Week 7 Blog Post

Hey everyone, here is my post for week 7:

One of Foucault’s boldest statements was to declare that the homosexual identity type was a modern invention of 19^th century Europe, and that prior acts of homosexuality were defined as just that: acts. It is a commonly accepted proposal that such conceptions of the homosexual identity are not applicable to periods prior to the modern era, and homosexual practices that were observed prior to the conception of a homosexual identity did not constitute anything more than a temporary sexual practice. Both Murray and Najmabadi seek to complicate this understanding of pre-modern homosexual identity. Murray takes a look at the lexicon of different Islamic cultures in an attempt to locate ways of defining homosexual identities that are different from the modern conception of homosexuality, yet still constitute an identity over an act. He focuses specifically, then, on explaining the invisibility of these identities and roles. “Usually in Arab and other Islamic societies, everyone successfully avoids public recognition (let alone discussion!) of deviation from normative standards—sexual or other,” which can be thought of as “the will to not know,” (Murray, 15). Najmabadi uses both Foucault and Murray as inspiration and explores Persian sexualities and identities through conceptions of beauty and love. Both authors work to complicate the notion that homosexual identities are a purely modern phenomenon, but also acknowledge that the modern idea of gay and lesbian are not applicable to these time periods.

                Stephen Murray begins by using a comparison between the “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” homosexuals policy of the US military to that of the public sphere in what he refers to as the Mediterranean/Islamic status quo. He outlines the main difference as the lack of a push for respect toward discrete homosexual behavior in the Mediterranean/Islamic status quo. He at first acknowledges the idea that homosexual identities may not have existed prior to the modern era in the form of homosexual acts—however he quickly moves to contest that notion by going into detail about the many different ways that homosexual roles were lexically defined. “Whether or not egalitarian/”gay” homosexuality existed as a covert category earlier and/or elsewhere, terms for homosexual types have long been lexicalized in a range of Islamic societies,” (Murray, 35). Murray launches in to a long list of different words that denote not just acts, but kinds of people that pursue both relationships and acts. While these roles do not line up with modern notions of homosexual identity, Murray seeks to complicate the polarized discourse that would contend that no sort of homosexual identity could have existed in the Mediterranean/Islamic sphere. While there doesn’t appear to be a singular, united definition of homosexuality in the western sense of egalitarian or equal desire, to synthesize his main point would be that homosexual identities do exist in that sphere—however, certain norms prevent the public mobilization of these identities. In other words, the will to not know dominates the public knowledge of these private homosexual relations.

                Afasaneh Najmabadi in “Early Qadjar” expands on Murray’s work in “The Will Not to Know” by looking at conceptions of beauty in Persia and how they reflect identities of sexuality. An interesting note to point out in depictions of beauty would be the androgynous nature of adjectives used to describe male and female beauty, in which the same adjectives are used for both male and female representations (Najmabadi, 11). Another piece to note would be the description of khanith, which “can be read as an intermediate on a continuum between very feminine women and very masculine men,” and were often seen as the object of desire in homosexual roles (Najmabadi, 17). This discussion progresses into a similar point as Murray’s which approaches modern conceptions of the homosexual type as an identity that should not be mapped onto earlier socio-historical periods. But, she contests that “by locating same-sex identification in modern Euro-America, one renders homosexuality external to other places, an alien concept for formation of desire in these other cultures,” (Najmabadi, 19). I believe it is problematic to approach homosexuality as an identity purely belonging to the West because it creates another hierarchy that posits Islamic conceptions of homosexual identity as inferior to the Euro-American notion. Najmabadi continues by concluding that even if a fixed notion of a homosexual identity didn’t exist in this time period, it would be a mistake to think that there were no identifications based on non-standard desire types, which complicates the fixed notion of modern homosexual identity.

                In conclusion, I believe these two authors work well in tandem to elucidate the ways in which homosexual or non-standard sexual identities were formed in the Mediterranean/Islamic sphere. “In the case of Iran and much of the Islamic world, sexual practices were generally not considered fixed into life-long patterns of sexual orientation,” therefor such fixed terminology as the Euro-American homosexual were not necessitated (Najmabadi, 20). It is important to contest the notion that there were no pre-modern conceptions of non-hetero identity, because to accept that could reinforce the east-west hierarchy set in place by colonialism. The notion that there were only homosexual acts, without a homosexual identity plays into the stereotype of the overly sexualized Middle Eastern man that cannot control desire—while at the same time completely ignoring the wealth of lexical and literary evidence of such identity formation.