Review: Transnational Queer Theory and Unfolding Terrorisms Robert Diaz Wayne State University, Robertgdiaz@Gmail.Com

Wayne State University DigitalCommons@WayneState

English Faculty Research Publications English

1-1-2008 Review: Transnational Queer Theory and Unfolding Terrorisms Robert Diaz Wayne State University, [email protected]

Recommended Citation Diaz, R. (2008). Transnational Queer Theory and Unfolding Terrorisms. Criticism, 50(3), 533-541. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/englishfrp/2

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the English at DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Research Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. TRANSNATIONAL Queer theory has always been at- tentive to often undertheorized re- QUEER THEORY lations between sexuality and cultural AND UNFOLDING citizenship. Recently, much of the TERRORISMS most exciting queer scholarship has Robert Diaz directed its attention toward an analysis of spaces outside of the United States and beyond the West, Terrorist Assemblages: Homona- focusing in particular on transna- tionalism in Queer Times by Jasbir tional communities affected by K. Puar. Durham: Duke University ever-expanding global capital and Press, 2007. Pp. 368. $89.95 cloth, imperialism. In an issue of Social Text $24.95 paper. (“What’s Queer about Queer Stud- ies Now?”), the editors suggest that a reinvigorated queer framework “insists on a broadened consideration of the late-twentieth-century global crises that have configured his- torical relations among political economies, the geopolitics of war and terror, and national manifesta- tions of sexual, racial, and gendered hierarchies.”1 In other words, a re- newed queer theoretical frame must thoroughly adapt to and expand upon the speciﬁ c ways in which counterterrorism, mass consumer- ist culture, and battles for legal recognition have compartmentalized nonnormative populations. This new queer work examines new forms of subjugation across national borders and requires that we reevaluate sexual, gendered, and racial politics in a global age. What iterations of queer culture are produced at this crucial juncture? How might a range of performance practices contest, negotiate, articu- late, and heighten these iterations? Examples of new work address- ing these kinds of questions include Criticism, Summer 2008, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 533–542. 533 ©2009 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. ISSN: 0011-1589. 534 ROBERT DIAZ

