Beyond Queer: A View on ‘Different Normativity’ from the Middle East

Key information

Date
Time
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Venue
Russell Square: College Buildings
Room
Khalili Lecture Theatre

About this event

Sabiha Allouche

This talk rethinks the queer in contemporary Lebanon beyond western scholarship by examining it in relation to Lebanese society’s conventional interpretations of married life. It draws on the lived experience of homo-desiring men and women who escape kin pressure by performing normative married life in order to conceive ‘different normativity’ in a Lebanese context. I draw on my interlocutors’ narratives and the scholarship on alternative intimacies in order to blend queer studies with area studies (in this case the Middle East / Lebanon) in line with Maya Mikdashi and Jasbir Puar’s recent recommendation ‘for a politics in queer theory that works to displace the United States as the prehensive force for everyone else’s future.’[1] By doing so, I highlight the promise of epistemic solidarity that ensues from transnational queer scholarship.

[1] M. Mikdashi & J. Puar (2016) Queer Theory and Permanent War, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Queer Studies 22(2), p. 217.


Bio:

Sabiha is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS from where she obtained her PhD in Gender Studies. She has previously examined the affective making of the “angry Arab man” in US News and the shortcomings of international asylum organizations in the context of self-identified LGBT Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Her upcoming publications queer heterosexual love when examined in tandem with sect in Lebanon, and conceive romantic love vis-a-vis the institution of kinship, also in Lebanon. She is currently co-editor for the Book Reviews section for the emerging open-access journal Feminist Encounters and a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Kohl: A Journal of Body and Gender Research.