Hey
everybody. First off, since I’m going alone on this it’s just going to be a
half-memo. It’s on the readings for Monday, so apologies that there’s not going
to be a memo for the Wednesday readings! See you all soon.
The
readings for Monday seek to extend a critical eye upon those who would speak on
someone else’s behalf, and try to expose for what practical reasons one might
be speaking on someone else’s behalf for. Enloe, Puar, and Long all write on
contemporary situations that privilege certain masculinities or sexualities
over others in the context of the modern American empire. Cynthia Enloe in Updating the Gendered Empire looks at
the way in which women are used as a symbol by the American leadership to
legitimate the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, yet the practical strategies
employed in both wars complicate and contradict that message. Scott Long writes
in Unbearable Witness: how Western
activists (mis)recognize sexuality in Iran about how young men in Iran who
are slated for execution also become symbols devoid of their original context.
These young men become symbols of the international gay-rights movement, which
appropriates their struggles and places it within the American-European
paradigm of sexuality, removing the context of alleged rape, and casting Iran
as a sexually backwards country. Jasbir Puar’s text, as an introduction, covers
a much wider topical area, yet it comes down to an understanding of biopolitics
and necropolitics: who decides who gets to live and die? And furthermore she
uncovers the concept of homonormativity as linked to hegemonic whiteness: which
queers are folded into the ability to reproduce life—and does queerness getting
folded into the mainstream mean deferred death, or displacement of that death
upon others in other parts of the globe? All of these authors take a look at
the ways in which western narratives of sexuality reinforce and replicate the
American hegemonic system, in terms of both sexual exceptionalism and practical
military dominance.
Cynthia
Enloe’s text, Updating the Gendered
Empire begins with a fascinating account of a meeting in Canada in which
women take on the roles and identities of women affected by American global
military presence. The goal of this process was to help expose where women are
within the concept of empire building, and what roles they play within it. This
process exposes a mirror between the unequal gender relationship evident in the
process of empire-building, and the unequal alliances between the American military
and other powers across the world. These unequal relationships, then, are based
on the dominant notions of femininity in comparison to masculinity. Enloe then
moves to use this framework to unpack NATO’s actions in Afghanistan, concurrent
with the dominant narrative that a major aim of the mission in Afghanistan was
the liberation Muslim women. Enloe asks if the concern of women’s freedoms was
central to the effort why then, from the beginning, did the United States
support the Northern Alliance, a group whose policies regarding women are
decidedly harsher than the Taliban’s? What ensued was a debate between the
Northern Alliance and the “neckties” which were mostly male political leaders
in Kabul in which women became a sort of symbol for modernity and progress. Despite
the reduction of women to symbols by western narratives and debates within
Afghanistan, Enloe wants to be clear that Afghani women did stand up and
participate in a variety of ways in the shaping of a new Afghani government.
Women directly participated in the creation of the new Afghani constitution
which ensured equality between men and women—but at the heart of that very
constitution is the ambiguity that some feel will arise due to the provision
that Afghani law must be informed by the principles of Islam. All of these
examples point toward the privileging of certain kinds of masculinity within
the international political system. Without understanding the gendering of
international affairs, it would be impossible to understand international
affairs and how it is rendered through unequal power structures.
Scott
Long’s piece is more straightforward than the other two articles I am writing
about. Long looks critically at the way that different LGBTQ media outlets in
Europe and the United States reacted to the execution of young men in Iran who
were accused of homosexual rape. Long doesn’t seek to condone execution of
anyone, but looks at the ways in which the response to these executions used
them as a symbol to push toward an international agenda, rather than any
attempt to understand the context in which the executions were carried out.
Long outlines how western media outlets have crafted an Iranian war on
homosexual youth as a means to pursue an agenda against the Iranian government,
even though homosexuality is never mentioned in any other cases. By glossing
over or completely ignoring the allegations of rape and imposing a narrative of
American or European style homosexuality on to the young men that were executed
it does a disservice to the very objective of the western writers. If the
objective of the LGBTQ activists is to celebrate the potential that they died
for trying to be true to themselves, then the imposition of a false narrative
upon them contradicts that aim. The responses to these executions are full of
contradictions, and Long even outlines how it may have even contributed to the
hastening of the executions in certain instances.
The
last piece I will try to cover is Jasbir Puar’s “Introduction: Homonationalism
and Biopolitics” to Terrorist Assemblages.
Since it is an introduction it covers a wide topical area meant to preface an
entire book, so I will do my best to pull out what I believe to be there most
important notions that she raises. First, the outlining of what biopolitics
(the policy of sanctioning and allowing life and living to occur) and
necropolitics (the policy of sanctioning death) are, and the linkage of race
and sexuality. Key to the linkage of race and sexuality is the sexual
exceptionalism of the United States over the rest of the world. This
exceptionalism privileges dominant, white, heterosexuality. By linking race and
sexuality it also becomes clear however, that certain forms of homosexuality
are now becoming sanctioned and named. One of the core conceptions that Puar
raises is the notion of not just heteronormativity, but homonormativity as
well. By positioning a type of normative (white, male) gayness as acceptable
within the United States, an otherwise subversive community can be folded into
the sexual mainstream. Puar doesn’t mean to denigrate the struggle that the
majority of LGBTQ people face within the United States, but sets up the
question of why certain types of homosexualities are privileged over others.
The dominance of gay marriage, for example, which is now the central issue of
the gay rights movement in the United States and much of Europe, extends a
heterosexual institution over the queer community and creates a type of
sanctioned queer. At the heart of this exploration is the concept of empire—and
the use of United States sexual exceptionalism as a means to both sanction and
take away life. I am looking forward to further unpacking what all this means
in class over the next week.
Quotations:
“…
so many empire builders designed international power extension strategies based
on particular ideas about where different sorts of women ‘naturally’ were meant
to be. The imperial strategists may have been men, but they were men who
thought (and worried) a lot about women,” (Enloe, 271).
“The
way that equality in marriage rights has superseded most other goals for gays
in the USA (and much of Europe) eerily confirms Fraser’s point. In the USA,
indeed, marriage has virtually eclipsed the struggle for national-level
protections against discrimination in the workplace and other areas of life,”
(Long, 128).
“Underscoring
circuits of homosexual nationalism, I note that some homosexual subjects are
complicit with heterosexual nationalist formation rather than inherently or
automatically excluded from or opposed to them,” (Puar, 4).
On
the ascendancy of whiteness: “what little acceptance liberal diversity proffers
in the way of inclusion is highly mediated by huge realms of exclusion: the
ethnic is usually straight, usually has access to material and cultural capital
(both as a consumer and as an owner), and is in fact often male,” (Puar, 25).
Discussion
Questions:
1.
How
can queer rights be pursued in the United States without falling victim to the
issues outlined by Puar in linking race and sexuality?
2.
Does
any state have the authority to pursue international action against another
state for perceived human rights issues?
