Between Religion and Desire: Being Muslim and Gay in Indonesia

Thousands of Indonesian men now identify as both "gay" and "Muslim." How do these men understand the relationship between religion and sexuality? How do these understandings reflect the fact that they live in the nation that is home to more Muslims than any other? In this article, I address questions such as these through an ethnographic study of gay Muslims. I argue that dominant social norms render being gay and being Muslim "ungrammatical" with each other in the public sphere that is crucial to Muslim life in Indonesia. Through examining doctrine, interpretation, and community, I explore how gay Muslim subjectivity takes form in this incommensurability between religion and desire.     

Q! Film Festival as Cultural Activism: Strategic Cinephilia and the Expansion of a Queer Counterpublic

This article examines the gay and lesbian Q! Film Festival in Indonesia as a form of cultural activism. I build on Michael Warner’s work to situate the Q! Film Festival as a counterpublic, but argue that QFF’s strategy and tactic, in de Certeau’s terms, demand that we think beyond the oppositional position as a salient feature of a counterpublic. QFF deployed what I call “strategic cinephilia” to assert itself as a legitimate unit in the urban middle-class public culture, expanding its public address and thus destabilizing the notion of oppositionality. I also demonstrate that the recent emergence of religious conservatism has forced QFF to reconfigure its position and find new tactics to negotiate with the confining spaces.     

Fragments of a Composite Identity: Aspects of Australian Nationalism in a Sports Setting1

I argue that it is erroneous to view nations as culturally homogeneous entities. Rather, all nations are riven by multiple divisions. What characterises a nation is that the people constituting it believe that they share a sameness with their co-nationals. So, the idea of cultural homogeneity is a myth that breathes life into nationalism: it is a cohering leitmotiv, a predicate of the ‘imagined community’ that can be subscribed to in different ways by people of diverse social locations and of disparate interests. Whereas most writers on nationalism write from a top-down perspective, I side with Hobsbawm in posing the question of how ‘ordinary’ people embrace a belonging to their nation. I maintain that there is no single, simple axis of national cohesion: rather, in any nation, there are multiple ways of identifying with and intuiting the collectivity. The emergence of the axioms of Australian nationhood, particularly with regard to how ideas of Australian distinctiveness emerged in counterpoint to British based discourses, is explored. I suggest that people ‘lock-in’ to these axioms through the symbology of specific events and situations. Attention is directed to the Stawell Easter Gift professional running carnival as an event that, amongst other things, provides occasions that enable participants to ‘lock-in’ to the meta-discourse of national identity.     

Nationalist Anxiety or the Fear of Losing Your Other

The nation of the nationalists is always conceived to be in crisis. There is always an other standing between them and ‘it’. ‘It’ is often the impossible goal of a ‘totally gratifying nation’. Within a psychoanalytic framework, gratifying this nation is perceived as a fantasy, an object-cause of desire (Lacan), that is, a practical impossibility that neverthless keeps the practitioner trying to reach it. Within such a framework the other standing between the nationalists and their goal becomes a necessary subjective construction which allows the conversion of the impossibility of the nationalist fantasy into deferred possibility. The crisis presented by nationalist thought as triggered by the presence of the other is in fact a mode of reproducing the nationalists' belief in themselves and their nation. The ‘real’ crisis is when nationalists ‘lose’ their other and are forced to face the impossibility of the desired nation. Such situations can be described as states of nationalist anxiety. This paper, based on research during the civil war in Lebanon, examines certain events where the Lebanese Christian Nationalists were faced with the threat of losing their Muslim other. The paper describes the states of anxiety generated by this ‘threat’ and the nature of the strategies the Christian militias deployed to bring their state of anxiety to an end.     

Desire Work: Producing Heterosexuality in South African Pentecostal Gay Men

Gay men in Cape Town, South Africa joined a Pentecostal ministry in an attempt to produce what they understood as ‘natural’ heterosexual attraction. In this article, I explore how these gay men try to form new selves through what I call ‘desire work’, or physical and emotional micropractices and discipline. Desire is not ‘natural’, but it is produced through a multitude of engagements with cultural norms, public life, political economies, and social forces. New selves are built through concerted bodily changes and comportment [Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], and although gay Pentecostal men shared this process, their success was limited. I understand desire work as a response to a larger context in which many Pentecostals are disaffected with the post-apartheid government and withdraw from politics as a result. Their fears of the uncertainties of democracy pushed them to engage in optimistic fantasies of heterosexual lives, which were not often realised [Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press].     

