Naming our sexualities: Secular constraints, Muslim freedoms

Terms of a Western discourse of homosexuality shape conflicts surrounding sexual identity that are faced by many Muslims, especially those who live in diasporic communities. Many use essentialized categories to articulate their sexual orientations and express incommensurabilities between their sexua...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Focaal 2011, Vol.2011 (59), p.89-98
Main Author: Pratt Ewing, Katherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropological analysis
Colonialism
Conflict
Deviance
Diaspora
Discourse
Ethnography
Field study
Fieldwork
Freedom
Gays & lesbians
Gender
History
Homosexuality
Honor killings
Identity
Islam
LGBTQ rights movements
Muslims
Naming
Postcolonialism
Psychoanalysis
Religion
Religious Orientations
Rights
Secularism
Sexual Preferences
Sexuality
Transnationalism
Violence
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Summary:Terms of a Western discourse of homosexuality shape conflicts surrounding sexual identity that are faced by many Muslims, especially those who live in diasporic communities. Many use essentialized categories to articulate their sexual orientations and express incommensurabilities between their sexuality and their identities as Muslims. This article argues that discursive constructions of the Muslim as traditional other to the secular sexual subject of a modern democracy generate an uninhabitable subject position that sharply dichotomizes sexual orientations and Muslim family/religious orientations, a dichotomization that is reinforced by well-publicized backlashes against open homosexuality in several Muslim countries. Yet observations made during ethnographic field research in Pakistan, as well as scholarly evidence from other Muslim countries, suggest that many Muslims are less troubled by sex and desire in all their possible forms than they are by the peculiar modern practice of naming our sexualities as the basis for secular public identities.
ISSN:0920-1297
1558-5263
DOI:10.3167/fcl.2011.590107