homonationalism. I thought Long's evidence actually supported Puar's argument much better. But Puar's arguments about whiteness and how LGBT people of color are ignored and used simultaneously definitely is true. Most people that enlist in the military are minorities from poor communities looking for a way to escape and gain lots of benefits, but they are also putting their lives on the line to defend a nation that often disregards them. The exploitation is disturbing.

Long's article was really unique and well-presented. While Iran probably does execute LGBT youth under false accusations, it is incredible how fear-mongering is used by LGBT activists to villainizeMuslims and prop the War on Terror. From Enloe's article we can see that is incredibly unlikely that US intervention will actually help any LGBT Iraqis or Afghans, yet these activist ignore the hypocrisy of western discrimination by creating a binary of good v. evil with the Middle East. It seems that they'll accept discrimination and the singular obsession with the marriage title just because the state isn't hanging gay people, although I'm sure plenty of private citizens are participating in lynchings.

Week 9

This week's readings focused on the role of gender and sexuality in regards to the nation, specifically the role of women and homeosexuality. The article "Updating the Gendered Empire" was particularly interesting in the way that it spoke about the role of the US in Afghanistan and the liberation, or lack thereof, of its women. Nationalism and imperialism worked to turn women away from each other and away from the US, giving them little to no support in securing actual rights for themselves.

Homosexuality has also been an issue between the East and the West. Gayness in the Oriental countries has always been seen as a corruption, whether it be of America or of Islam for the Hindus (Long 129). Homosexuality, just like womanhood, became part of a differentiating identity - support or opposition was not based on one's humanity, but rather if one was part of either of these groups.

Week 9 Blog

"Analogies are powerful. If we get our analogies wrong, our explanations are likely to be askew" (Enloe 268).

This way in which Cynthia Enloe began "Updating the Gendered Empire" I believe encompasses not only this week's readings, but much of what we have covered in the course so far. Enloe discusses women's roles in the processes of empire-building, both historical and modern, and presents the dilemma of what we are implying by painting America's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq as an imperial move. By analogizing America as a new incarnation of past imperial powers, Enloe argues that you then must look at the roles of men and women by the roles they used to play; men as the prime political and military figures, but women as the ones who facilitated much of the actual politics in their parlors, brothels, etc. Thus woman-to-woman politics was just as important and relevant as masculinized politics, and as Enloe says, "a feminized space is not the opposite of a political space." However, Enloe does draw an important analogy between past imperialism and masculine contest, and the current role of women in military conflict; part of masculine rivalry is ensuring "that 'their' women will play those politically salient feminized roles" (Enloe 285). This recalls from me the Kandiyoti reading from last week in which we brought up the subject of women as political pawns, even in a more emancipated state. Women, even "free" women, are consistently used for political purposes, which is why I feel Enloe's statement about analogy is so relevant; we must not only be careful to use appropriate analogies when trying to explain a phenomenon, but we must be careful of what those analogies imply, in this case what they imply about the reality of female liberation in the political sphere.

This comes up again in Jasbir Puar's "Homonationalism and Biopolitics", which analogizes multiculturalization (and by proxy imperialism and American exceptionalism) with heteronormativization, that imperial powers and capitalism rely on secularism and heteronormative behavior to perpetuate themselves. However, while these powers rely on heteronormativity, Western nations also become the scenes of liberation for people who identify as homosexual, which creates a particular conflict for queer-identifying Arabs and Muslims; they are "doubly indicted for the fundamentalist religion they adhere to or escape from and for the terrorist bodies that religion produces" and "are either liberated... or can only have an irrational, pathological sexuality or queerness." Homosexuality is still an "other", even in Western cultures where sexual liberation is largely accepted, and Islam is an "other" to those same cultures, and queer-identifying Muslims end up facing both homophobia and Islamophobia, and are doubly "others". Even if multiculturalism were to occur, these people would still be "others", and vice versa, and this makes Puar's final statement particularly jarring; "Does this securitization of queers entail deferred death or dying for others, and if so, for whom?"