Faith on Trial: Blasphemy and ‘Lawfare’ in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article develops the argument that blasphemy trials occupy a pivotal role in ‘religion-making’ in post-1998 Indonesia. Examining a blasphemy trial on the island of Lombok in 2010, I argue that the process of democratisation has given civilian actors more opportunity to engage Indonesia’s blasphemy law, a process analysed in terms of ‘lawfare’. Examining the interplay of legal regulation and the campaign against ‘deviant’ religion launched by conservative Muslim groups, the article tracks the affective consequences of this regulation, showing how the blasphemy law inspires civilians to investigate suspected cases of heresy. While blasphemy trials purportedly protect religion from insult and foster religious order, this article argues that religion lawfare breeds suspicion and divisions among citizens.     

Knowing and the truth: Three histories of Daugo Island,Papua New Guinea

Courts of law in Melanesian countries, particularly in the aftermath of the colonial period, have attempted to accommodate ‘custom’. In Papua New Guinea they commonly hear land claims under terms of reference that acknowledge the wide variety of customs among the many ethno‐linguistic groups comprising the nation. A corollary of this liberalism is that, in theory, they admit ‘traditional evidence’ including legends and myths. Yet as courts of law they are required to apply some criteria of proof and to search for the ‘truth’ by examining the ‘facts’. A long‐running land case from Papua New Guinea and its aftermath raises interesting questions about what happens when oral history encounters these legal imperatives, and may help us appreciate why Melanesians often do not regard a court's decision as final.     

Belonging to the nation: generational change,identity and the Chinese diaspora

This study reviews developments in the ethnic and national identity of the descendants of migrants, taking ethnic Chinese as a case study. Our core question is why, in spite of debates worldwide about identity, exclusion and rights, do minority communities continue to suffer discrimination and attacks? This question is asked in view of the growing incidence in recent years of ‘racial’ conflicts between majority and minority communities and among minorities, in both developed and developing countries. The study examines national identity from the perspective of migrants' descendants, whose national identity may be more rooted than is often thought. Concepts such as ‘new ethnicities’, ‘cultural fluidity’, and ‘new’ and ‘multiple’ identities feature in this examination. These concepts highlight identity changes across generations and the need to challenge and reinterpret the meaning of ‘nation’ and to review problems with policy initiatives designed to promote nation-building in multi-ethnic societies.     

Beyond the cross and the crescent: plural identities and the Copts in contemporary Egypt

This paper examines the slow but steady transformation in how Coptic identity has been articulated and expressed since the mid-1990s. In the past, Copts were careful not to challenge a particular narrative of national unity, which formally included Copts in the Egyptian nation (‘religion is for God, and the nation is for all’), but which in practice imposed a kind of public invisibility on them. Today, a growing number of activists are seeking a public identity for Copts, a form of the ‘politics of recognition’ and the ‘right to difference’. This is a controversial approach within the Coptic community, as well as between the Copts and the Muslim majority and the Egyptian state, and to some extent has required new vehicles for Coptic self-organization and expression, outside the older ‘neo-millet’ institutions that had governed Coptic life for decades.     

History and ‘Mentawai’: Colonialism,Scholarship and Identity in the Rereiket,West Indonesia

This paper takes a critical look at the discursive construction of the identity of ‘the Mentaiwaians’ who are purported to inhabit the Mentawai islands in Western Indonesia. Out of a range of possible indigenous representations of identity ‘Mentawaian’ is the one that travellers and scholars universally use. I trace the formation of this representation in the very early literature on the islands authored by traders, travellers, scholars and missionaries. I then go on to examine the (hegemonic) effects of this on the way in which anthropologists have subsequently come to construct discursively the ‘culture’ of the ‘Mentawaians’. As an alternative, I propose that anthropological scholarship needs to take greater heed of the ways in which the local inhabitants construct their own identities. I briefly illustrate this through the example of my own work which describes a shifting and contextual construction of local identity in a particular locale on Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai islands.     

Hate groups targeting unauthorized immigrants in the US: discourses,narratives and subjectivation practices on their websites

The narratives and images on websites of US hate groups that oppose undocumented immigrants represent and reproduce discourses that contribute to the subject formation of group members, who feel ethically obliged to counter unauthorized immigration. Left alone by the government, which is seen as unreliable and uncaring of patriotic values, they position themselves as heroic saviours of the nation. We argue that these hate groups’ ‘games of truth’ develop in response to the perception that irregular immigration threatens specific social orders and values, for instance about citizenship, national identity and otherness. This article helps to understand the ways in which anti-immigrant narratives serve the functions of countering these threats and of asserting the group members’ ethical obligation as a form of care of the self. In other words, from a Foucaultian viewpoint, we interpret the problematizations of ‘illegal’ immigration as discursive practices for the subject formation of hate group members.     

