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Subjects of Rights and Subjects of Cruelty: The Production of an Islamic Backlash against Homosexuality in Turkey

Perverse Politics? Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, Multiplicity

ISBN: 978-1-78635-074-9, eISBN: 978-1-78635-073-2

Publication date: 30 March 2016

Abstract

Departing from Turkish national debates around Islam, national belonging, and homosexuality during 2008–2011, this paper shows how “LGBT rights” discourses ultimately worked to position Muslim headscarf activists as against LGBT activists by rendering complex positions that do not follow easy “for vs. against” LGBT rights political formulas as “homophobic.” In return, this foreclosed potential solidarities differently injured citizens could have formed against increasing neoliberal state violence. I show that the multitude of Muslim women’s positions on the issue of LGBT rights complicates easy religious/secular binaries and illuminates how it is not only human rights discourses but also their “Western” critiques that travel transnationally. This story also contributes to current debates on postsecularism by illustrating how the same national context can house both liberal rights frameworks that can be used against pious Muslim subjects, and a monopolization of a definition of Islam for state power. Finally, I offer “politics of cruelty” and “right to sin” as alternative frameworks for imagining social justice outside of liberal rights-based politics.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

This piece went through many iterations. I would like to thank Neda Atanasoski, Héctor Carrillo, Steven Epstein, Julie Hua, Sunaina Maira, Ann Orloff, and Raka Ray for their thought companionship and critical feedback at various stages, without which it would have never found its current shape. I am also thankful to the Perverse Politics working group and PPST anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Citation

Savcı, E. (2016), "Subjects of Rights and Subjects of Cruelty: The Production of an Islamic Backlash against Homosexuality in Turkey", Perverse Politics? Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, Multiplicity (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 159-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920160000030005

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited