CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Qubaiova, Adriana |
|---|---|
| Title | Cross-Bracing Sexualities: Hedging "Queer"/Sexual non-Normativity in Beirut |
| Summary | Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Beirut, this dissertation traces the (re)production of gendered non-normative sexualities as co-constituted by the local and the global. Several actors emerge as central players in shaping the meanings and politics of ‘the sexual’ in Beirut today: the Lebanese state and its security apparatus, LGBT-rights NGOs and activists, ‘queer’ bars, and Syrian refugees. These actors continuously configure the politics of gender and sexual non-normativity and sexual subjectivity in relation to power, profit, space, kinship, and displacement. Prevalent scholarly approaches to gender and sexual non-normativity in the Middle East (West Asia) have been caught in a debate over local authenticity on the one hand and imperial imposition and mimicry on the other. I argue for a way out of this bind. In line with post-structuralism, I propose ‘cross-bracing’ as a theoretical structure that captures ‘the sexual’ as a set of unequal and cross-dependent interactions among dominant forces of the local, regional, and transnational. Cross-bracing reveals the dynamic interactions among these unequal forces as they constitute and are constituted by each other, and through movement, interdependence, and friction. In order to understand how persons and institutions navigate these cross-braced structures, I introduce the concept of ‘hedging’ sexualities. My interlocutors invest in what appear to be multiple and contradictory gendered and sexual identities, acts, bodily performances, and politics. In doing so, they minimize their risk of losing power as guards of morality (the state apparatus), manage risks of closure and policing (LGBT NGOs) and of raids and lost profits (‘queer’ bars), and balance building alternative queer kinship networks with the chance of resettlement (gender and sexually non-normative Syrian refugees). As my interlocutors hedge their gendered sexualities, they show us ways to exist in parallel, in contradiction, and in tension. Based on a feminist queer ethnographic approach, this dissertation contributes ‘cross-bracing’ and ‘hedging’ as a novel conceptual framework to theorizations of gender and non-normative sexualities in Beirut, as well as to the field of anthropological studies of gender and sexuality at large. |
| Supervisor | Renkin, Hadley Z. |
| Department | Gender Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/qubaiaa.pdf |
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