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Deviant Attachments: An Argument on Minoritization, Political Dissent, Aleviness, and Queerness in Turkey
Abstract
In this paper, I trace the attachment of sexualized discourses to Alevi bodies, arguing that sexual and sectarian minoritization are intertwined in the context of Alevilik (Aleviness) in Turkey. How can the complex web of discourses imbued with sexual anxiety and moral panic be explained as a site of power, knowledge, and signification about ethnoreligious minoritarian social life and politics? In addition, how does the rhetorical politics of deviance organize current discourses of normativity, morality, and dissent in Turkey? Drawing on archives in the Turkish news media, scholarship, and popular culture, I contend that Alevi culture is a sexualized one that is placed outside established conventions of the Turkish nation-building project. Moreover, Alevis are a "religiously queered" population systematically produced in the Turkish national imagination. These aspects remain marginalized in dominant Alevi scholarship. Instead, scholars of Alevi studies have often shown defensiveness to the politically mediated circulation of sexualized discourses against Alevis. This stance has led them to reproduce such binaries as Alevi/Sunni, straight/queer, and normal/abnormal. I move away from defensive and identitarian scholarly strategies that negate Alevis' allegedly deviant sexuality to offer an analysis of the ways in which sectarian and sexualized differences have become entangled in the service of the control of minoritarian populations in Turkey. I propose that a close reading of the entanglements of sect, sexuality, affect, and politics is essential within the intellectual and political trajectory of Alevi studies and historiography. Therefore, I bring together Alevi Studies, Sexuality Studies, and Affect Studies in this paper. I begin by summarizing a historical matrix of sexuality discourses that imaginatively construct Aleviness as an object of fear in Turkey. I then discuss how this circulation involves or mobilizes affects that support political rule and national imaginary that render Aleviness dissent and a “threat,” thus reducing it to an essentialist category regardless of ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences among the Alevi community. Finally, I conclude by discussing the discourse of sexuality in Alevi scholarship, focusing on my own affective involvement and ethical role in navigating between degrading meta-narratives and collective minoritarian sensibilities. Sexualized discourses, which have functioned as grounds for repression, have become a collective political force for Alevis in the past. In such a political scenario, I suggest that deviant attachments can offer new political and epistemic queer possibilities for the present and future.
Discipline
Anthropology
Other
Religious Studies/Theology
Sociology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None