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Hedging “Queer”/ Sexual Non- Normativity in Beirut

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Hedging “Queer”/ Sexual Non- Normativity in Beirut CROSS-BRACING SEXUALITIES: HEDGING “QUEER”/ SEXUAL NON- NORMATIVITY IN BEIRUT By Adriana Qubaiová Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Gender Studies Supervisor: Hadley Z. Renkin CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2019 Copyright Statement I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. Nor does it contain materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographic reference. th April 29 , 2019 CEU eTD Collection i Abstract 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- CEU eTD Collection 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. ii Acknowledgements I sincerely thank my supervisor Hadley Z. Renkin for his longstanding support of this project. Hadley was the first person to believe in my project‘s possibility, long before I could believe it in myself, and unequivocally supported it from the day I applied to the program. For your committed and critical academic supervision, exceptional patience and encouragement, I am forever grateful. I thank my Comprehensive Exam committee members for their generous feedback on the first version of this project; Laleh Khalili, Martin F. Manalansan IV, and Eszter Timar. I especially thank Laleh for her support during the first stages of fieldwork in Beirut. I also thank my professors in the Gender Studies Department who have supported me in a myriad of ways throughout this journey, offered advice, feedback, involved me in projects, and helped me get by financially in extremely precarious conditions. Elissa Helms and Francisca de Haan; without your feminist support, I would have never been able to complete this degree. Sofian Merabet, thank you for your mentorship, I am humbled that you have accepted to be my External Examiner. Sima Shakhsari, thank you for accepting to be my External Reader, I humbly look forward to learning from you. I am lucky to have been part of an incredible feminist cohort of PhD students: Katalin Rahel Turai, Marianna Szczygielska, and Alex Ghit. You are my dearest friends, I do not know what I would have done without you, and I am honored to have been on this path with you. Thank you for all your feedback, joint learning endeavors, struggles and love. I love you with all my heart. I have also shared parts of this journey with several PhD colleagues in my department whose input, advice, and feminist joyful company I have been blessed with: Petra Bakos, Selin Çağatay, Alexandra Manta, and Heather Tucker. You are heroines that inspire me every day. I am especially indebted to my colleague Maria Temmes who read the entire first draft of my CEU eTD Collection dissertation and so generously debated it with me for hours over flipcharts and coffee. Thank you. Parts of this dissertation were copy-edited by Laith Aqel, Monika Jones, Miloš Jovanović, Roy Kimmey, Trish Ward, and Allison West; I am greatly indebted to you for your free labor. iii I have crossed paths with so many wonderful academics along the way. In 2016, I participated in the Lebanon Dissertation Summer Institute where I met my second academic family of scholars of Lebanon. Nadya Sbaiti – who supervized me a year later in AUB during a formal research visit on the Doctoral Research Support Grant from the CEU Foundation – and Ziad Abu Rish, I am indebted to you for your unbelievably generous mentorship. Thank you. I am delighted to have had such a wonderful academic exchange with Tory Brykalski, Susie Ferguson, Anne Irfan, Sean Lee, and Rossana Tufaro; I have learnt a lot from you all and I am eager for more joint endeavors. To my interlocutors, colleagues, friends and family in Lebanon, I am eternally humbled by your openness and generosity. You have opened your lives for me and entrusted me with your knowledge. I have done my best to reference you in this work and I hope that I have done you justice. Ahmad Saleh, without you this project would not exist, I am forever grateful for our conversations, debates, and all of our joint projects in Beirut. Bernadette Daou and Anthony Rizk, for your feminist comradery, for sharing your knowledge and history so openly, and for your beautiful friendships. Ghassan Makarem, I humbly thank you for sharing your wisdom with me; you are a treasure. Rebecca Abu Saad, thank you for the honest talks and for your delicious meals. Mathew Gagne for your academic and personal companionship on the field. Niamh Fleming-Farrell, thank you for providing me with a shelter when I had nowhere else to go, I hope I can return the favor one day. For everyone who made the time to meet with me, reached out, or simply was a friendly soul in a hard time, I sincerely thank you for your personal and intellectual generosity: Sonya, Leen, Sara, Roba, Sara, Hiba, Joe, Fady, Hana, Genwa, Tarek, Georges, Jo, Maia, Noor, Jahd, Sabiha, Alaa and Nadine. To my chosen Beirut family: Leila Younes, Lara Nuwayhid, Kim Voogt; your support during my hard times meant the world to me, thank you for sheltering me. Rasha Younes, you are a force, having you in CEU for a year was the luckiest I‘ve been, thank you for commenting on my work and for your love. To my family in Budapest: Steven Allen, Celine Cantat, Ian Cook, Olena Fedyuk, Dumi CEU eTD Collection Holdis, Ben Jarrett, Judit Koppány, JD and Veronika Kozma, Julcsi Major, Tibor Meszmann, and Lilu; for the picnics, laughs, mentorship, massages, activism, and solidarity. I aspire to be as generous and firesome as you are. Judit Hatfaludi; thank you for all of our joint journeys with wolves and whales and with the Lebanese Cedars; I am a better person because of you. Omar iv Qassis thank you for the Massad debates and all the Arab love. Ezgi Özdemir and Luke Kelly, thank you for being the kindest and sweetest housemates one could ever wish for, and Ezgi for tolerating the last moments of this endeavor. To my international family: Sarah Jamal Ahmed, no one has ever understood me as well as you. You are the twin I have been looking for all my life. Thank you. We must continue building new feminist knowledge together. Muaz Abu Dalo and Trish Ward, thank you for your sincere engagement with my work and for keeping me rooted; you are my Irbid family. Miloš Jovanović, for your unwavering belief in me as an academic, for sincerely engaging with my work, for being a feminist friend, ally, and an accomplice: thank you. The frame of this dissertation bears your mark. Lela Rekhviashvili, I don‘t know what I did to deserve your beautiful friendship; thank you for all the love and talks. Gruia Bădescu thank you for Beirut; I always learn from your brain, heart, and soul all at once. Klaudia Rottenschlager, Maria Lis Baiocchi, Marisa Burton, thank for your feminist support and love. Marek Čaněk and L‘uba Kobová, no one ever believed in me as much as you did, I‘ve been honored to have worked with you both; you are the reason I can call Prague a home. To my beautiful family, my grandmother Babi, my mom Jana, my two sisters Jarin and Katreen, my father Ahmad, and Jarda; thank you for your support, love, and understanding of something so dubious as a PhD project and the unreasonable lifestyle it comes with. I love you. Finally, no one brought me more joy than all the cats whose long-term company I have been blessed with: Bedřich, Snížek, Roza, and Mici, may you be happy in cat heaven.
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