Pundits, policymakers, and even academics often treat the Middle East as “exceptional”—a region of primordial violence and war, stuck in premodern social dynamics. But such conflict is not unique to the region—the United States and Europe have, of course, fought in multiple wars, though often not on their own soil. It is because of these assumptions that news coverage of the war in Ukraine is viewed with justifiable shock, but the media often treats violence in Iraq or Syria as relatively unremarkable—the Middle East is supposed to be used to war.
In this episode of Order from Ashes, the scholars Karma R. Chávez and Maya Mikdashi talk about moving beyond the common exceptionalizing frameworks that surround region, gender, and sexuality. They argue that, if straight and queer sexualities are analyzed together—rather than treated as if the condition of LGBTQ minorities is solely its own separate issue—observers can better understand how state and social power operate. Queer or marginalized genders and sexualities are policed or controlled, but so too are straight sexualities and all genders, in ways that are fundamental to how state power operates. The broader implication of their analysis: when we stop seeing the Middle East as exceptionally authoritarian, backward, and violent—and stop seeing the United States and Europe as particularly democratic and civilized—the transnational contours of war and power become clearer.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants:
Citizenship Finale: Learning, from Protests to Movements
Citizenship: Skill-Building, from Protests to Movements
Citizenship: Police Reform Is a Global Industry
Citizenship: Who’s Afraid of Gender?
Citizenship: Are We Really in an Age of Militias?
Citizenship: Gender, Religion, and Militias
Citizenship Introduction: A Global Crisis in Citizenship
War in Ukraine, Pain in Syria
Making Lemonade from the Abraham Accords
Closing Syria’s Border to Aid
Syrians Are Going Hungry
Iran and Saudi Start to Talk
Thaw Between Turkey and Egypt
Yemen’s Wars at a Turning Point
Rethinking American Assumptions about the Middle East
Egypt’s Revolution at 10
War Comes Homes
America’s Attempted Coup
Nature and National Security in the Middle East
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