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QUEER AFFECTS: INTRODUCTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2013

Hanadi Al-Samman  and
Tarek El-Ariss
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Extract

When we and several authors of the articles included here originally debated the idea of this special issue, our aim was to respond to what we perceived as a standstill that locks Middle Eastern queer studies into a premodern Eastern versus modern Western-oriented division. While the East is studied as a repository of tradition with an identifiable sexual and amorous nomenclature, the West is often presented as a fixed hegemonic structure distinct from the East, regardless of the long traditions of cultural exchange and the specific forms of translation and dialogue that take shape when the identities and models of desire associated with the West travel or are performed outside it or at its periphery. This division has generated a set of binaries pertaining to the applicability of terms (gay, lesbian, homosexual) and theoretical frameworks (queer theory) to Middle Eastern literary and cultural contexts. It is our belief that critical engagements with queer Arab and Iranian sexualities in literature and culture ought to situate current discussions in queer theory within debates and concerns arising from specific Middle Eastern social and political realities.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Special Issue 2: Queer Affects , May 2013 , pp. 205 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

NOTES

Authors’ note: We express our gratitude to IJMES editors Beth Baron and Sara Pursley for seeing this project through from its inception and for the many anonymous reviewers whose perceptive comments shaped and informed the arguments of our contributors. This special issue is dedicated to the memory of Ramzi Zakharia (1964–2010), a human rights activist who did so much to promote tolerance and justice on LGBT issues, Palestine, and women's rights.

1 Traub, Valerie, “The Past Is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate Sexuality Studies,” in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire, ed. Babayan, Kathryn and Najmabadi, Afsaneh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Center for Middle East Studies, 2008), 2Google Scholar.

2 Amer, Sahar, Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Love, Heather, “Queers___This,” in After Sex? On Writing since Queer Theory, ed. Halley, Janet and Parker, Andre (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011), 182Google Scholar.

4 Pullen, Christopher, “LGBT Transnational Documentary ‘Becoming,’” in LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.