Islamicate sexualities: translations across temporal geographies of desire

When I heard the Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil in London in 2008 I was puzzled by his remark linking the French with cross-dressing. Sahar Amer’s paper in this anthology partly explains the remark. She describes how cross-dressing appears in much Arab literature, linked to identity, status and power. Partly continuing the tradition of Arab homoerotic (including female–female) literature, female cross-dressing could be seen as ‘normal’ and culturally ‘logical’, in that wanting to ‘be’ male implies acceptance of male superiority. But there are also considerations of anonymity, escape, safety and adopted identity – sexual, social, cultural, national. The ‘disguise’ aspects of cross-dressing are reflected in French and Spanish literature – Leyla Rouhi’s paper cites ‘Don Quixote’ – and in Shakespeare, although these reflections misunderstand or neuter the original Arab significances, which challenge historical and ideological power structures. Amer’s paper is one of nine in this anthology, originating in a May 2003 Radcliffe Seminar organised by the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The seminar attempted to broaden the established disciplines of Middle Eastern studies by linking conventional areas of interest to comparative literature studies and queer theory. Participants came from a variety of backgrounds – including Arabic, Persian, French, Spanish, Christian, and Islamic. The term ‘Islamicate’ was adopted parallel to the term ‘Italianate’, indicating a combination of geographical, cultural, linguistic and literary contributions to understandings of Islam and the Islamic world that are not solely religious or theological. One specific aim was to link western ‘sexuality’ (science of sexuality) scholarship with a, possibly theoretical, eastern counter of ‘erotica’ (art of love), a polarity contested by some contributors. This theme, of how terminology both helps and constrains, runs through many of the contributions. Participants were invited to explore male and female sexual desire; power relations; and cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. Most have close readings of literary texts or genres, with intriguing revelations and subject matter. The opening and closing papers, by Valerie Traub and Dina Al-Kassim, take a wider view of the topics and themes, looking at the wood rather than the trees – the book rather than the chapters. Traub refers to ‘the intricate dance between erotic desires, acts and identities’ (p. 13), indicating the concerns explored. Traub sees the linkage of queer studies and the Arab–Persian nucleus of the Islamic world as potentially provocative or contradictory. She and others (cf. Epps) question whether queer studies is relevant to any cultures other than that of the United States– United Kingdom, where the discipline originated. Rouhi explains how in Iberia the notion of ‘outing’ refers to an individual’s actual or perceived Moorish or Jewish roots.