(Dis)-Intersecting Intersectionality in the Time of Queer Syrian Refugee-ness in Lebanon

Main author: Allouche, Sabiha
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-29971
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
description This paper heeds Jasbir Puar’s call to supplement an intersectional analysis with an exercise of assemblage when examining identity politics. It argues that asylum organizations’ unwillingness to account for the interplay between the receiving state (in this case Lebanon) and the lived reality of (Syrian) LGBT refugees results in a “one size fits all” narrative that forces the latter into a more visible and potentially death-instigating corporeality. The interplay between refugees and the receiving state is summed up in the elitist discourse of a “Syrian neo-invasion” that results in the revival of an “authentic Lebanese masculinity.” Whereas the Syrian refugee is vilified as “rapist” in a heterosexual context, they are emasculated as “necessarily bottom” in a same-sex one. This discourse is hegemonized through its emergence at the intersection of sect, political loyalty, and class. At the empirical level, this paper draws on narratives recollected during fieldwork in order to show the limits of an analysis that takes identity politics as given, as seen in asylum organization’s westernimbued “fixed” interpretations of what LGBT identities should “look like” and “act like.”
format Journal Article
author Allouche, Sabiha
author_facet Allouche, Sabiha
authorStr Allouche, Sabiha
author_letter Allouche, Sabiha
title (Dis)-Intersecting Intersectionality in the Time of Queer Syrian Refugee-ness in Lebanon
publisher Heinrich Böll Stiftung Middle East
publishDate 2017
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29971/