Projektart |
Promotion |
Finanzierung |
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Themen |
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Disziplinen |
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Laufzeit |
01/2013 ‒ |
Geographischer Fokus |
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Institutionen |
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Beteiligte Personen |
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Fadi Saleh
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Prof. Dr. Sabine Hess
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Kurzbeschreibung
(nicht vorhanden)
Abstract
Through ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey, I shed light on the recent emergence of Syrian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ) refugees as the new, exceptional objects and recipients of the benevolence of “queer humanitarianism”, an assemblage that could be provisionally defined as the product of the convergence of global, identity-based LGBT politics and the migration-asylum-humanitarian complex. To that end, I give detailed, critical accounts of how the Syrian LGBTIQ refugees are affected and shaped by the increasing imposition of mainstream, standardized narratives of persecution and queer suffering as the only possible discourses through which they are allowed to speak, be, or represent themselves. In a second step, and to counter such representations, I follow their everyday lives in Istanbul to document and analyze the ways in which they navigate the city, build communities, reflect on their journeys, and negotiate the power dynamics between them and the (Western and local) media, the UNHCR, and the governmental and humanitarian institutions in Turkey. By centralizing their everyday praxis of engaging with and deconstructing the dominant, monolithic representations of the "suffering Syrian queer refugee”, I demonstrate how they allow for new modes of knowledge, different discourses and narratives, and more complex trajectories for queer historicization in the context of war to emerge.