Martin Manalansan’s Global Di- closer to the standards of norma- vas: Filipino Gay Men in the tive heterosexuality, fueled by hu- Diaspora and Gayatri Gopinath’s man rights discourses that in many Impossible Desires: South Asian Pub- ways mask the violence of neolib- lic Cultures.2 Both revisit diaspora eral capital’s spread.3 as a rich space from which queer Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblage: belonging could be imagined. This Homonationalism in Queer Times is revisiting is especially relevant a refreshing and much-needed given the expansion of transna- addition to this recent queer scholar- tional migration and labor. Spread ship. Like Manalansan and Gopi- across multiple locations and tem- nath, Puar studies “queer diasporas” poralities, “queer diasporas” create and their multiple performance their own cultural archives amidst practices. Expanding on Duggan’s efforts to survive and cope with the work, she maps out moments of everyday. Manalansan and Gopi- queer normalization and inclu- nath argue that, in addition to na- sion within U.S. dominant culture. tionality and ethnicity, sexuality is What is most salient about this an important site for understand- book, however, is that it focuses on ing practices of diasporic belonging. the ways in which sexuality aids in New queer work also reexamines policing appropriate forms of U.S. the changing relationship between citizenship and diasporic identity sexual minorities and heteronor- during the current “war on terror.” mative culture. Could sexual mi- The author examines a collection of norities foster, rather than resist, examples ranging from South Park sexual, gendered, and racial oppres- episodes, to photographs from Abu sions? In The Twilight of Equality, Ghraib, to the Lawrence vs. Texas Lisa Duggan analyzes the many ruling that struck down the Texas ways that limited representations sodomy law by arguing that consen- of lesbian and gay culture have sual sex was protected as “private.” become so normalized—and in a Using these examples, she creates a sense evacuated of a contestatory complex theoretical approach to politics—by a mostly white, up- analyzing the ways in which sexual- wardly mobile, gay population that ity has been mobilized by the United has demanded legal recognition States after September 11th in order through gay marriage. This nor- to demonstrate the country’s “excep- malization is compounded by the tionalism.” Puar takes aim at “excep- demands of a growing consumer tionalism” because it allows the class that requires queer represen- United States to set itself apart from tation adequate for consumption. other more “barbaric” (i.e., nonsec- Coining the term “homonormativ- ular, Islamic, and “fundamentalist”) ity,” Duggan describes the move- nation-states and cultures. She ar- ment of lesbian and gay politics gues that exceptionalism also helps ON JASBIR K. PUAR’S TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 535 to produce a continual state of para- of sexual normalization that accepts noia that justifi es the complex meth- particular forms of homosexuality odologies needed to “fi ght” the war in order to foster American empire: on terror. Her argument is essential “[T]his brand of homosexuality op- for critics looking for a way to bet- erates as a regulatory script not ter understand the linkages between only of normative gayness, queer- sexuality and antiterrorism. Puar ness, or homosexuality, but also of suggests that exceptionalism serves racial and national norms that re- as a strategic and effective means of inforce these subjects” (2). Although furthering violence against postcolo- the critique of structures of state nial populations by legitimizing sec- power such as the military is unsur- ularism as the key ethical standard of prising, what is refreshing about communities in the global north. It is Puar’s beginning is that it also takes precisely these secularist values that aim at a particular strand of queer make the United States more “pro- theory that reiterates a fetishization gressive,” and what arguably makes of queer exceptionality as always al- the country’s population more de- ready liberatory or always already serving of biopolitical preservation based on a transgressive difference. than ethnic and religious minorities This fetishization in the end elides within and outside its borders. the many ways that queer popula- Signifi cantly, Puar shows how tions are also separated by multiple queer politics can be fueled by allegiances. Thus, aside from an regulatory rather than liberatory automatic assumption of “queer” purposes. In her introduction as nonnormative, Puar asks how (“Homonationalism and Biopoli- might this term be further compli- tics”), Puar notes that government cated by historicizing queerness policies around terrorism and aca- within a U.S. context? She argues demics writing about these policies that layered racial and national af- produce a version of queerness that fi liations are most legible at mo- abjects racial and national minori- ments when the nation-state needs ties. They do so by acquiescing to to mark some bodies as terrorist to what Rey Chow defi nes as the “as- make these subjects susceptible to cendancy of whiteness,” or the mobi- methods of surveillance and con- lizing of cultural difference to serve trol. Homonationalism is exceed- the racially dominant population in ingly present as the nation starts to the United States.4 Key to this abject- deploy more networked technolo- ing process is the valorization of sec- gies of policing justifi ed by interna- ularism I mentioned. Puar sees the tional attempts to thwart terrorism. heightening of secularism as indica- The fi rst chapter expands on tive of “homonationalistic” impulses homonationalism. Puar traces the motivated by antiterrorism. She de- rhetorical strategies deployed by les- fi nes “homonationalism” as a form bian and gay tourist organizations, 536 ROBERT DIAZ feminists writing about the Middle has become a central characteristic East, and the cartoon show South for the sense of queer respectability Park. Although these organizations in the United States. This leads to and individuals seem to advocate the question, what about other sub- for universal human rights, they also jects who do not fi t this acceptable problematically rely on particular iteration of lesbian or gay culture? In markers of “otherness.” One exam- her most intriguing analysis of ple of this othering tendency is the South Park, she focuses on an epi- constant exhibiting of those who sode that features a guest character: practice Islam as automatically in- Mr. Slave. Mr. Slave is a leather- tolerant toward women and sexual bottom who Mr. Garrison (the minorities. The author questions school’s teacher) invites to class so this assumption by suggesting that that he can then prove that the school Islam is contradictory to and varied is intolerant toward homosexuality. among those who practice it. In- Showing that the school’s adminis- deed, in many cases, it even serves as tration is intolerant would enable a powerful source of cultural belong- Mr. Garrison to sue the school for a ing for sexual minorities. Queers of substantial amount. Puar centers her color in the United States, here no- analysis on a student’s statement tably South Asians living in urban about Mr. Slave, that he is Pakistani. locales such as New York City, She then proceeds to highlight the have turned