"THE VEILING EVE at the Mushe World" (original) (raw)

The Genesis Complex : Queering the Myths of Human Sexuality

Dominant ideologies utilize mythological motifs as a means by which to construct normative behavioral patterns in large populations. The Myth of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, arguably the most influential origin myth of the Western world, has been utilized to regulate hetero-normative coupling patterns and to justify global patriarchy in response to Eve‘s temptation as the cause of ‗Original Sin‘. Occupying an ambiguous positionality between myth and socially sanctioned allegory, the Eden story has retained a gripping metaphorical pull since it was first inscribed. The Genesis Complex performs a queer excavation of this myth and its accompanying mythologies by unsettling assumptions surrounding the household narrative, whilst exposing a range of interpretations that have permeated the public and political spheres. The apparatus behind the myth is exposed and new queer readings are provided which illustrate the promiscuous nature of the myth and presents possibilities for making this damaging story accessible and meaningful to contemporary queer audiences.

Sex and the City of God: Sexuality, Gender and the Body (Course Syllabus)

This course analyzes the social construction of personhood, gender, sex, sexuality and the body through an analysis of interrelated networks of discourse including Christianities, medical, media, pop culture, economics, race and technologies. This course is interdisciplinary in its approach. The students will become familiar with contemporary theorists and sub-disciplines germane in the study of gender, sexuality, the body and personhood. The interdisciplinary approaches privileged in this course include feminism, Christian theology, race, psychoanalysis and sociological paradigms. As a result of active participation in this course, the student will acquire the ability to evaluate a range of social, political, theological and theoretical constructions of and approaches to sexuality, sex, gender, identity, the body and personhood in the diverse iterations embedded in socio-historical contexts.

Aberrant sexualities: Others under the gaze of transnational documentary (Pre-publication version)

Sexualities, 2020

This article examines the discourse of non-normative sexuality and gender variance in Pakistan produced through commissioned transnational documentaries. While the documentary apparatus is mobilized to make visible gender and sexual minorities in Pakistan, they deploy self-othering schema within which the other is defined in comparison to the Euro-American center and its politics of normative citizenship. Sexual practices and gender embodiments that do not match up to the normative ideals are deemed aberrant and rendered abject, while simultaneously Muslim cultures are metonymically linked with homophobia and oppression. I demonstrate through a close reading of three documentaries that the optics and modalities that they employ do not make intelligible the other and their relationalities but rather circumscribe them. I argue that the discourse is not constituted to empower but instead functions to subordinate, impoverish, and incapacitate the other.

Una evidencia queer: trabajo sexual y metodologías afectivas

Resumen: Este artículo investiga dos libros que combinan fotografía con testimonios biográficos para documentar un albergue para trabajadoras sexuales de la tercera edad en Ciudad de México, Casa Xochiquetzal. La yuxtaposición de biografía y fotografía suscita nuevos interrogantes en nuestra investigación sobre la representación de la subjetividad sexual y las prácticas interpretativas que desplegamos para investigarlas. Este artículo se plantea los modos en que diferentes formas de documentación biográfica problematizan productivamente nuestros encuentros con las representaciones estéticas de la sexualidad; y cómo la presencia corporal del sujeto complica sus testimonios vitales. Este proyecto responde con la propuesta de una metodología queer que descompone las evidencias para valorar lo afectivo como un modo de enlazar con la alteridad. A Queer Evidence: Sex Work and affective methodologies Abstract: This article considers two books that combine photography with biographical accounts to document a home for elderly sex workers in Mexico City, La Casa Xochiquetzal. Juxtaposing biographical narrative with visual forms raises new questions for our investigations of sexual subjectivities and the interpretive practices we call upon to investigate them. This project asks, how do different forms of biographical documentation productively trouble our encounters with the aesthetic representations of sexuality? How does the corporeal presence of the subject complicate testimonies of their lives? This project responds by proposing a queer methodology that undoes what functions as evidence in order to valorize the affective as a mode of engaging alterity.

“Queers in-between: Globalizing Sexualities, Local Resistances.”

The Postcolonial World, 2017

The 2012 Turkish movie Zenne Dancer (dir. Alpay and Binay) narrates the real-life story of Ahmet Yildiz, a Kurdish youth, who, at the age of 26, was shot dead allegedly by his father in Istanbul because of his aberrant sexual orientation. 1 Deriving from the Persian word zen [woman], and also evoking one of the historical characters appearing in Turkish theatrical shadow plays like Karagoz from the fifteenth century onwards, zenne refers to a man in drag; and today the word is used for campy male belly dancers in the Turkish language. The movie presents Ahmet and his zenne friend, Can, as victims of social, familial, and state violence. The story of the two "queer" men reaches its climax when they try to acquire an official exemption from their military service that is obligatory for all "healthy" males in Turkey. 2 For Can and Ahmet, there is only one possible way to avoid this service: undergoing an interview with military doctors to prove their "homosexuality" by adopting extremely flamboyant and feminine manners during the interview, and providing the military officials with photos of themselves having sex as evidence for their pasif [passive] sexual behavior. 3 After being diagnosed as "psychosexually disordered" by the military doctors, and forced to come out to his father as ibne, the leading character Ahmet is shot dead by his father to save the honor (namus) of the family right before his European boyfriend Daniel was to "save" him by taking him to Europe. 4 The movie not only evinces the everyday lives and struggles of queer people, but also invites us to consider the complexities of different queer subjectivities (i.e. ibne, zenne) that coexist simultaneously in contemporary Turkey. In this essay, I explore how these struggles and perceptions of sexual identities are interlinked with the historically changing sexual discourses as they have been shaped by state policies, nationalism, globalization, and westernization. Going back to the Ottoman modernization as the primary means of adopting western sexual identities in the nineteenth century, I propose to map out a genealogy of different sexual identities to better highlight indigenous terms, categories, and models as well as a blend of historical continuities and ruptures in Turkey. 5 In the nineteenth century, there occurred an epistemological shift in Ottoman sexual attitudes by which the object of sexual intercourse gained

Queer Studies from a Multireligious Perspective (HRRS-8421 - Fall 2013) - Syllabus

In an increasingly changing and globalized world, the intersection of religious and queer studies is vital for understanding the construction of identities. This online course is designed to introduce you to the place given to gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, the sexual division of labor and gender role expectations within world religions’ theo(ideo)/logical discourses. Drawing from an interdisciplinary approach you will develop a self-critical perspective on the way that sacred texts and dogmatic corpus influence the lives and spiritual practices of queer individuals and communities. Together we will explore the mutual constitution of queerness and subjectivity of religious experiences and their social and political implications towards the deconstruction of stereotypes, power dynamics, and marginalization.