Homophobia among doctors.

Homophobia creates stress for gay men and women. An interview study of 28 doctors, 20 gay and eight non-gay, was performed to assess whether homophobia is strong among the medical profession, the stress it causes, and whether the advent of AIDS and HIV infection has increased the stress. The doctors, recruited by word of mouth and by a letter in the medical and gay press, were asked about their own attitudes to homosexuality and AIDS. Only one (non-gay) doctor thought that there was no prejudice against gay doctors in the medical profession. The gay doctors certainly perceived prejudice, which they claimed caused them extra stress; the advent of AIDS had increased this stress to an extent. Doctors who had not openly declared themselves to be gay feared doing so because of the effect on their job prospects, but those who had declared themselves openly reported less stress than previously. Homophobia clearly exists within the medical profession. Non-gay doctors should use the power of the profession to challenge homophobia in the profession and in society. HIV infection could then be treated as a purely medical condition; sufferers would receive wider understanding and the pressures of extra workload could be more equally shared.     

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Power and Powerlessness of Transnational Narratives among Gay Martinican Men

In Martinique, self-identified gay men often tell each other stories about gay communities in other societies. France and Martinique are central characters in these stories but their presence is largely negative: life in the former is criticized for its economic or racial hardships and life in the latter is criticized for homophobia, hypocrisy, and smallness, creating a frustrating catch-22 for these men. However, in these narratives Quebec often emerges as an ideal destination of racial and sexual freedom. In this paper, I argue that Quebec is signified as utopic in terms that are antithetical and therefore profoundly connected to impressions of social life in France and Martinique. At the same time, however, I maintain that these narratives also reveal common threads in the African-pan-American diasporic experience. Furthermore, these men's experiences of "gay" life in other countries demonstrate their awareness of a "global gay" identity, albeit one that is commercially and ideologically centered in Euro-American societies, [homosexuality, Martinique, transnationalism, diaspora, race]     

Nations and Tribes ‘Within’: Emerging Aboriginal ‘Nationalisms’ in Katherine

Throughout Australia, many Aboriginal responses to the legislative and administrative pressures of the native title regime have been couched in a nation‐building idiom expressed through legally incorporated Aboriginal associations. The membership criteria of these umbrella associations are often derived from definitions of the ‘tribe’ or ‘language group’. Yet, in a kind of Balkanisation, those who see themselves as marginalised to positions of uncertainty on the peripheries of the nation often seek to establish their own independent corporations on the basis of exclusive ties to specific areas of land within it, in search of greater recognition and in competition for scarce resources. In Katherine, in the Northern Territory of Australia, the administrative and legislative gaze of the State, particularly the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, brought into focus a Jawoyn ‘tribe’, soon to express itself in the idiom of nationhood, closely followed by a Wardaman ‘tribe’ and ‘nation’. More recently, a native title gaze has now brought into focus ‘new’ configurations of kindred clusters, apparently located on the ‘peripheries' of the Jawoyn and Wardaman nations, and named and valued them as Dagoman. This paper discusses the processes associated with an emerging, but seemingly already fragmenting, Dagoman nation. It argues that divergent and changing Aboriginal subjectivities disrupt what might be seen as mimetic processes as Aboriginal people employ strategies of transforming essentialist representations of their collective selves in changing conditions of possibility.     

Max Weber in the thought of Edward Shils (1910–1995) and Ernest Gellner (1925–1995): the paradox of two Weberian approaches to the understanding of nations and nationalism?

This article traces the paradoxical impact of Weber's oeuvre on two major scholars of nationalism, Ernest Gellner and Edward Shils. Both these scholars died in 1995, leaving behind a rich corpus of writings on the nation and nationalism, much of which was inspired by Max Weber. The paradox is that although neither scholar accepted Weber's sceptical attitude to the concept of ‘nation’, they both used his other major concepts, such as ‘rationality’, ‘disenchantment’, ‘unintended consequences’, the ‘ethic of responsibility’ and ‘charisma’, in their very analyses of the nation and nationalism. And they both saw, each in his own way, the nation and nationalism as constitutive elements of modern societies. However, the paradox ceases being a paradox if one sees the integration, by Shils and Gellner, of concepts of the nation and of nationalism in the analysis of modernity, as a development of Weber's ideas.     