Week 9 -Naima

The first reading for Monday by Enloe talks about how women react (their actions and feelings) to imperial presence. Enloe dedicates a few pages initially to talk about how women from the Innu tribe in Canada, Tokyo and Okinawa react to military presence and share their experiences of foreign military bases. She mentions how women, and men, take on the persona of a woman living inside the alliance between the American "Empire" and the foreign country, in an effort to make women more visible in power politics. Although it was interesting to read what people came up with, I am not really sure what the purpose of the exercise are...also, on page 275, she discusses how the exercise influenced our thinking of how women respond to imperial enterprise and make five complicated observations that i did not understand very well.

I found the case study of women's participation in Afghanistan very informative. Also interesting was the narration of the experiences of the deputy minister and the efforts of the female lawyer Suraya to suggest clauses to the constitutions that allow women's participation in government and women's protection from domestic violence and social injustices. I remember reading i think in the Mohanty article how the American government gathered support for the invasion of Afghanistan promoting the liberation and empowerment of women,; however, on the contrary, the U.S. Military's most trusted ally in Afghanistan was the Northern Alliance led by Ismail Khan, an organization that opposed modernization, secularization and women's empowerment. By partnering with the Northern Alliance, the U.S. Military promoted certain forms of local masculinity.

blog post feb 26

The overarching theme in the readings for this week seems to be the potential of the body, through the modern construct of identity through sexuality, as both the weapon and the battlefield of normativity. I found Coco Fusco’s piece to be particularly salient; although she presents a stern critique of modern feminism (particularly feminism in the military), she does so without producing an overly transgressive discourse. That being said, I did find it a bit self-indulgent that she continued to directly address Virginia Woolf throughout her book. In spite of this, her account of female interrogators exemplifies a picture-perfect model of Agamben’s “state of exception,” the terminology Puar utilizes to describe the situation of gender disparities within the temporary and designated spaces that wartime deems inevitable. I find it fascinating that even English, a language not explicitly gendered, has an implicitly gendered nature when functioning in tangible communication. Even when the technology exists to capture, reproduce, and disseminate particular images throughout society (via photographs), the absence of terminology specific to the nature of the interrogation techniques represented in the photos meant they could be easily pushed under the rug.

Another issue that culminated within the readings is the presumption that gender equality should be qualified by the passive vocabulary that women were “granted” access to the very power structures responsible for disseminating the previous patriarchal oppression. The situation of women in the US military struck me as eerily similar to the manipulation of Egyptian women by political agendas both at home and abroad as a synecdoche of social progress; an image that could be easily reproduced and disseminated by Western media as an apparatus for inciting the cultural legitimacy of those once Otherized.

"Transnationalization" of the "homosexual subject"

The readings for Monday analyze the role of gendered and sexuality discourses play in the construction of distinct subject positions, and the implications of the use of such subjects within new transnational contexts (via Western imperialist projects or otherwise) - although in quite distinct ways. I took up issue with Enloe's analysis and was fascinated by Puar, which is why the two of them take up this blog post.

Enloe discusses role of masculinity and the consequent manipulation of femininity in "empire-making" - calling for a "feminist curiosity" as the way to reveal the gendered political motives of modern imperial projects (i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq). This piece, to me, came off as an incredibly one-sided argument for a feminist worldview, as if feminism (I beg the question, what type of feminism are you actually arguing for?) is the only and "right" way of seeing the world/analyzing politics. She explores what she calls the "privileging of masculinity", arguing for a more in-depth analysis of "women" in order to truly understand the role of masculinity in politics.

Within her analysis, I'm not disagreeing with the fact that the imperial projects she discusses are inherently masculinized (militarized, etc.), that political projects and governments utilize and manipulate gendered identities and norms for their own nationalist gain (Kandiyoti and Najmabadi already showed us that this is possible in a variety of ways). What I disagree with is a line of argument that pushes one distinct worldview - here, feminism (again, not sure what she actually means by this) - without being critical of it. Enloe's argument, to me, is a prime example of what many of the authors we've read (Mohanty, Mahmood, Abu-Lughod) have made a point to critique: writing through a distinctly feminist paradigm only reifies a gendered binary that simplifies local dimensions and other causal mechanisms. Enloe not only works within the gendered continuum (masculinity <--> femininity) that Najmabadi discusses, in turn reifying such a binary, but also creates another feminist/non-feminist binary that I find to be incredibly problematic.

