Sima Shakhsari | The Sexuality of Liberation: Iranian Diaspora and Loaned Life

This talk examines the deployment of sexuality in the "liberatory" discourses and projects that have led to the U.S./Israeli war on Iran. Whether it is the hyper-sexualized body of the Iranian woman as the object of liberation, or the sexist, homophobic, and transphobic slogans and gestures used by the pro-war elements among the Iranian diaspora in North America and Europe, I argue that the cultivation of a “democratic future" for Iran by war enthusiasts, while employing pinkwashing, sexual liberation rhetoric, and affective trajectories of freedom, is deeply invested in cis heteronormativity, and is contingent on the conditional form and temporality of the loaned life of the Iranian population at large.

About the Speaker

Sima Shakhsari is an Associate Professor and former Chair at the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. They received their PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University and are the authors of several journal articles, book chapters, and the book, Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan. Shakhsari is the incoming President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, a member of the UMN Educators for Justice in Palestine, and a member of the Let Iran Live Collective.