to their ethnic enclaves problematic assumptions of this and religious spaces as a viable way sentence, by suggesting that the to create community during the production of the terrorist body de- government’s lockdown on “terror- pends upon the oversexualization ism.” These sites ultimately foster of the ethnic-national minority that cultural belonging for persons out- “Pakistani” indexes. The leather bot- side of the “patriotic” U.S. citizen, tom is confl ated with an interstitial white, and male population valo- nationality, one that is both coopera- rized in the national imaginary. tive to the United States and one that Toward the end of the chapter, is easily corruptible as a terrorist en- Puar studies the South Park episodes tity. She argues that “the perverse since they also demonstrate specifi c and the primitive collide in the fi g- homonationalistic tendencies. In ure of Mr. Slave: the violence of one reading, she notes how the homophobia is shown to be appro- preponderance of the (usually male) priate when directed toward a “metrosexual” fi gure in media rep- pathological nationality, whereas resentations highlights how accept- the violence of racism is always al- able forms of queerness tend to ready caught in the naming of the appeal to a consuming, cosmopoli- queer” (75). In other words, Puar tan, white, and elite population. The suggests that even in the most pro- hyperaestheticizing of hip urbanity gressive of shows, such as a cartoon ON JASBIR K. PUAR’S TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 537 made for adults that often satirizes sexualities and sexual practices the failed policies of the govern- within its border. Moreover, the fo- ment, one can see the “unevenness cus on Muslim sexuality valorizes of liberal forms of diversity and sexuality as the site of violence tolerance” (75) produced as the na- within torture rather than thinking tion consolidates its citizens within of violence as a networked strategy one seemingly cohesive group. in compartmentalizing specifi c ter- The relationality between terror- rorist populations for death as it se- ism and sexuality is revisited in cures the lives of the privileged few. chapter 2 (“Abu Ghraib and U.S. As the author notes, “[T]he sexual is Exceptionalism”). Puar studies the the ultimate site of violation, por- controversial Abu Ghraib photo- trayed as extreme in relation to the graphs, which depict Iraqi prison- individual rights of privacy and ers being tortured by U.S. military ownership accorded to the body personnel. These photographs ex- within liberalism” (81). Thus, the pose the United States’ failure to axiomatic grief that goes hand in treat its prisoners humanely and hand with the declaration that ethically. Puar notes that the na- these pictures are uniquely abu- tional grief and embarrassment the sive fosters the very same practices Abu Ghraib photos produce have of marking the ethnic national as depended upon an understanding outside of the United States citizen. of torture, especially sexual torture, This presumably also leads to as an uncommon military practice. justifi cations for furthering the She contends, however, that these domination of postcolonial subjects photographs do not mark an excep- across the globe through argu- tional moment at all. They demon- ments against terrorism. In one strate the constant mobilization of brief but astute moment, Puar points sexuality as a policing mechanism out that we know so much about the that justifi es state violence. More U.S. military personal perpetrating importantly, she argues that the the abuse, but very little about the nationalistic shock exhibited by a Iraqi prisoners. This lopsided over- majority of the country’s population abundance of information suggests a intrinsically polices what “Muslim skewed form of historiography— sexuality” ultimately means. At its one that fi lls in the information for base, this sexuality must be inher- the U.S. subject in order to argue ently different from the “liberated” for this fi gure’s unexpected depar- sexuality practiced in the United ture from norms of justice and States. The obvious point here is ethical behavior, while marking the that this myopic way of thinking suspected terrorist as only capable about Muslim sexuality negates and of being sexualized and violated, disavows the multiple ways that the and nothing else. I fi nd Puar’s at- United States itself limits particular tention to the speed, forms, and 538 ROBERT DIAZ intensity in which these photo- of what intimacy means. According graphs were mass distributed as a to these critics, Kennedy’s descrip- new approach to thinking about tion ultimately creates the boun- their importance. Following the daries of what counts as valid work of Brian Massumi on affect domesticity and intimacy for pro- and visuality, Puar shifts away from tection. Puar then adds that what merely reading these photographs this normative domesticity also as representational artifacts, but as marks are the limitations of citi- sites for exploring how the chang- zenship for racial and ethnic mi- ing speed, intensity, and distribution norities that are constantly under of images in an age of technological the threat of surveillance because of simulacra go hand in hand with multiple panoptic structures (exac- modern forms of imperial consoli- erbated by the war on terror). The dation and expansion. notion of privacy has always been Chapter 3 (“Infi nite Control, In- fl eeting for those subjected to what fi nite Detention”) and chapter 4 she refers to as multiple and bound- (“The Turban Is Not a Hat”) chal- aryless forms of detention (hence lenge the false idea that privacy making them, in her words, “infi - and citizenship have been secured nite”). What the Supreme Court for queer subjects by specifi c “monu- considers as “lasting relationships” mental” liberatory utterances. Chap- erases entire populations of queer ter 3 presents a comparative analysis and racialized persons whose inti- of the Lawrence vs. Texas case, macies have been dictated by the which uses the Fourteenth Amend- state: “[T]he private is a racialized ment right to privacy to overturn and nationalized construct insofar the criminalizing of sodomy previ- as it is granted only to heterosexuals ously set forth in Bowers vs. Hard- but to certain citizens and withheld wick (1987). This ruling also makes from many others and noncitizens” the claim that the moral belief that (125). At one point, she refl ects upon makes sodomy illegal is outdated, the image of Lawrence and Garner, since, in the words of Justice Ken- which did not achieve mass circula- nedy, who delivered the majority tion until after the ruling was handed opinion, “When sexuality fi nds down. The absence of information overt expression in intimate con- about the couple, specifi cally that duct with another person, the con- Tyrone Garner is African Ameri- duct can be but one element in a can, is, according to Puar, at its best a personal bond that is enduring” subsuming of queerness to multicul- (quoted in Puar, 123).5 Puar builds turalism and at its worst an elision on the criticism by specifi c feminists of his race as a nonexistent element and queer theorists that Kennedy’s of the ruling. notion of queer relationships is The theoretical stakes of chapter limited in terms of its understanding 3 are materialized in chapter 4 as ON JASBIR K. PUAR’S TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 539

