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Queer subjectivities and spatial dimensions in Tripoli, Lebanon
Abstract
Can we imagine a future for queerness in the Middle East despite a religious fundamentalism that endorses oppressive homophobia? Can we conceive queerness outside the universalist progressivism of international LGBT rights groups? I will present a video project, On the Natural, that maps out and visualizes spaces of queer "utopia" in Tripoli, Lebanon, beyond the usual dichotomy: the oppressive, homophobic Middle East versus the emancipating, gay-defending West. As a film practitioner and scholar, I explore visual possibilities of locating queerness outside a film tradition that either celebrates a romanticized orientalist depiction of homosociality and homoeroticism in the Arab region or represents homosexuals as oppressed victims of conservative societies. Considering queerness beyond the confines of sexuality, I draw in my paper on the writings of queer theorists like Jack Halberstam, by engaging with queerness as an all-encompassing notion of life that espouses unorthodox conceptions of space and time, and like José Esteban Muñoz, by positioning queerness in a utopian, "not-yet-here" futurity. I use the work of scholar Sara Ahmed on queer phenomenology to conceive an alternate audio-visual navigation and re-orientation for queer bodies. I focus on spaces like the central public garden where the idea of productive and reproductive time is suspended and where pre-colonial homo-erotic affects are activated. I rely on concepts advanced by postcolonial scholars, like Homi Bhabha, to ponder the subversive potential of such a space as a spatiotemporal site of "slippage" into "uncertain interstices, areas of ambivalence and spaces of unresolved contradictions," where notions of masculinity, patriarchy and heteronormativity can be destabilized outside the framework of western ideals of individual freedom and liberation. In Tripoli, the homophobic and homoerotic seem to clash and intermingle. It is a city rife with an ambivalence felt at a bodily, visceral level as a space that holds both the promise of pleasure and the risk of violence. My intervention lies in furthering the search for visual representations of Arab queer subjectivities and corporealities as they continue to morph in a changing region and world. My work ultimately aims at positioning the question of queerness in the Arab region within a socio-political and historical context that engages with debates about western imperialism, neocapitalism, and religious orthodoxy. It is a proposition to engage with the future of Arab queerness as a new mode of desiring that allows us, as Muñoz writes, "to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present."
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Sub Area
Queer/LGBT Studies