Queerness and the Cosmopolitan

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I read Rashid al-Daif’s and Joachim Helfer’s What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin (2015) as a dialogue on (homo)sexuality discourse within the framework of cosmopolitanism delineated by Kwame Anthony Appiah, in which he calls for the necessity of conversation across national and cultural boundaries in order to enhance our understanding of one another’s differences. I argue that al-Daif’s and Helfer’s cross-cultural exchange can be understood within the lines of negotiating (dis)involvement in the Eurocentric assimilationist project as identified by Joseph Massad. I read What Makes a Man alongside al-Daif’s earlier novel Who’s Afraid of Meryl Streep? (2001) and propose an analytic approach to these texts within the context of literary agitation. My analysis attends to the dynamics of defining self in relation to the other in matters of sexuality and the role of language, translation, and readership. This article suggests that the centrality of gender and (homo)sexuality discourse to the cross-cultural conversation appropriates queerness to local and global readers within humanistic lines of inquiry.