Anthropocene anthropology: reconceptualizing contemporary global change

The Anthropocene is the scientific label given by earth scientists to the current epoch of unprecedented anthropogenic planetary change. The Anthropocene is also a political label designed to call attention to this change and evolving notions of agency and responsibility in contemporary life. This article critically explores what I call ‘the Anthropocene idea’ and the condition of ‘Anthropocene spaces’ through selected anthropological writing about recent planetary change and through analysis of current events in a specific ‘vulnerable’ location. By considering recent events in The Bahamas, I arrive at an orientation that I call simply Anthropocene anthropology. Rather than advocating for the creation of a new subfield of research, this mode of engagement offers an open‐ended conceptual framework for the critical examination of the Anthropocene idea as it influences the symbolic and material realities of contemporary Anthropocene spaces.     

A ‘Great Affective Divide’: How Gay Singaporeans Overcome Their Double Alienation

Since its independence in 1965, Singapore has been trying to unify its diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities under one coherent national identity. Queer Singaporeans, however, suffer from a double alienation from the nation. While socially ostracised by the existing anti-sodomy Section 377A and the queer-unfriendly state policies that it justifies, they also suffer from that inability to identify with the nation called the ‘Great Affective Divide’. In this essay, I aim to achieve two goals. Firstly, I invoke the idea of cultural citizenship as I ethnographically investigate the efforts that queer Singaporeans make to overcome their national estrangement, particularly an event called ‘Pink Dot’. While such efforts do not receive universal support from queers, they are essential in the development of a better understanding of it means to be citizens of Singapore. Secondly, rather than wanting to remain socially marginal and critical of the norm, queers actually express their desire for national inclusion through Pink Dot. Yet, I argue that it would be erroneous to read this desire as ‘homonationalism’. As such, Pink Dot provides a fertile example that counters the conventional view within Queer Studies that queers always resist the hetero-patriarchal norm.     

Postcoloniality,National Identity,Globalisation and the Simulacra of the Real

The focus of this paper is a famous boys' boarding school in the North Indian city of Dehra Dun. The Doon School was founded in 1935 and was soon hailed by a wide cross section of post-colonial Indian intelligentsia as the site for the production of the ‘modern’ Indian citizen. The discussion below suggests that contemporary social analysis needs to focus on specific sites of the production of the discourses of the nation and citizenship rather than simply announce their dissolution as an ‘inevitable’ by-product of ‘globalisation’; this seems to be the stand taken by certain strands of theorisation in the so-called globalisation debate and in particular versions of cultural studies. I argue that rather than having simply dissolved, the ‘national’ emotion, at least in the Indian context, may have been transformed into the production of ‘post-coloniality’ as a differentiating category to distinguish the ‘progressive’ populations of the nation-state from its ‘backward’ counterparts. I employ Baudrillard's concept of the ‘real’ in order to argue for situated analyses of the contemporary global condition where analyses of the relationship between nation-states and of the asymmetries within them continue to be important political tasks.     

Manikin‐Ship: Value‐added relatedness in Vietnamese museums, 1996–2005

Objects are telling of identity and difference, through possession, exchange, and display, but this dynamic must be historicised and socially situated. In this article, I focus on the signification of ethnicity in Vietnamese museums, particularly on an apparent distinction between historically ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ matter. The earliest displays responded to the previous hegemony of French colonial significations. Subsequent national exhibits consistently enable Vietnam through assemblies of objects and images, but suggest—when examined over time—fundamentally different configurations of the nation, ethnicity, gender, and historicity. Object assemblies, where a centrepiece signifies the surrounding objects, indicate repeated prospecting for new social assemblages, most recently situating Vietnam in post‐Cold War networks through the Southeast Asian kinship implied in the nation’s ethnic diversity.     

From whiteness to diversity: crossing the racial threshold in bicentennial Argentina

This article examines recent transformations on the discourses of race and nation in bicentennial Argentina, which have shifted from the notion of a fundamentally white nation to an assertion of its racial and cultural diversity. I examine the production of race in contemporary institutional and non-institutional practices that challenge the discourses of modernity according to which Argentina is a white, homogenous and Europeanized nation. The article focuses on a set of cultural manifestations involving Japanese Argentines that – as non-traditional actors in the racial and national stages and as ‘desirable’ immigrants – reveal some inherent fissures in the current official narrative that ostensibly progresses from homogeneity to diversity, and from exclusion to inclusion. By observing the performativity of race and a non-constructivist understanding of race embedded within these cultural manifestations, I argue that the newly multicultural nation continues to inherit its mechanisms of racial production from the modern nation.