scholarly journals ‘Erotiques Cannibales’: A Queer Ontological Take on Desire from Urban Congo

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 853-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hendriks
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article illustrates the theoretical productivity of the recent ontological turn in anthropology as a way to further ‘anthropologize’ queer studies by taking seriously erotic alterity as an ethnographic situation that unlocks possibilities for radically re-thinking desire beyond the limiting framework of ‘sexuality’. It proposes a thought experiment with the specific ways in which same-sex loving men and boys in contemporary urban Congo conceptualize desire as a self-affirming predatory force that joyfully queers the ‘normal’ world. Rather than ethnographically representing ‘their’ erotic concepts, this article tries to think through them and calls for a non-melancholic theorization of desire.

When Is a Thing? Transduction and Immediacy in Afro-Cuban Ritual; or, ANT in Matanzas, Cuba, Summer of 1948

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 786-809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Palmié
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Urban Site ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Agential Realism ◽  
Radical Alterity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

AbstractRevisiting William R. Bascom's 1948 ethnography of Afro-Cuban religious practices in Jovellanos (a semi-urban site in Cuba's Province of Matanzas) in light of current theoretical concerns in our discipline, this essay constitutes a thought experiment. As such it seeks to re-describe some of Bascom's data in terms of Actor-Network Theory, to see if his patent puzzlement over his interlocutors’ statements concerning the liveliness and even personhood of mineral objects—stones that embody, rather than represent deities—can be resolved that way. At the same time, I offer a critique of current attempts to redefine our discipline's mission under the sign of an “ontological turn” that recurs to notions of radical alterity that strike me as potentially essentialist, and certainly profoundly ahistorical. Drawing on Karen Barad's theories of “agential realism,” I suggest that contemporary concerns with post-humanist anti-representationalism need to be tempered by a view of our epistemic pursuits, including those of anthropology, as embedded in thoroughly historical—and so fundamentally emergent—ontologies. In light of such considerations, the essay concludes with a vision of anthropology as a form of knowledge that cannot afford to evade the historical transformations of the social worlds it aims to illuminate, nor those of the concurrent transformations in its own epistemic orientations. Instead, it must reframe its goals in terms of conjunctures of ontologies and epistemologies of mutually relational and, most importantly, historical scope.

A “Vortex of Identities”: Freemasonry, Witchcraft, and Postcolonial Homophobia

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

Abstract:The recent moral panic in Cameroon about a supposed proliferation of “homosexuality” is related to a special image of “the” homosexual as un Grand who submits younger persons, eager to get a job, to anal penetration, and are thus corrupting the nation. This image stems from the popular conviction that the national elite is deeply involved in secret societies like Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism. The tendency to thus relate the supposed proliferation of homosexuality in the postcolony to colonial impositions is balanced by other lines in its genealogy—for instance, the notion of “wealth medicine,” which Günther Tessmann, the German ethnographer of the Fang, linked already in 1913 to same-sex intercourse. This complex knot of ideas and practices coming from different backgrounds can help us explore the urgent challenges that same-sex practices raise to African studies in general. The Cameroonian examples confuse current Western notions about heteronormativity, GLBTQI+ identities, and the relation between gender and sex. Taking everyday assemblages emerging from African contexts as our starting point can help not only to queer African studies, but also to Africanize queer studies. It can also help to overcome unproductive tendencies to oppose Western/colonial and local/ traditional elements. Present-day notions and practices of homosexuality and homophobia are products of long and tortuous histories at the interface of Africa and the West.

scholarly journals Privacy, Porn, and Gay Sex Parties: The Carceral Governance of Homosexuality in Indonesia

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
State And Society ◽  
State Surveillance ◽  
Sex Parties ◽  
And Control ◽  
Lgbt Individuals ◽  
Lgbt Media

This article examines how the recent Indonesian Pornography Law renders homosexuality and/or homosexual acts intelligible to the Indonesia state and society by institutionalising them as criminal offences. By drawing on insights from queer studies and exploring the cases of gay arrests in the country, I demonstrate that certain same-sex sexual acts are more susceptible to criminalisation, especially when those acts blur the distinction between public and private. The deployment of the Pornography Law against gay people, together with the anti-LGBT media environment in the country, has carried consequences for LGBT individuals, particularly gay people, by making them visible, legible, and thus subject to state surveillance and control.

