Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures

This book traces how ideas about sexuality and gender have been constructed and subverted throughout history in Islamic societies. Starting from the premise that the very concepts of 'Near and Middle East' originate from Eurocentric apprehensions of the region, the book avoids imposing Western sexual categories on the different countries under consideration. Instead it highlights the multiple notions of sexuality and gender that have always circulated in the Islamicate world. Taking a chronological approach, and spanning case studies from the 9th to the 21st centuries, the book includes contributions on philology, literature, anthropology, history, and politics to showcase the plurality of discourses on sexuality and gender and how they interconnect. The first part of the book examines how gender categories were constructed, discussed and challenged from the Abbasid to the Ottoman period. This section looks at language, law, medicine and to understand topics such as masculinity and femininity in religious and legal medieval texts; effeminate men in medieval literature; and ideas about passive and active sexual roles in the Ottoman period. The second part looks at literary and cinematic Arabic cultural production to reveal how a less fluid gender binary, constructed in terms of man and woman, came about with the European influence. The third part comprises contributions from the social sciences and builds on feminist historiography and social anthropology to understand how people define themselves, from single mothers in Egypt to queer Palestinians living in Israel. Each chapter questions sexual categories by historicizing the notions of masculinity, femininity and what is in between, and glimpsing what different sexual norms have meant for people in the Middle East.

A wonderfully rich and varied interdisciplinary collection, including both historical and contemporary perspectives, that provides us with a glimpse of desire by highlighting the plurality of meaning and practices linked to gender and sexuality in the Middle East.

Auteur
Aymon Kreil is Assistant Professor for the Anthropology of the Middle East at Ghent University, Belgium. He worked before at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Lucia Sorbera isChair of the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney, Australia. Serena Tolino is Associate Professor in Islamic/Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Previously she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Texte du rabat

What have different ideas about sex and gender meant for people throughout the history of the Middle East and North Africa? This book traces sex and desire in Muslim cultures through a collection of chapters that span the 9th to 21st centuries. Looking at spaces and periods where sexual norms and the categories underpinning them emerge out of multiple subjectivities, the book shows how people constantly negotiate the formulation of norms, their boundaries and their subversion. It demonstrates that the cultural and political meanings of sexualities in Muslim cultures - as elsewhere - emerge from very specific social and historical contexts.

The first part of the book examines how people constructed, discussed and challenged sexual norms from the Abbasid to the Ottoman period. The second part looks at literary and cinematic Arab cultural production as a site for the construction and transgression of gender norms. The third part builds on feminist historiography and social anthropology to question simplistic dichotomies and binaries. Each of the contributions shows how understanding of sexualities and the subjectivities that evolve from them are rooted in the mutually-constitutive relationships between gender and political power. In identifying the plurality of discourses on desires, the book goes beyond the dichotomy of norm and transgression to glimpse what different sexual norms have meant at different times across the Middle East.

Contenu
Acknowledgements Note on Transliterations and Translations Introduction. The Many Names of Desire: On the Study of Sexual Practices, Norms and Binaries in the Middle East, Aymon Kreil, Lucia Sorbera and Serena Tolino Part I. Who's Who: Beyond the Gender Binary 1. Locating Discourses on the Gender Binary (and Beyond) in Pre-modern Islamicate Societies, Serena Tolino 2. Illusions of Androgyny: Crossdressing Women (Ghulamiyyat) in Abbasid Society, Johannes Thomann 3. Contesting Masculinity in Pre-Modern Arab Societies. Intoxication, Desire and Antinomian Mysticism, Danilo Marino 4. Three Genders, Two Sexualities: the Evidence of Ottoman Erotic Terminology, Irvin Cemil Schick Part II. Subverting the Sexual Norm in Modern Arab Cultural Productions 5. Eros and Etiquette Reflections on the Ban of a Central Theme in Nineteenth Century Arab Writings, Nadia Al-Bagdadi 6. Women's Literature as Counter-Narrative in Ba'thist Iraq?, Achim Rohde 7. Framing the Closet: Gay Men in Egyptian Cinema in the 1970s, Koen M. Van Eynde Part III: Sexuality, Power and Resilience in the Middle East and North Africa Today 8. Living Archives of the Egyptian Human Rights Movement: the Political Biography of Aida Seif al-Dawla, Lucia Sorbera 9. Sex Work in Tangier and the Emergence of New Youthful Subjectivities, Mériam Cheikh 10. The Straight Story Challenging Heteronormativity in Beirut, Erica Li Lundqvist 11. Palestinian Queers and the Debate on Sexual Identity and Religious Normativity, Nijmi Edres Note on Contributors Indexes Endorsements