*Call for Abstracts for AAA Annual Meeting, Denver, November 18-22, 2015*
*Panel Entitled: "Cultures of Difference: The Everyday Makings of
Heteronormativity"*
Any attempt to anthropologically study heteronormativity involves multiple
challenges, both theoretically and ethnographically. Works on globalization
have suggested that there has been a growth in people all over the world
identifying with Western models of sexuality, and has tracked the growth of
gay scenes and other markers of identity (Altman 1996a, 1996b; Boellstorff,
2005, 2008). However, theory and ethnography has begun to trouble sexuality
as a point of reference in certain parts of the world, and has also put
under question pervasive divisions between the non-normative (homosexual,
LGBT, queer) and the heterosexual/normative. Works on non-Western contexts
questions the hetero-homo binary, and problematizes it as a form of Western
hegemony (Massad 2008; Puar 2007; Boyce, 2006, 2007, 2008; Boellstorff
2011; Khanna, 2009 ) There has been less critical attention applied to the
terms heterosexuality or heternormativity in this literature. Following
Jackson, we take as our departure the idea that, 'heterosexuality...is not a
singular monolithic entity- it exists in many variants.' (2006: 105). In
studying sexuality from a queer perspective it becomes possible to take
apart the mundane makings of (hetero)normativities, and begin to analyze
the cracks and divisions within. In a context where both sexuality and
normativity have become questioned, how might we understand institutions
and practices that take at their heart the relationship between men and
women as gendered persons?
We suggest one way to do this is to look in two places. Firstly, what
Judith Butler (1990) calls the "heterosexual matrix", which refers to the
socially constructed relationship between sex (i.e. anatomy), gender (i.e.
identity/subjectivity), and sexual desire. And secondly, Lauren Berlant's
concept "institutions of intimacy" sheds light to the makings of particular
desires, aspirations, and also narratives "about something to be shared."
(1998:281). In other words, heterosexual culture simultaneously
institutionalizes its narrations and normalcies, so that it operates in a
way towards preserving its own coherency. Indeed, "sex, gender and
sexuality are the product of a set of interactions with material and
symbolic condition, mediated through language and representation" (Moore
1994). Thus, ethnographic enquiries are able to look closer at normalcies,
institutions and practices that involve and create hugely diverse
relationships between men and women (e.g. marriage, dating, consumer
practices etc.)
In this light, we suggest that, in order to understand the complexity of
heteronormative social relations, it is important to examine ordinary
makings of heteronormativity and other normativities. Kathleen Stewart
(2007) proposes that the ordinary realm of everyday life is quite
affective, yet looks so deeply banal that we often fail to recognize its
complexity and its potency. Yet, "its very banality calls us to understand
the technologies that produce its ordinariness" (Berlant and Warner 1998:
549). For this aim, we aim to further develop a conversation between the
theories on ordinariness, banality and everyday life and those on gender
and sexuality, with particular focus on heteronormativity.
This panel represents an attempt to discuss the ordinary makings of
heteronormativity in order a) to contribute to the term itself, and b) to
work out how it might be operationalised as a topic for ethnography.
With this, we aim to ask the following questions:
* How, as anthropologists, should we ethnographically approach the makings
of heterosexuality?
* What are the everyday makings of heteronormativity and heterosexuality
across the world?
* How does heterosexuality work in everyday contexts? What institutions
does it involve and how are normalcies produced?
* How is heterosexual made normal in a context where it didn't previously
exist? How does it fix ideas of relationality that are not necessarily
related to sexuality?
* If heterosexuality is about normalcies and the institutions, then isn't
it also a way of knowing the world?
These questions are not exhaustive, and we welcome ethnographically
grounded work that specifically examines the makings of heteronormativity
from a broad range of geographical settings.
Please send abstracts of approximately *250 words* to Sertaç Sehlikoglu (
[log in to unmask]) and Matthew McGuire ([log in to unmask]) by the *8th of April
2015*.
*References*
Butler, Judith
1990 Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. *In* Performing Feminisms: Feminist
Critical Theory and Theatre. S.-E. Case, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
Jackson, Stevi
2006 Gender, sexuality and heterosexuality: The complexity
(and limits) of heteronormativity. Feminist theory 7(1):105-121.
Massad, Joseph A
2008 Desiring Arabs: University of Chicago Press.
Moore, Henrietta L.
1994 A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and
Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Puar, Jasbir
2007 Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times:
Duke University Press.
Stewart, Kathleen
2007 Ordinary Affects. United States of America: Duke
University Press.
Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu
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