Sexuality and Translation in World Politics
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EDITED BY i CAROLINE COTTET AND MANUELA LAVINAS PICQ Sexuality and Translation in World Politics This e-book is provided without charge via free download by E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info). It is not permitted to be sold in electronic format under any circumstances. If you enjoy our free e-books, please consider leaving a small donation to allow us to continue investing in open access publications: http://www.e-ir.info/about/donate/ i Sexuality and Translation in World Politics EDITED BY CAROLINE COTTET AND MANUELA LAVINAS PICQ ii E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, England 2019 ISBN 978-1-910814-46-8 This book is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. 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Production: Michael Tang Cover Image: Aldo Soligno A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. iii E-IR Edited Collections Series Editors: Stephen McGlinchey, Marianna Karakoulaki & Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska Books Editor: Cameran Clayton Editorial assistance: Benjamin Cherry-Smith, Assad Asil Companioni, Tomek Najdyhor, Anjasi Shah and Alexander Stoffel E-IR’s Edited Collections are open access scholarly books presented in a format that preferences brevity and accessibility while retaining academic conventions. Each book is available in print and digital versions, and is published under a Creative Commons license. As E-International Relations is committed to open access in the fullest sense, free electronic versions of all of our books, including this one, are available on our website. Find out more at: http://www.e-ir.info/publications About the E-International Relations website E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info) is the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics, reaching over 3 million readers annually. Our daily publications feature expert articles, reviews and interviews – as well as student learning resources. The website is run by a registered non-profit organisation based in Bristol, UK and staffed with an all-volunteer team of students and scholars. iv Abstract When terms such as LGBT and queer cross borders they evolve and adjust to different political thinking. Queer became kvir in Kyrgyzstan and cuir in Ecuador, neither of which hold the English meaning. Translation is about crossing borders, but some languages travel more than others. Sexualities are usually translated from the core to the periphery, imposing Western LGBT identities onto the rest of the world. Many sexual identities are not translatable into English, and markers of modernity override native termin- ologies. All this matters beyond words. Translating sexuality in world politics forces us to confront issues of emancipation, colonisation, and sovereignty, in which global frameworks are locally embraced and/or resisted. Translating sexualities is a political act entangled in power politics, imperialism and foreign intervention. This book explores the entanglements of sex and tongue in international relations from Kyrgyzstan to Nepal, Japan to Tajikistan, Kurdistan to Amazonia. --- Caroline Cottet is a co-founder and field coordinator of the Refugee Women’s Centre, a charity that operates in refugee camps in Northern France. She is also editor-at-large for E-International Relations. Her activism and research focus on gender, migration, and militarism. Manuela Lavinas Picq is Professor of International Relations at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and Loewenstein Fellow at Amherst College. She contributes to international media outlets and has held research positions at Freie Universität (2015), the Institute for Advanced Study (2013), and the Woodrow Wilson Centre (2005). Her latest book is Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (University of Arizona Press 2018). v vi Sexuality and Translation in World Politics Contents INTRODUCTION Manuela L. Picq and Caroline Cottet 1 1. THE NAMELESSNESS OF LIVES: WHAT’S NOT IN A NAME? Cai Wilkinson 13 2. JAPANESE ‘LGBT BOOM’ DISCOURSE AND ITS DISCONTENTS Ioana Fotache 27 3. TRANSLATING ‘QUEER’ INTO (KYRGYZSTANI) RUSSIAN Mohira Suyarkulova 42 4. INDIGENOUS SEXUALITIES: RESISTING CONQUEST AND TRANSLATION Manuela L. Picq and Josi Tikuna 57 5. DOING SEX RIGHT IN NEPAL: ACTIVIST LANGUAGE AND SEXED/ GENDERED EXPECTATIONS Lisa Caviglia 72 6. ASEXUALITY, THE INTERNET, AND THE CHANGING LEXICON OF SEXUALITY Jo Teut 85 7. BETWEEN EMANCIPATION AND OPPRESSION: THE BODIES OF KURDISH LIBERATION An interview with Diako Yazdani, by Manuela L. Picq 95 8. DECOLONISING QUEER BANGLADESH: NEOLIBERALISM AGAINST LGBTQ+ EMANCIPATION Ibtisam Ahmed 101 9. DONORS’ LGBT SUPPORT IN TAJIKISTAN: PROMOTING DIVERSITY OR PROVOKING VIOLENCE? Karolina Kluczewska 112 10. THE COMMODIFIED QUEER SUBLIME Soheil Asefi 127 GLOSSARY 135 NOTE ON INDEXING 138 Contents vii viii Sexuality and Translation in World Politics Contributors Ibtisam Ahmed is a Doctoral Researcher at the School of Politics and IR at the University of Nottingham. His research is a decolonial killjoy which critically evaluates the toxic ways that British colonialism conceptualised itself as a utopian civilising mission, with the aim of shifting the focus towards anti- colonial and local narratives. Soheil Asefi is a journalist and scholar. He studied Political Science at The New School for Social Research and is a PhD student of Sociology at the University of Nevada. Soheil Asefi was Nuremberg’s guest under the German PEN project “Writers in Exile”, and received the German Hermann Kasten award. He has written on the politics of belonging, commodification, imperialism and the dimensions of democratisation and neoliberalisation in the Middle East. Laura Bensoussan attended the École de Condé (Paris) for a preparatory year in fine arts, and the ESA Saint-Luc (Brussels) for a degree in illustration. She specialises in children’s books, having most recently published Jeu Dans l’Espace (Feuille de Lignes, 2018), with two other books forthcoming in 2019. Lisa Caviglia (BSc Medical Biochemistry; MSc International Health; PhD Anthropology) researches gender and sexuality, and transnational migration between Asia and Europe. These topics have been addressed in recent media and scholarly publications, including “Sex Work in Nepal: the Making and Unmaking of Category” (Routledge, 2018) and “Outsourcing Love” (Economic and Political Weekly, 2017). She is currently focusing on “Traditions of Yoga and Meditation” at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London, UK). Ioana Fotache is currently pursuing their Ph.D in Socio-cultural Change Studies at Nagoya University. Their research is concerned with LGBTQ+ activist narratives in Japan, and the way in which queer people negotiate their personal, social, and political identities on a personal, local, and global level. Karolina Kluczewska is a post-doctoral research fellow at the research centre CERAL, University of Paris 13. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews. Karolina has research and practical experience in the development sector in Tajikistan, including collaborations with civil society organisations, international organisations and local academic institutions. Contributors ix Mohira Suyarkulova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the American University of Central Asia. She received her PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in 2011 and since then has held teaching and research positions at universities in the UK, Germany, and Kyrgyzstan. Her research interests include the politics of modernisation and development, gender and sexuality, environmental politics, nationalism, and statehood and sovereignty in Central Asia. Jo Teut (they/them/their) serves as Assistant Director of Diversity and Inclusion Programming at Centre College after serving as Diversity Specialist for the University of Wisconsin Extension and, now defunct, Colleges. They received a MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati. They presented on asexuality at the National Women’s Studies Conference, North American Asexuality Conference, and Creating Change Conference and created educational programming on asexuality for the University of Cincinnati LGBTQ Center, NASPA: Student Affairs Adminis- trators in Higher Education, and multiple queer conferences. Josi Tikuna (Josiane Otaviano Guilherme), is a researcher in anthropology who graduated from the Institute of Nature and Culture at the Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil. She coordinates the Project Agrovida-Naãne Arü Mãü and collaborates with Brazil’s Indian National Foundation (FUNAI- CRA-AS). As an active member of the Indigenous movement, she has presided over the indigenous students’ commission at the