Puar discusses how South Asian Helpfully, Puar often ends her diasporic culture is challenged by its chapters with numbered summa- (dis)affi nities with other identities. ries of her points. Moving into Puar juxtaposes the constant prepon- fi elds such as postcolonial studies, derance in the national imaginary American studies, and ethnogra- of confl ating Muslim subjectivity, phy, this book also demonstrates male Sikh masculinity, and terror- the productive possibilities of in- ist threat. Sikh cultural belonging terdisciplinary thinking. This in- is metonymically linked to the tur- terdisciplinarity lends to Puar’s fi nal ban as a garb and representational argument. She posits that the speci- object. The turban is a material ap- fi city of the present moment re- pendage of the ways Sikhs embody quires new analytical frames for terrorist potential, as it is also a sign approaching a gamut of subjectivi- of how various Sikh organizations ties, both minoritized and other- have unwittingly repeated this con- wise. She advocates for what she fl ation by their insistence that male terms as thinking within an assem- turbaned Sikhs conform to heter- blage rather than in intersectional onormative iterations of masculin- ways, especially since seemingly ity and victimology, as exceptional unrelated, unremarked, and un- law-abiding citizens who state a re- networked ontological sites actu- fusal to remove the turban only at ally link up in a more rooted or the expense of dehistoricizing and rhizomatic fashion. decontextualizing the intercultural As a whole, this text is also useful differences the turban clearly poses. because it provides portable terms The turban “is accruing the marks that move into other aspects of of a terrorist masculinity” (175) be- one’s critical thinking. For exam- cause it shows “bodies in excess” of ple, I was reminded of Puar’s work their meaning, one that they do not during the recently concluded Bei- escape as they try to do so. jing Olympics. As I was watching Terrorist Assemblages is dense the extravagant, stylistically choreo- and highly theoretical. As a previ- graphed opening ceremonies, I was ous reviewer has mentioned, some struck by a comment that made me readers might have a diffi cult time laugh as it also called for some following the thread of Puar’s ar- “nerdy” introspection. One of the guments. The work engages a range announcers for NBC had sug- of intellectual genealogies, from gested that the sheer immensity of theories of subjection (including the visual spectacle before us (and Butler and Foucault), to challeng- the capital needed to produce it) ing work on affect (such as Mas- meant that China had fi nally “come sumi, Deleuze, and Guattari), to out” as a world power. This com- current work on sovereignty and ment reminded me of Puar’s intro- bare life (Agamben and Mbembe). duction, which critiques both Charles 540 ROBERT DIAZ