Moving to Puar, she complicates our understanding of the "homosexual subject" and the role of such a subject position within the (American) nationalist project. Puar analyzes the concept of "U.S. sexual exceptionalism" as a biopolitical mechanism of social control. Such exceptionalism utilizes what Puar calls "homonationalism," or a national homonormativity that "operates as a regulatory script not only of the normative gayness, queerness, or homosexuality, but also of the racial and national norms that reinforce these sexual subjects" (2).

She aptly notes how the production of national subjects (whether heterosexual, heteronormative or now homosexual/homonationalist) is embedded within the formation of the U.S. as nation-state, the narrative of American exceptionalism (as not only a tool used in the "disciplining of the American citizen" but as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy) now dependent on the production of a homosexual subject. The discourse that works to create this new subject is one of "sexual othering" that, now functioning in a transnational context, further aids the U.S. imperialist project. As Puar notes, there is work being done by the dis/re-placing of particular subject positions - here the "homosexual subject" as homonational - within a transnational context; what are the implications of the "transnationalization" of distinct subject positions?

I also appreciated the notion of the necessity of a particular "exceptional" narrative - through use of "state of exception" discourse - that serves (through the discourse itself, as well as the temporality of such exception) to naturalize the "normative ordering" that occurs within American society (8-9). In exploring the queer subject, something I also found to be quite fascinating, Puar places such a subject position in relation to Rey Chow's "ascendency of whiteness" and the management of difference in the racial framing of homosexual subjects ("homosexual other is white, the racial other is straight" - something Long explores as well). There's a lot more to unpack here, but for the sake of space, I'll end with this: how can we further complicate the meaning and function of the term "queer" in navigating these varying narratives of exceptionalism?

Week Nine Post

Scott Long's argument that Makwan's use as a gay symbol of Islamic repression is convincing. Gay activist fact checking was perfunctory, and based in a forgone conclusion--that Islam is homophobic. Sensationalism is needed to forward Outrage!'s political agenda, so the facts get short shrift. What bothers me is the lack of attention given to Islam's actual outlook on homosexuality. One thing that has been explicitly established is the Qu'ran's condemnation of sodomy, which is obviously, a large part of homosexual activity. If Islamic societies merely put less emphasis on the kinds of people that engage in sodomy, or just ignore it altogether, as implied in our readings about pederasty a couple weeks ago, fine, but it was also suggested that homophobia has been on the rise, due to Western influence. Ultimately, religious foundations of repression of any sort, whether it be of homosexuality or women's rights, can be used as a trump card of justification. It can't be denied that this has some validity, as if people really believe in something regarded as repressive in more secular societies, it doesn't matter to them, as it would be seen as a religious imperative. This would be fine given a unanimous agreement on religious principles in a given society, but clearly this cannot be true in any society. Maybe I'm being a bit too Orientalist, as I'm implying that there is a problem with gay persecution in Muslim societies. It would be nice, then, to learn more about how homosexuality expresses itself in Muslim societies, and furthermore, to reinforce it with some demographics. There needs to be an honest inquiry into morals, divorced from religiously derived morals, so the question can be asked--is there a problem with homosexual persecution in any Muslim society, and is it big enough to outweigh religious justification for the problem?
Although a bit of a cavil, I had a problem with Long's assertion that homosexuals' basing of homosexuality in genetics suggests that  it is purely politically motivated, and devoid of scientific legitimacy. Genetic theories are politically fortuitous, as it undermines assertions that homosexuality is based in a failure of nurture, and neatly dovetails with what's natural is good based morality. But the inclusion of this with the specious rhetoric surrounding Makwan doesn't seem intellectually honest.

Week 9 Reflection

Both the articles Updating the Gendered Empire and Homonationalism dealt with the role of the minority or, perhaps more appropriately called, the subjugated majority (i.e. women and homosexuals) and their role in forming and shaping the "empires" within which they live. I thought one of the most powerful statements in Updating the Gendered Empire was the concept that a "feminized space is not the opposite of a political space." It's something that's such an obvious issue and yet, I've never heard it articulated before. I'll even admit that when I first read that one of the three Iraqi women sent to the delegation owned a beauty shop, I was highly skeptical of what her political contribution could be. My own assumptions are just a demonstration of how deeply penetrating the heteronormative influence is; it doesn't just affect the way we see the relationship between men and women and their spheres of influence, it can even affect the way we views the space of those sphere themselves. It's not that it's strange to view a beauty shop as a feminized space but there's such a heavy heteronormative notion that if it's a feminized space it can't possibly serve any other use, that makes it seem like there is this mutual exclusivity between being both feminine and political. The image of the Iraqi government council reminds me of something I recently watched on the political satire program The Daily Show. On the Daily Show they showed some video footage from a recent council on women's health with regards to religion, convened by fox news. There were all these religious and medical experts come together to discuss the rights of a woman's body (i.e access to birth control, abortion, etc) and yet there was not a single woman among them. And I wondered how anyone could bring together a group of people to discuss women without including women? When I saw that picture of the Iraqi government council a similar thought occurred to me; how can you discuss the future and restructuring of a nation without giving the other half of the population, women, any real form of representation or voice in the formation of that new nation?

