Outing the Pakistani queer: Pride, paranoia and politics in US visual culture

Sexualities ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moon Charania

This article draws on the 26 June 2011 US embassy-sponsored Gay Pride parade in Islamabad, Pakistan alongside popular US visual cultural moments (2008–2012). I use visual culture to reread US intrigue in Pakistani queer subjects through specific images of terrorist/feminized masculinities – images that elucidate the conspicuous shifts in the technologies of power and sexuality in the context of contemporary Pakistani LGBT visibility. I move through popular US representations of Pakistan, Muslim masculinity and US LGBT visibility – all of which attempt to capture homoerotic desire (and dread) in the transnational landscape of sexuality-racial-gender politics and all of which, I argue, are embroiled in US national identity (and ‘security’). My analysis is two-pronged. First, I look closely and critically at the narrative and visual character of the knowledge the US has created around defining Pakistan and Pakistani (sexual) subjects. Second, I demonstrate that in Pakistan queer resistance is often produced and animated from below the state and articulated against US hegemonic practices of visibility and representation.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4-1) ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Noraini Md. Yusof ◽  
Z. J. Esmaeil

Abstract The terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ bear social and political importance in a multicultural society. Introduced in Malaysia by the British back in the colonial era, these terms have been influencing the politics of the state and everyday life of the grassroots. Since the early days of independence, Malaysia has been witnessing ethnic conflict and right from the very beginning of making a new Malaysia, the Malaysian governments have introduced concepts and plans to eradicate the ethnic conflict but it has not been very successful although the country boasts of its racial stability. Multiculturalism in Malaysia still remains an ambivalent nationalist project. In fact, the road to a collective national identity through multiculturalism is paradoxical. This paper examines how visual culture can help reconstruct a multicultural society and argues that Malaysia’s plan in creating a national identity will remain a myth as long as one ethnicity and its values are more important than other ethnicities. It also investigates whether a collective identity is really needed for a multicultural country such as Malaysia.


Author(s):  
Anna Kuteleva ◽  
Sarah J. Clifford

Abstract This article presents a study of the discursive politics of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States and Russia from its early onset to 30 April 2020. We examine how official securitisation discourses in the two countries draw on gendered constructions of national identity and discuss what linkages and potential implications they have for the state, its policy, and its society. Our analysis shows that both the US President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin instrumentalise hierarchical gendered identities to securitise COVID-19. They mobilise gendered narratives, imageries, and practices to affirm particular understandings of the threat and create a homogeneous national ‘we’, portraying themselves as its guardians.


Author(s):  
Roberto Alvarez

I utilize my situated position as anthropologist, academician, and citizen to argue not only that we should “think” California, but also that we should “rethink” our state—both its condition and its social cartography. To be clear, I see all my research and endeavors—my research on the US/Mexico border; my time among the markets and entrepreneurs I have worked and lived with; my focus on those places in which I was raised: Lemon Grove, Logan Heights; the family network and my community ethnographic work—as personal. I am in this academic game and the telling of our story because it is personal. When Lemon Grove was segregated, it was about my family; when Logan Heights was split by the construction of Interstate 5 and threatened by police surveillance, it was about our community; when the border was sanctioned and militarized it again was about the communities of which I am a part. A rethinking California is rooted in the experience of living California, of knowing and feeling the condition and the struggles we are experiencing and the crises we have gone through. We need to rethink California, especially the current failure of the state. This too is ultimately personal, because it affects each and every one of us, especially those historically unrepresented folks who have endured over the decades.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ringo Ringvee

The article focuses on the relations between the state , mainstream religions and new religious movements in Estonia from the early 1990s until today. Estonia has been known as one of highly secular and religiously liberal countries. During the last twenty years Estonian religious scene has become considerably more pluralist, and there are many different religious traditions represented in Estonia. The governmental attitude toward new religious movements has been rather neutral, and the practice of multi-tier recognition of religious associations has not been introduced. As Estonia has been following neoliberal governance also in the field of religion, the idea that the religious market should regulate itself has been considered valid. Despite of the occasional conflicts between the parties in the early 1990s when the religious market was created the tensions did decrease in the following years. The article argues that one of the fundamental reasons for the liberal attitude towards different religious associations by the state and neutral coexistence of different traditions in society is that Estonian national identity does not overlap with any particular religious identity.


MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Gisela K. Cánepa

Nation branding plays a central role within neoliberal governmentality, operating as a technology of power in the configuration of emerging cultural and political formations such as national identity, citizenship and the state. The discussion of the advertising spot Perú, Nebraska  released as part of the Nation Branding campaign Marca Perú  in May of 2011, constitutes a great opportunity to: (i) argue about the way in which audiovisual advertisement products, designed as performative devises, operate as technologies of power; and (ii) problematize the terms in which it founds a new social contract for the Peruvian multicultural national community. This analysis will allow me to approach neoliberalism as a cultural regime in order to discuss the ideological nature of the uncontested celebratory discourse that has emerged in Perú and which explains the economic growth of the last decades as the outcome of a national entrepreneurial spirit that would be distinctive of Peruvian cultural identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (02) ◽  
pp. 66-78
Author(s):  
Nurul Fadilah

The ideology of Pancasila as a way of life, the basis of the state, and national identity has a various challenge from time to time so that the existence of Pancasila as an Ideology must be maintained, especially in industrial revolution 4.0. The research method used is a qualitative approach by doing study of literature. In data collection the writer used documentation while in techniques data analysis used content analysis, inductive and descriptive. Results of the research about challenges and strengthening of the Pancasila Ideology in facing the era of the industrial revolution 4.0 are: (1)  grounding Pancasila, (2) increasing professional human resources based on Pancasila’s values, (3) maintaining the existence of Pancasila as the State Ideology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.


Author(s):  
Sara Riva ◽  
Erin Routon

Abstract This article explores the mechanisms in which, through the US family detention asylum process, neoliberal ideas of citizenship are reinforced and contested. Through ethnographic research, and using a Foucauldian lens, we take a closer look at the neoliberal processes involved within so-called family detention. Specifically, we focus on legal advocates who are helping detained women prepare for their legal interviews. This paper argues that humanitarian aid work becomes knowable through attention to microlevel details and forms of practice—on the ground and at the margins. This affords a recognition of not only areas of functional solidarity or symbiosis with the state, but also those less visible forms of contestation. We claim that while legal advocates play a role within the neoliberal regimes at work inside these centres, they also contest this system in various critical ways, ensuring both access to legal representation for all detainees and their eventual release.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document