Brief Reading Notes: Puar, "The Turban Is Not A Hat"

[rax]

Sikh American attempts to separate themselves from Muslims after 9/11/2001 --- in response to a number of murders and attacks --- included a PR campaign, which had messages like "The Turban Is Not A Hat." "These efforts were driven by a desire to inhabit a proper Sikh American heteromasculinity, one at significant remove from the perverse sexualities ascribed to terrorist bodies." (167) (see also Queering the Anti-Chirst for such perverse sexualities)

Queer South Asians in a double bind --- page 169

Axel: Diaspora creates homeland, not vice versa. (In general I find that diaspora is an interesting tool that you can apply to multiple things, like queer, which makes "queer diaspora" both fascinating and kinda what huh.) Homeland "must be understood as an affective and temporal process rather than a place." This comes back to the network stuff from the first couple of weeks actually.

Oh look it is the question "What does this body do?" AGAIN.

Oh hey it's Deleuze! Puar doesn't want to queer the turbaned male body or turban the queer, she wants to consider the queer turbaned body as an assemblage and in general page 174 yay. An assemblage of contagions! What did we read on contagions again?

Interesting point, that while the US doesn't attempt to legislate or request that people take off headscarves/turbans/&c., the state uses those visible marks of difference on part of the population as a way to show the presence of the Other. (This is sort of like the inclusive/exclusive bare life thing, though I'm not sure it's a clean parallel.)

pg182 --- Sikh turbaned victimology as a way of erasing women, something I would never have thought of were it not for this article

p192 --- turban as prosthesis, assemblage

p194 tactile vs. haptic sort of an interesting brief side debate

p195 assemblages vs intersectionality!

In general this article is awesome but I have limited time for detailed notes. :/

Comments

[sixolet]

Huh, interesting -- I actually wrote a paper for a class a few years ago arguing "diaspora creates homeland" without having heard of this Axel person. (It was an anthropology class entitled "Ethnic and National Identity")

[kiya]

Axel: Diaspora creates homeland, not vice versa. (In general I find that diaspora is an interesting tool that you can apply to multiple things, like queer, which makes "queer diaspora" both fascinating and kinda what huh.) Homeland "must be understood as an affective and temporal process rather than a place." This comes back to the network stuff from the first couple of weeks actually.

Where is this from? It is Relevant To My Interests.

Or more accurately, my theology.

[rax.livejournal.com]

You have a PDF in your inbox. :) It's from Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times by Jasbir K. Puar.

[kiya]

The level to which I want this to be sufficiently useful as to require being included in my bibliography is not to be understated.

[identityfail.livejournal.com]

i am reading this right now for stryker. like, AT THIS INSTANT. it's way interesting stuff.

your understanding of diaspora intrigues me.

[identityfail.livejournal.com]

oh also, puar's a she

[rax.livejournal.com]

Well! Egg on my face!

(*fixing*)

[rax.livejournal.com]

Queer diaspora comes up in the work of (IU professors!) Herring and Gray in talking about queer rurality --- I bet there'll be some of that at the conference on Saturday!

[identityfail.livejournal.com]

as;dlfkjawe
why haven't i taken their classes, they are probably awesome
senior year was way too late to become interested in queer shit / work up the guts to take queer classes ):

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting! Google Scholar turns me up a few papers by them, but nothing's leaping out at me -- suggestions for things I should read?