Geography and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

In February 2007 a group of about fifty Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) and Immigrant rights organizations released the first national "Queer and Transgender Vision Statement on immigration reform in the US." The statement was meant to create a set of guiding principles that addressed the intersections of queerness and immigration reform while highlighting the voices of LGBTQ immigrant rights organizers. However, the very process of its creation was fraught with contradictions and challenges that are inherent in these intersections. In this paper I will situate the conflicts and agreements that emerged during the drafting of the statement within a range of rhetorical frameworks which exist within both the immigrant rights and LGBTQ rights movements. Claims to sexual and economic citizenship (marriage, rights of tax paying citizens) within the neoliberal state structure is the dominant trope within both these movements, along with the trope of 'family reunion' (rights of US citizens to sponsor their immigrant partners, protection of the heteronormative immigrant family). Critical voices that seek to shift such normalizing tropes by highlighting struggles of LGBTQ immigrants of color, poor LGBTQ communities, and undocumented immigrants exist within both these movements. In conclusion I contend that in organizing strategies of LGBTQ immigrants which attend to the intersections of race, class, gender, (dis)ability, and sexuality, while privileging the voices of the undocumented and non-normative families lie possibilities of disrupting the neoliberal tropes of equality within the LGBTQ rights as well as the immigrant rights movement.

The politics of “differential consciousness” and “Queer Diasporas” as elucidated by Chela Sandoval and Gayatri Gopinath respectively, has come to define a large terrain of feminist and Queer organizing (often loosely defined as “US third world feminisms” and “Queers of Color” critique) in the US/West currently. In this article I deploy these key concepts to illuminate the resistance mounted against neoliberal citizenship discourses by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer (LGBTQ) identified (im)migrants of color in the US. I will situate the conflicts and agreements generated during the drafting of the first national "Queer and Transgender Vision Statement on Immigration Reform in the US” within a range of rhetorical frameworks which exist within both the transnational (im)migrant rights and LGBTQ rights movements. Claims to sexual and economic citizenship (marriage, rights of taxpaying citizens) within the neoliberal state structure is the dominant trope within both these movements, along with the trope of 'family reunion' (rights of US citizens to sponsor their immigrant partners, protection of the heteronormative immigrant family). In conclusion, I contend that within the migration patterns, organizing rhetoric, and community organizing strategies of LGBT (im)migrants of color lie possibilities of disrupting neoliberal security regimes and tropes of sexual citizenship.

Debanuj DasGupta, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University; Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu

Rationale:
This panel engages in a conversation about deploying feminisms within multiple registers: non-governmental organizations, mixed status queer immigrant collectives, documentary films and same-sex support groups. How does the work of gender queer theories, feminist understandings of human rights, and social activism resonate with the lives of marginalized collectives? This panel offers four perspectives on the ways feminisms reshape our understanding of rights, identity and agency across transnational spaces

Sponsor:
Deploying Feminisms
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Sun, Nov 13 - 8:00am - 9:15am  Building/Room: Level 1, Atlanta 1 - AV
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Deploying feminisms transnationally: in conversations with NGOs, filmmakers, queer immigrant collectives and same-sex support groups.
Session Participants:
The ‘Right’ Image: Representing Women’s Rights in Documentary Film
*Swati Bandi (State University of New York, Buffalo)
“Ami Samakami”: Same-sex desires and community in Kolkata
*Niharika Banerjea (University of Southern Indiana)
Extraterrestrial Queers Fly Over the Equality Rainbow: Reflections on the Politics of Queerness, Immigration Reform & Radical Love.
*Debanuj Dasgupta (The Ohio State University)
Engendering the non-governmental organization movement in India
*Raili Roy (The Ohio State University)
Moderator: Srirupa Prasad (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Abstract:
none.

