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QUEER COUPLINGS: FORMATIONS OF RELIGION AND SEXUALITY IN ʿALAʾ AL-ASWANI'S ʿIMARAT YAʿQUBYAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2013

Michael Allan
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Abstract

Faced with the possible censoring of the film adaptation of ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan, the book's author, ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani, responded, “Why aren't Italy, France, or the United States defamed by movies dealing with homosexuality?” Implicit in his defensive question is a perceived distinction between First World gay rights and social conservatism in the Third World. My paper considers this conventional coupling of gay rights and civilizational discourse in the global reception of ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan. Against the author's remarks, I argue that the story is remarkable for staging an interplay between the putatively opposed characters of Hatim Rashid, an openly gay newspaper editor, and Taha al-Shazli, a young man lured into a terrorist group. By uniting these two characters along parallel tracks, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan queerly couples the seemingly antagonistic forces endemic to the civilizational discourse of gay rights and offers us a means for imagining new constellations of queer politics.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Special Issue 2: Queer Affects , May 2013 , pp. 253 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Hicham Bouzid, Saba Mahmood, and Damon Young for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I have also benefited from discussions with members of the CRESS Seminar at the University of Oregon, especially Sangita Gopal and Amanda Powell, as well as from the IJMES anonymous readers.

1 Hamed, Marwan, dir., ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan (Cairo: Good News, 2006).Google Scholar

2 Quoted in Gihan Shahine, “A Taboo Too Far?” Al-Ahram Weekly, no. 803, 13–19 July 2006.

3 Brian Whitaker, “Call to Censor ‘Immoral’ Egyptian Film,” The Guardian, 6 July 2006.

4 Claude Guibal, “Sa sortie au Caire a choqué ou ravi,” Libération, 23 August 2006.

5 “Egypt Debates Controversial Film,” BBC News, 5 July 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5150718.stm (accessed 17 August 2010).

6 Jérôme Provençal, “Entretien avec Marwan Hamed,” Le Monde, 23 August 2006.

7 Negar Azimi, “Prisoners of Sex,” New York Times Magazine, 3 December 2006.

8 “Lajna bi-Majlis al-Shaʿb al-Misri li-Mushahadat ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan,” al-Jazeera, 6 July 2006.

9 For astute criticisms of how this civilizational ruse operates, see Brown, Wendy, Regulating Aversion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Mahmood, Saba, “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror,” in Women's Studies on the Edge, ed. Scott, Joan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

10 For a discussion of homonationalism in particular, see Puar, Jasbir and Rai, Amit, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag,” Social Text 20 (2002): 117–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Puar, Jasbir, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lisa Duggan's work has also been foundational for discussions of homonormativity (from which Puar derives her title); see Duggan, Lisa, “Equality, Inc.,” in The Twilight of Equality? (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003).Google Scholar It is worth noting that in this context, the invocation of gay rights is less a call for nationalism than a critique of Egyptian politics, albeit one that still turns upon distinctions between countries.

11 Judith Butler, “I must distance myself from this complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism,” ‘Civil Courage Prize’ Refusal Speech. Christopher Street Day, 19 June 2010, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/articles/i-must-distance-myself (accessed 24 September 2010).

12 Jasbir Puar, “To Be Gay and Racist Is No Anomaly,” The Guardian, 2 June 2010; and “Israel's Gay Propaganda War,” The Guardian, 1 July 2010.

13 Even the critic Joseph Massad concedes the national dimensions of the novel: “The Yaʿqubyan Building . . . make[s] not sexual deviance but a community of sexual deviants the manifest sign of postcolonial degeneration.” See Desiring Arabs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 389.

14 “Egypt Parliament to Scrutinise Film,” Al-Jazeera English, 5 July 2006.

15 For a discussion of this policy, see Butler, Judith, “Sexual Politics, Torture and Secular Time,” British Journal of Sociology 59 (2008): 3–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

16 Applicants from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States are all exempt from the exam.

17 See Rouayeb, Khaled, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jacob, Wilson Chacko, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011).Google Scholar Outside of the context of the Middle East, see Grewal, Inderpral and Kaplan, Caren, “Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality,” GLQ 7 (2001): 663–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lucey, Michael, The Misfit of the Family: Balzac and the Social Forms of Sexuality (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Massad, Joseph, “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” Public Culture 14 (2002): 361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Ibid., 362.

20 See, for example, Massad's interview with Reset Doc: “The West and the Orientalism of Sexuality: Joseph Massad Talks to Ernesto Pagano,” http://www.resetdoc.org/story/1530; and “I Criticize Gay Internationalists Not Gays: Joseph Massad Counter-replies to Ghassan Makarem,” http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000001554 (accessed 17 August 2010).

21 I draw inspiration here from Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky's reading of Billy Budd in Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

22 al-Aswani, ʿAlaʾ, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 2005/2002), 51Google Scholar; and Al Aswany, Alaa, The Yacoubian Building, trans. Davies, Humphrey (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004), 35Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 52/35.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., my emphasis.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., 53/36.

29 Ibid.

30 Massad, Desiring Arabs, 393–95.

31 Al-Aswani, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan, 54–55/37.

32 Ibid., 55/37.

33 Ibid., 181/130.

34 Ibid., 182/131.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 185/133.

37 Ibid., 186/134.

38 Ibid., 328/232.

39 Ibid., 330/234.

40 Ibid., 331/234–35.

41 Ibid., 334/237.

42 Ibid.

43 Mahfuz, Najib, al-Sukkariyya (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1957)Google Scholar; and Hetata, Atef, dir., al-Abwab al-Mughlaka (Cairo: Misr International, 1999)Google Scholar.

44 Massad, Desiring Arabs, 413–14.

45 Al-Aswani, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan, 28/16.

46 Ibid., 30/18.

47 Ibid., 32/20.

48 Ibid., 83/58.

49 Ibid., 97/68.

50 Ibid., 112/79.

51 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet; Miller, D. A., The Novel and the Police (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar, esp. the chapter “Secret Subjects, Open Secrets.”

52 Al-Aswani, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan, 216/153.

53 For an astute reading of the Dera’ incident, see Silverman, Kaja, “White Skin, Brown Masks,” in Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

54 Al-Aswani, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan, 342/242.

55 Ibid., 343/243.

56 Massad, Desiring Arabs, 399.

57 Ibid. See also al-Samman, Hanadi's reading of this novel in the context of emasculation, “Out of the Closet: Representations of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature,” Journal of Arabic Literature 39 (2008): 286–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 ʿAlaʾ al-Aswani as quoted in “Cairo Calling,” The Guardian 23 August 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/23/fiction9 (accessed 22 September 2010).

59 Bersani, Leo, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” October 43 (1987): 197–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Ezra Levant, “Gay-Bashers Thrive in Modern-Day Netherlands,” Toronto Sun, 10 October 2010.