THINKING PAST PRIDE: QUEER ARAB SHAME INBAREED MISTA3JIL

Abstract

AbstractThis article offers a reading of the groundbreaking bookBareed Mista3jil: True Stories, a collection of the narratives of Lebanese queers. Here, I argue, a burgeoning collective queer experience is being mapped from the conditions of Western imperialism and globalization, from the legacies of a colonial past, and from everyday life in postwar Lebanon. Resisting the urge to reduce Arab queer identities as either Western or traditionally Arab, the article suggests that though Western constructions of sexualities have certainly been influential, these identities are also responding to the local and cultural context. If we attune our readings to the affects that underlie the stories in this collection, it becomes clear that the emotional strategies to survive and negotiate the difficulties of postcoloniality are different from the strategies of post-Stonewall pride culture. Rather than stifle shame with the insistence of queer pride, this community is creating itself by expressing its suffering from the effects of shame and social humiliation. The narrative thread that comes through is not pride but hope. That is because shame, as Elspeth Probyn contends, gives access to what is most important and, as Eve Sedgwick has argued, is a resource for imagining change.