In the Homonationalism article I was struck by the idea of homonormativity. Similar to what I experienced while reading Updating the Gendered Empire, it felt like the articulation of an idea I had always known existed but could never really explain. Puar seems to suggest that even though there has been this surge in gay pride and acceptance in American society that there are far more practical motives for this limited acceptance. She states that the surge in European and American acceptance of gay marriage serves as an "insurance premium" for Westerners to tout their superiority to the "backwardness" of the Middle East. This reminded me of the kind of flip flopping on the rights and role of women that occurred under Saddam's government. When men went to fight women were encourage to "step up to the plate" and become educated and to fill the gap they had left. But when the men came home and their morale was low, women were encourage to become more conservative again. I also wondered how accepting is the United States really when we've created a homonormative culture that is completely and totally based on the white, middle class, American family steroytype?I think that in the United States we've made a fundamental mistake, just because homonationalism has been used to justify the War on Terror, it doesn't justify the horrendous Islamophobia that runs rampant in our culture nor does our perpetuation of homonationalism mean that we do not still have deep running issues of homophobia. As I see it, homonationalism really only masks the symptoms rather than providing a cure for American homophobia.

Week 9

In the Jasbir Puar and Scott Long pieces we learn about how the West is wrong about homosexuality in Islam. The Puar piece challenges the view that being Muslim and being gay are mutually exclusive. The Long piece criticizes Western projections of Islam’s harsh response to homosexuality. Puar includes a picture of a man holding a sign that reads “I am homosexual also”. The “also” signals the challenge of his identity as both a Muslim and gay man. Long gives examples of many Western activists embellishing stories for the sake of their activism. He cites several cases in Islam where boys were executed for alleged rape. Although there was no talk of or evidence suggesting consensual sex in these cases, the Western activists developed those narratives, embellishing a gay rights struggle. Instead of being boys hung for charges of rape, they became young men hung for being gay. These embellishments served to fit into the Western framework of Iran as backwards and oppressive. From these pieces one can see that the way many Western activists represent homosexuality in Muslim nations serves to perpetuate the view of the Orient as backwards. Like “look at these countries, they kill people for being gay.” It reaffirms the hierarchy of the West as progressive and superior and the Orient as traditional and behind. The gay rights activists are able to put themselves in a position identical to that assumed by many Western feminists who discuss third world women.

I understand and appreciate the task of righting Western misconceptions about Islam. But I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time talking about what Islam isn’t and less time talking about what it is. I don’t feel like I have a good understanding of what the Islamic view of homosexuality is. I know it’s not uniform among all the Muslim countries. But I don’t even feel like I have a good understanding of homosexuality in the specific countries these readings discussed. I feel like a lot of the readings have been describing Islam from a negative sense: it’s not backwards, it’s not oppressive. I want to hear about what it is. The title of the Long piece “Unbearable witness: how Western activists (mis)recognize sexuality in Iran” pretty much sums up what I feel like we’ve been hearing a lot of. I feel like a great deal of the readings we’ve done have addressed some Western misrecognition. That’s totally interesting and insightful and valuable. I just wish that we could also read more of how these things should be recognized.

Week 9 Post

Updating the Gender Empire talks about how empires are built in parlors, brothels, and legally private places. A lot of productive work and relatively influential decisions occur in places where people have casual conversations and more natural interactions. However later the author says, “It takes a feminist curiosity to see a beauty salon as a political forum –and pay attention.” However, I do not think that is true only for meeting places that are gendered female. It would also take a particular curiosity to see a gym locker room or golf course as a political forum. It might be easier to see the later two as one, but only when the interactions in those places involve politicians. However, there are many “third places” where regular citizens discuss political issues, particularly the issues relevant to them. Therefore, when the author makes the claim that a “feminized space is not the opposite of a political place,” I don’t think the beauty parlor is a particularly good example. When you think of a barbershop, even though it is a masculine space, you would not immediately consider it a political forum. They both fall into the original category of relatively private places that can ground empires, including political and social empires.

