The Poetics and Politics of Pakistani Queer

Abstract

The present research aims to theorize the evolution of queer desire and poetics in Pakistan and also trace the metamorphosis of the oriental Hijra into a cosmopolitan drag queen/king. The lives and works of diasporic Pakistani queer, the poet Ifti Nasim, and the late controversial poet Fahmida Riaz illustrate the ways queer poetics and politics have been adopted, appropriated and indigenized. In an attempt to explore and deconstruct the complexity of their existence, exoticism and exile, this research borrows and contextualizes Judith Butler’s conception of drag—a quintessential queer art. The drag comes to exhibit a distrust of heteronormativity, gender roles, and bodily organization. In the sexually conservative South Asia, drag presents an alternate world view. It not only questions existing political structures but also attempts to challenge major philosophical and religious conceptions. Associated with the polymorphous existence of Butler’s drag queen/king is the Deleuze and Guattari’s Body—without—Organs which is deterritorialised in that it is a site of opposing forces, rather than a stable entity. In its avowal to a gender other than the one biologically assigned, the drag queen/king proposes a rhizomatic self. Its imitation of a gender which is not originally his/her the drag king/queen embodies physical and gendered transgression. The queer especially in the South Asian context is also a cultural deterritorialization. Its transformation from parochial Hijra (Transgender) performance to a more radical and cultured drag lends it a cosmopolitan outlook. The south Asian/Pakistani-Muslim drag asks for a more inclusive and non-hegemonic LGBTQ representation which marks the beginning of a decolonized and multiracial queer group.