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Budapest W9: Nationalism, Gender, Sexuality - Class notes

Sexual Terror

 How does the discourse of homonationalism used by political parties in Western European governments compare to the homopolitics discussed in Shakhsari's text?

How is Puar's concept of diaspora as becoming used in Shaksari's text through the medium of the cyberspace?

Sima Shakhsari - they/them/their

Different discourses of queer subjects emerge through and in different sites, that fit in with questions of queer representation and it's relationship with space and time - civilisational logics (Poland, US, Netherlands) that are connected to discourses on nationalism and liberalsim and reverse discourses (Foucault)

Shakhsari - abject-representable, exile-diaspora and how these shifts show civilisational logics and belonging of queerness

Presents a contrast/tension between Iran as a grand prison for queers, and how queer rights are chic/proper/acceptable

Questions they raise - war on terror, voices of diaspora, role of technologies in political discourse and effects and the consequences of their use

What positive influences do these discourses have on queer life in Iran?

Does 'liberation' include all Iranian queers or only those in the diaspora?

How does the West influence the discourse of homoeroticism?

Gay International - Massad's term discussing Arab countries where there is a dominant Western apparatus of LGBT organisations/discourses and impose them on Arab countries and reshapes the discourse - this produces a certain narrative about what it means to be gay/trans/etc, and it is not contextual - it produces figures in the model of the West. Massad says this erases local ways of being non-heteronormative

Hypervisibility vs Invisibility - queer people become hypervisible for people whom Iran is a prison - that abject addition becomes the thing that renders other things invisible
Shakhsari - chic queer rights - tolerance of the diaspora and West - exile shows the abject queer subject - the queer subject is representable but must be represented
There is safety in invisibility, especially for queer subjects

Neoliberal - visibility is critical to the individual/authentic self - coming out as helping other people come out

Cybergovernmentality - "While it is no longer necessary to quarantine the homosexual for as diseased, the population as a whole needs to be managed because of the hovering danger of homosexuality (which lies in the body of the homosexual) and the risk of developing an inauthentic desire (which lies in the body of the “normal” members of society)" p.30 - Nationalist discourse - im/proper ways of being homosexual, tolerance, pushing citizens to take a stance in a civilisational logic. A "good West" is to be aligned with in order to become tolerant. Through being tolerant of queers, the subject is liberated by being invited into the fold of civilisation.

If the diaspora is "exile in drag", then how can we distinguish between the two?

Diaspora as being more mobile, younger, more literate. The diasporic subject is created in the movement, the becoming. Take advantage of the conditions of their existence - entrepreneurial spirit of becoming the expert. 

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