I did think the discussion of how choosing allies favors certain kinds of masculinity was interesting. “Masculinity” gets favored in body and mind through patriarchal nationalism and Reason, which evokes images of ancient Greek (obviously male) philosophers. That seems to leave women as weak, irrational and lucky to have male protection in a very benevolently sexist way. It was interesting that when a woman violated these ideals, the punishment was indirect. For example the one woman who held a position of relative importance had her son beat up rather than direct violence against her. When men appear to violate norms they are the ones physically punished as in the Long piece with hangings.

My question would be if “lesbians” are equally punished so publicly and violently for “being lesbians?” I wasn’t quite sure what his argument was. He says sympathy depended on identity and pictures fed the political climate. If the people who are creating media hype are “too obsessed with their own inward-looking agendas to weigh his life or consider the implications of their actions,” he is suggesting creating media around a gay victim expedited his execution. But he also says that they government then framed the executions around rape rather than homosexuality. Was he saying different groups created a victim they could sympathize with at the expense of the actual person on trial and actual accusations? They way he explained it seemed like they were playing internet telephone and after a certain point no one had the full story so people just heard and reproduced what they wanted or what they inferred from what was already out there.

Week 9 Response

Upon reading Puar's piece, I immediately thought of something I saw on T.V. a couple weeks ago, during the ABC show "What Would You Do?" If you're not familiar with the show, here's a quick summary: the producers fake a morally-iffy scenario in public and film how random people react to it. A while back, they created a scene where some actors were portraying a family that had dropped their son (who they perceived to be gay) off at a local restaurant to meet with their parish's pastor so that they could discuss pray-away-the-gay options. The son actor was mortified and yelling at the pastor that it was none of his business. Pretty much all of the random families that got filmed took the boy's side and insisted that the pastor was rude and discriminatory, but the last family interviewed was a Muslim one. The parents in the Muslim family expressed their opinion that homosexuality was immoral and a choice, while the Muslim boy in the family seemed to be extremely embarrassed by his parents and held opposite views.

The reason I brought this T.V. episode up was for its blatant pitting of Islam against homosexuality. It goes along with everything that Puar suggested in her article. The double standards of the United States, as evidenced by the T.V. episode I described, are absolutely atrocious. Islam is described as "unyielding and less amenable to homosexuality than Christianity and Judaism," even though Christianity and Judaism, for the most part, are extremely intolerant of homosexuality as well (Puar 13). Those making strides for gay rights in the world are very rarely from religious groups, whether Muslim or Christian. The United States hides its homophobia by allowing gays some rights and widely publicizing gay rights issues, but it manipulates gays by using them in the "'Islam versus homosexuality' tug of populations war" with a very rare genuine attention to gay rights (Puar 19). The most ironic part of the T.V. episode, which I think Puar would agree with, is that the pastor the boy spoke to was just as anti-gay as the Muslim parents, but somehow at the end of the episode, all the hate was directed towards the Muslims, and not the pastor. Moreover, the show seemed to be praising the Muslim boy for assimilating into American culture, in direct opposition to his Muslim parents.

This manipulation of gays exactly reflects what many previous authors, including this week's Enloe article, have said about the treatment of women to achieve political goals.

Normative Claims

I had a bunch of feelings about Jasib Puar's piece on homonationalism. Then I read Scott Long's Contemporary Politics article and I forgot what my feelings were out of outrage. I feel like I need to reiterate that rape is bad, that victim-blaming is not okay, and lying about the facts at the risk of someone's life is wrong, even though I am sure all of you agree. Obviously the execution of juvenile defenders, and worse the execution of someone with literally no evidence of the crime is abhorrent. I know I have liberal moral values and distortions, but I feel confident that none of you disagree with me, especially on the second half. But what struck me (and what Long was very obviously trying to evoke) was the injustice of having the narrative around ones death stolen, rewritten, and used as propaganda to further political ends that one probably wouldn't have supported.

