“Queering Borders”: War, Diaspora, Gender And Sexuality Among Afghans In The United States
2019-08
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“Queering Borders”: War, Diaspora, Gender And Sexuality Among Afghans In The United States
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2019-08
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How did a nation known for a gender-neutral language and celebration of same-sex love through literature and poetry became a masculinist landscape as it learned to live through wars, and how do these wars continue in people’s lives thousands of miles away from their homeland? How was the sense of community and safety created by Afghans who settled in the United States during the political turmoil of the Cold War crushed by the US’s “War on Terror”? How did the lives of Afghans become engulfed by a continuous regime of surveillance that produces unsettling conditions; temporary and fragile homes marked by frequent violence; subjects defined by mistrust, anxieties and fears, and ultimately vigilant masculinities where the surveilled subjects surveil themselves? In this dissertation, I address these and many other entangled questions through stories of people who have lived through multiple wars and displacements, and who have actively refused imposed borders. Through these stories of lived experiences and border crossings, this work asks that we rethink rigid meanings of wars, diasporas and their complex relationships with gender and sexuality, while also complicating the imaginary borders between the researcher and research subjects. My particular contribution is a rich ethnographic study of gendered subjectivities among war diasporas. I argue that it is not possible to adequately understand the norms and performances of gender and sexuality and the profound ways in which they shape the lived experiences of diasporas, without first learning to listen carefully to the nuanced stories of these diasporic communities. These narratives offer complex ways to understand performances of gender and sexuality in the context of war and displacement. Grappling with these stories and narratives of many Afghans in diaspora, I use the pages of this dissertation to queer stable borders of nations, war, peace, gender and sexuality both methodologically and conceptually. Through a critical ethnography of war, diaspora and performances of gender and sexuality, this work strives to become deeply attentive to a wide variation of experiences and differences that accompany people’s lives as they become displaced, as they cross borders, and as they form a diaspora out of these ever-unfolding events and processes. I hope that this dissertation will help to strengthen the foundation for interdisciplinary scholars who are interested in advancing this critical and desperately needed research.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2019. Major: Political Science. Advisors: Raymond Duvall, Richa Nagar. 1 computer file (PDF); iv, 193 pages.
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Munhazim, Ahmad Qais. (2019). “Queering Borders”: War, Diaspora, Gender And Sexuality Among Afghans In The United States. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/259778.
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