Krauthammer and Amy Kaplan spectacle on screen, one that is also for using homosexual jargon—the segregated along gendered lines? “coming out” narrative—to discuss How might “coming out” be read American empire building. Aside as closely tied to “coming of age”? from the obviously humorous dual How might this notion of “coming” confl ation of personal coming-out into or out of a space be seen as a (and thus gay) narrative with a na- rhetorical turn to linear progress, tional assertion of might, what I one that involves skipping over found fascinating about this an- events in Chinese history? (The nouncer’s statement is that it Cultural Revolution, it seems, if brings to light the overabundance one were to follow the same an- of queer metaphors that are evacu- nouncer’s assertion that the show ated of their contextual meanings. marks every crucial point in Chi- How does this statement index the nese national formation, did not anxieties shown by the United happen.) What shift in the global States, as it foreshadows the threat matrix of signifi ers and terms has of continued Chinese expansion? made it possible for us to recognize How might we refuse the evacua- what exactly the announcer is re- tion of queerness that this mundane ferring to with such ease? How “coming out” comment highlights, might a liberal notion of human by instead thinking about the ways rights, of privacy, or of expression in which queer bodies and subjects be assumed as the comment is be- haunt the production, interpreta- ing delivered? This single fl ash- tion, and examination of these cer- point produces many more questions emonies? How might it be possible and thus requires new approaches for the “coming out” narrative to of critical inquiry. The quality of also index the various presences the Terrorist Assemblages, and I would statement elides, such as the ter- argue the current scholarship in the rorist potential China signifi es fi eld, lead me to believe that a re- through its possession of nuclear animated, self-critiquing, and self- weapons, or China’s continued re- refl exive Queer studies is up to the fusal to grant sovereign status to task ahead. various key territories (which, at any moment, could also be consid- —Wayne State University ered a terrorist threat at its whim), or to China’s being threatened by other terrorist factions (most evi- NOTES dent in the growing anxiety of dis- turbance as the Beijing Olympics 1. David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and approached)? How might this turn José Esteban Muñoz, eds. “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” to the “coming out” metaphor link special issue, Social Text 23, nos. 3–4 up with the mass ornamental (2005): 1. ON JASBIR K. PUAR’S TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES 541

2. Martin F. Manalansan IV, Global Divas: Gay Filipinos in the Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); and Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: South Asian Public Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 3. Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon, 2003). 4. Rey Chow, The Protestant Ethnic and The Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 2–3. 5. See Lawrence vs. Texas, U.S. LEXIS 5013 (2003).