The "LGBT community" had no right to adopt these stories as its own, as there wasn't any evidence that the executees identified as gay or even acted in a way that westerners would categorize as such. I personally found Outrage!'s piece describing their relationship (a work of complete fiction, regardless of whether it resembles the truth or not) disturbing. Imagining my experience of love was to be rewritten after my death, forcing fabricated relations and emotions on my memory, offends me. It is impermissible audacity to attempt to write the personal stories of another person based on no real knowledge of that person or zer emotions.

Now that I've ranted, I'd like to mention that I found Puar's perspective on the interaction of the othering of ethnic minorities and the othering of gender and sexual minorities interesting. Events like Dan Savage blaming black Californians for proposition 8 made the opposition described ring true to me. In addition, the mainstreaming of heterosexualized homosexual families in modern culture seemed to fit quite well with the respectability hypothesis.

Week 9 Reading

The reading this week was excellent at really drawing out clearer explanations for many of the concepts we have discussed throughout the quarter. For example, "Updating the Genderred Empire" explains how women get excluded from political conversation,and the Scott Long piece produces a step-by-step analysis of how Western media ends up reproducing misconceptions or propaganda without necessarily realizing it. I definitely found these two pieces to be more comprehensive, easy to follow, and interesting than the "homonationalism and biopolitics" excerpt that we read. I found the latter piece to be wordy and difficult to follow.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the other two articles for Monday, so I'm going to focus on those two.

The writing style in "Updating the Gendered Empire" was intriguing and really kept the flow of the piece going. I really liked the activity that the author mentioned in the beginning (where every person in the room took on the role of a different women who could have affected or been affected by the U.S. base), and I felt that it was a great introduction for the author's ultimate point that women play a crucial role in international politics, even if that role is often disregarded. I thought that the personal stories mentioned, like those of Suraya Parlika and Raja Habib Khuzai really explained how both "neckties" and "warlords" disregard women's opinions in the Islamic states that are mentioned. Their stories also exemplify the ways in which Western nations - the Bush administration is specifically mentioned - fail to help the women as well. Therefore, the writing style for this piece really complimented the subject mater.

The same can be said for the Scott Long piece. This article was definitely more analytically written, but I thought that that was perfect for the nature of the piece. There was one page in particular (page 691 in our course packet, or page 123 in the article) that was a list that systematically showed how Tatchell misunderstood the Mashhad case and how that viewpoint became widespread around the world. The outline was very clear, and I was shocked that the idea of "Islam's war on homosexuality" may have come about simply through a misunderstanding of Farsi. That page was just one example of how the entire article spells out complicated details in a simple way, which I found to be very rewarding and interesting.

Week 8

The readings this week focused on the role of women in the nation state specifically in Iran and Turkey. In Iranian culture, there is the concept of the vatan, or the homeland. It is feminized in the sense that it has all the connotations of a stereotypical woman, a mother that not only gives birth, but that needs to be protected and cared for. She is supposed to be pure, and it is her sons , the brotherhood of Iranian nationalists that are supposed to love and take care of her. It is unmanly not to do so. Najmabadi mentions that one of the Iranian nationalists proposes that, "love of vatan was second only to love of God, coming before love of family, love of one's beloved, and love of one's creed" (99) Nationalistic love for Iran was more important than love towards Islam itself. THis personification of the land leaves two more relationships, the father and the daughter. Religious leaders were referred to as fathers of the nation (117), and were the patriotic citizens whose job was to create that nationalistic society through the proper raising of their children. The role of women in society was relegated to motherhood, just like the role of the vatan.

Women in Turkey were slightly different. When the Caliphate was abolished and there was a push for secularization, the government specifically pushed for the secularization of women, but at the same time attempting to shy away from Western imperialist attitudes (Kandiyoti 7). The republic supported feminism, but turning away from Western and Islamic ideals, life for women became more difficult than before.

Week8

Kandiyati talks about how political context affected how the state would deal with women and there issues from a religious perspective. She talks about how Turkey deal with women issues differently due to the geographical location and modernism while in Iran we see the approach more conservative and religion based .She also talks about how the “woman question” contributed in creating a national identity for women and the importance of looking deeper into the experience of women in Muslim societies. In the second chapter, she talks about how gendered ideologies were used to create a better nation for Turkey. She talked about the composition and appearance of women had huge roles, due to Western influence.