Dystopian Impulses, Feminist Negativity, and the Fascism of the Baby’s Face

Old Futures ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 57-87
Author(s):  
Alexis Lothian
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Dystopian Fiction ◽  
The Future ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Second World

Building on the insights of the previous chapter, the second chapter of part 1 turns to feminist dystopian fiction written by antifascist British women between the First and Second World Wars. Man’s World (1926) by Charlotte Haldane and Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin use divergent strategies to route modernity’s futures through reproductive bodies, troubling oppositions twenty-first-century critical theory tends to naturalize: between heteronormativity and its others, queer and straight time, futurity and negativity, deviant and normative pleasures. Both novels revolve around the production of futurelessness—not just an undesirable world for some, but the notion that the future could end altogether. This negative speculation resonates with the queer project of articulating a politics that might not rely on reproduction: a futureless politics. At the same time, both Haldane and Burdekin insist that same-sex desire can all too easily appear as one of the various interlocking forces that set in place politically horrifying futures. This convergence of reproductive oppression with homoerotic nationalism calls forth concerns and conflicts in queer studies over the ways in which nonheterosexual bodies, communities, and politics have participated in the perpetuation of racial and colonial violence.

Make Me Gay

2020 ◽  
pp. 351-372
Author(s):  
Andrew Vierra
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Heterogeneous Population ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

Current legal arguments for gay rights use gay primarily to refer to individuals that have same-sex erotic desires. However, as this chapter argues using a thought experiment based on a neurointervention that would alter the orientation of one’s erotic desires, the term gay should be understood in a broader sense to include a more diverse group of individuals, including some individuals that do not have same-sex erotic desires. For this reason, the current restrictive use of the term gay presumed in legal discourse doesn’t capture the entire gay community that we should want to extend rights to. To rectify this problem with the way that arguments for gay rights are being framed, this chapter suggests that we expand the use of the term gay in legal discourse to encompass a more heterogeneous population than the one picked out by same-sex-attracted individuals, and it explains some of the advantages of doing so.

A Critical Queer Literacy Approach to Teaching Children’s Literature about Same-Sex Parenting

2014 ◽  
pp. 223-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aubry Threlkeld
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Normative Practices ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Same Sex Parents ◽  
Queer Pedagogy

Too often, critical literacy and critical pedagogy are complicit in maintaining silence around issues of sexuality. Similarly, queer pedagogues often focus on generalized descriptions of homophobia, heterosexism, or heteronormativity without addressing white, gender, and middle-class normativities. This chapter blends two approaches—critical literacy and queer pedagogy—to focus on what Kevin Kumashiro (2002) refers to as “participation in” normative practices when teaching children’s literature about same-sex parenting. Queer studies terminology like heteronormativity and homonormativity are used to describe children’s literature taught in elementary schools. Particularly children’s literature on same-sex parenting is reviewed from a critical perspective. The cases discussed illustrate how teaching children’s literature about same-sex parents in elementary school classrooms can disrupt heteronormative goals while resisting homonormative ones. In the end, the author issues a call for additional examples of critical queer literacy that can be instantiated in practice and support critical engagement for students, teachers, and communities.

scholarly journals A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-597
Author(s):  
Alessandra Consolaro
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Human Tragedy

AbstractPaṃkhvālī nāv (The winged boat) is a Hindi novel by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ that appeared in installments in Haṃs (2007) and was published as a book in 2009. The protagonist is a homosexual man, and the novel, defined by the author as a “sensitive human tragedy” (Tehelka, 05/12/2012), constructs a highly heterocentered discourse on queerness. Set in India just before the neoliberal turn, the story discusses sexual citizenship not only with reference to Indian society, but also in a global context.In this article I analyze the text, problematizing the notion of gender and the emergence of a queer identity corresponding with the opening up of Indian economy to neoliberal capital. Politics of sexual identity in newly globalizing economies are linked to global discourses on HIV/AIDS prevention, sexual health, sexual rights, and reproductive health. Also the emergence of queer literature in India, and of khuś literature in the Hindi literary field, has to be investigated on the backdrop of global queer identity. Drawing on the ‘anti-social turn’ in Queer Studies, I propose an interpretation of queerness and failure as resistance to capitalism.

Language Onset and Concomitant Speech and Language Problems in Subgroups of Stutterers and Their Siblings

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin A. Seider ◽  
Keith L. Gladstien ◽  
Kenneth K. Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Speech And Language ◽  
Negative Family History ◽  
Late Talkers ◽  
Language Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Language Onset

Time of language onset and frequencies of speech and language problems were examined in stutterers and their nonstuttering siblings. These families were grouped according to six characteristics of the index stutterer: sex, recovery or persistence of stuttering, and positive or negative family history of stuttering. Stutterers and their nonstuttering same-sex siblings were found to be distributed identically in early, average, and late categories of language onset. Comparisons of six subgroups of stutterers and their respective nonstuttering siblings showed no significant differences in the number of their reported articulation problems. Stutterers who were reported to be late talkers did not differ from their nonstuttering siblings in the frequency of their articulation problems, but these two groups had significantly higher frequencies of articulation problems than did stutterers who were early or average talkers and their siblings.

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