Queerly Precarious; documenting the politics of survival and place making within queer immigrant collectives in US/global cities
Debanuj DasGupta (Ohio State University, United States)
Much has been written about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) organizing within US/global cities such as San-Francisco, New York, and Chicago, yet not much has been documented about the organizing trajectories of LGBT identified immigrants. LGBT identified immigrants live and organize at the intersections of largely heteronormative migrant spaces and dominant US LGBT spaces. Such intersections render LGBT immigrants invisible rather precarious within the highly securitized US nation state. This paper documents fragment of such precarity and attempts toward claiming a livable life by LGBT identified immigrant collectives in New York City during and after 9/11. The paper focuses upon political documents such as the first national queer and transgender vision statement on immigration reform and the cultural production “Tara’s Crossing.” The cultural production documents the abuse faced by an Indo-Guyanese transgender refugee within US detention facility while awaiting decision on her asylum application. In conclusion, I contend that the politics of survival and place making within LGBT identified immigrant collectives allow us to reimagine US/global cities such as New York City as sites of continuous collective political labor and precarious living.

Cartographies of Friendship, Desire, and Home; Notes on surviving neoliberal security regimes.



Abstract: In this auto-ethnographic essay I shed light upon processes of racialization and sexualization which work to construct the figure of the disabled, diseased, alien. I shed light upon global circuits of migration, pre and post 9/11 US national security practices by retracing lived experiences of mine from Kolkata, India and post 9/11 New York City. The narrative journeys to sites such as HIV clinics, S&M chambers, and hospital rooms in hopes of undersatnding collective claims to life being made by those marked as in-between figures of life and death within transnational circuits of labor, capital, ability regimes, and national security practices.



Author Name: Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student & Graduate Teaching Associate
Academic Affiliation: The Department of Women's, Gender& Sexuality Studies.The Ohio State University.

Dis/Abling Heteronormativity: Reading Queer Places, Practices, and Lives through a Disability Studies Framework.

is scheduled on Saturday, 4/13/2013, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Emerald Bay, Westin, Third Floor

Sponsorship(s):
Disability Specialty Group

Organizer(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University

Chair(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago

Abstract(s):

8:00 AM  Author(s): *Andrew Gorman-Murray - University of Western Sydney

Abstract Title: Queer domicide? LGBT displacement and home loss in disaster impact, response and recovery

8:15 AM  Author(s): *Marian Mustoe - Eastern Oregon University

Abstract Title: Trans Substantiation:  Integrating the transgender experience within the religious political landscape of Anchorage, Alaska.

8:30 AM  Author(s): *Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student - The Ohio State University

Abstract Title: (Dis)ability Regimes and the Precarious Queer Migrant Body

8:45 AM  Discussant: Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University



Discussant(s):
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University

Session Description: This session critically examines queer places, practices, and lives through the lens of disability/crip theory. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject. Queer and disability scholarship(and activisms ) "share a will to remake the world, given the ways in which injustice, oppression, and hierarchy are built (sometimes quite literally) into the structures of contemporary society" (McRuer, 2012). Queering space calls for questioning the supposedly stable relationship between sex, gender, sexual desire and sexual practice (Browne, Lim, and Brown,2009). Similarly, disability studies calls for re-examining notions of a functional body, and questions the stable relationships between gender, desire, and bodily abilities (Bruggemann,2009; Mcruer 2006). The disabled body is a queer body, since it is always located outside the norm (functional body). Further, a disabled body is always read as either an asexual body or a body with improper sexuality (Bruggemann, 2009; McRuer 2006). This panel interrogates regimes of racialized, sexualized, gendered (hetro)normativity and citizenship by centering a (dis)ability studies approach within queer studies. The presenters interrogate regimes of inclusion/exclusion, visibility/invisibility along with attempts of life-making by bodies which inhabit crippling intersections of race, class, (trans)gender, sexuality and non-urban locations.

References:

Browne,K. Lim, J. & Brown,G. 2009. Eds. Geographies of Sexualities:Theory, Practices, and Politics. Surrey, England & Burlington, USA: Asshgate Publishing Ltd.

