Rannie Queer of Methodologies

This week, I found the reading by Puar particularly interesting, especially its discussion of US exceptionalism and queerness. Puar describes how narratives of Muslim sexualities by the West cast Muslim culture (really, the prisoners at Abu Ghraib) as simultaneously repressive and perverse. The US, by contrast, is seen as the beacon of freedom and self-determination. What this process is ultimately doing, is othering the Muslim culture and the prisoners. This reminded me strongly of research of violence against women in developing countries. Many scholars and policy makers only focus their efforts on developing countries, trying to understand how and why domestic violence and sexual assault happens there. However, what often ends up happening is just reification of differences and othering of the culture of these women.

Puar discusses how the queer narratives surrounding Abu Ghraib actually other Muslim culture and blame it for how prisoners react to torture. The same process can be seen for violence against women in the third world. Somehow, culture only becomes an explanatory variable when doing with other and exotic cultures. One clear example of this is how many studies in the United States focus on psychopathology to understand violence. In this way, men who batter their wives are seen as sick individuals and women who don’t leave abusive partners are either weak or sick for staying with them. However, when similar studies are done in developing countries, cultural processes and norms are often used to explain violent behavior. In  a way, women in other cultures are blamed less for being victims, but their culture is also othered and their autonomy is undermined. Of course, there are cultural factors in the US that enable violence against women, such as privacy of the home, but these are rarely discussed. Puar also discusses how the West has effectively taken an Orientalist view of Muslim culture and problematizes its relationship between queer identities and queer behaviors. When pointing out problems in other cultures, you end up ignoring your own problems.

Puar also put forward the idea of necropolitics by Mbembe, but how it has been focused on the male and Universal suicide bomber. That suicide bomber has no context given to his life and his motivations may seem pure. However, when a woman assumes the role of a suicide bomber, her behavior and attire must both be feminized as well as some emotional distress or irrationality used to explain her behavior. Why is it that the female suicide bomber requires a motive and is portrayed as somewhat broken and frail, when that is not the case for a male bomber?