Bruggemann. J,B. 2009. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. NYU Press.

Mc.Ruer. R. 2006. Crip Theory:Signs of Queerness and Disability.
---------------2012. "Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism" in A New Queer Agenda. Scholar&Feminist Online. Issue 10.1-10.2 | Fall 2011/Spring 2012. Appears at http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/cripping-queer-politics-or-the-dangers-of-neoliberalism/ Accessed on 10/23/2012.

Intimate Subjects, Oblique Objects, and Viral Intimacies: Trans/national Scales, Performativity and the Aesthetics of Queer Activisms in India.

Panel Organizer: Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu


Discussant: Dr. Niharika Bannerjea. Associate Professor. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies. University of Southern Indiana.
nbanerjea@usi.edu

Presenters:

Kaustavi Sarkar. Doctoral Student. Department of Dance. The Ohio State University.
Mahari Then and Now, Queering Performativity in Odissi

Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.

Viral Friendships,  (Dis)embodied Intimacies, and Local Activisms: Situating bodies and pleasures among friendship network of delinquent young men in Kolkata, India.

Dr. Paul Boyce. Lecturer. Department of Anthropology. University of Sussex.

Subject, Objects, and Secrets: Misrecognizing Same-Sex Sexualities in West Bengal as a Viewpoint for Anthropological Ignorance in Modernity.

Rohit DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. London College of Communication.
  Queering cyberspace in Kolkata, India.


Dr. Aniruddha Dutta. Assistant Professor. Gender and Women’s Studies. The University of Iowa.

Queer Globalization and the De/Construction of Scale: Metro centrism, Structural Violence and Resistance in Eastern India

Panel Abstract:
Recent approaches to Queer shift from naming intersectional identities towards an understanding of affective assemblages (Puar, 2005; Rai 2009), oblique orientations (Ahmed, 2006), critique of liberal notions of freedom and ethics (Dave, 2012; Winnubst, 2008; Reddy, 2012), and intimate dependencies (Povinelli, 2011; Shah 2012).  Intimacies across screen/body interfaces between strangers, transnational activist rhetoric, and embodied aesthetics are brought to bear upon the oblique orientations of post-Marxian West Bengal, and it’s neighboring state of Orissa. The panel proposes moving away from global gay imaginaries of liberal rights based legal activisms towards small towns, resistance against violence upon aberrant bodies, and viral friendship networks. While a lot has been written about the ethics, and everyday practices of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/and Transgender activism, which hover around the state and juridical domain in India (Bhaskaran, 2006; Boyce, 2012; Banerjea and DasGupta, 2013; Dave, 2012; Narrain and Bhan, 2006; Srivastava, 2004), this panel coheres around circuits of NGO activism, friendships across researcher/ activist positions, internet encounter between strangers, and the embodied aesthetics of queer performativity in India. Collectively the panelists disidentify with the “here and now” (Munoz, 2009) of liberal gay modernities, obliquely orienting ourselves towards critical post/colonial, then and there of future intimacies.
Reference:
Banerjea, N & DasGupta,D. 2013. “States of Desire: Homonationalism and LGBT Activism in India” Sanhati. June, 06. 2013. Appears at http://sanhati.com/articles/7185/ Accessed on 12/15/13
Bhaskaran, S. 2004. Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Boyce, P. 2012. “The Ambivalent Sexual Subject: HIV Prevention and Male to Male Intimacy in India” in Understanding Global Sexualities: New Frontiers. Edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore and Richard Parker. New York & London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
Dave,N. 2012. Queer Activism in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Narrain, A & Bhan, G. 2006. Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India. New Delhi, India: Yoda Press.
Puar, J. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer times.
Povinelli, E. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Abandonment in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rai, A.2009. Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Reddy,C. 2011. Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shah, N. 2012. Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. University of California Press.
Srivastava, S. 2004. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia. London & New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Winnubst,S. 2006. Queering Freedom. Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.