Performativity of Hijras - by Aqib Ali
Date: January 27, 2017
Time: 12 PM
Venue: A-6, Academic Block, LUMS
Aqib Ali's work discusses the perpetual exclusion and abuse of the hijra community in Pakistan, and how the community continues to survive in the rigid heterosexual binary system. The paper will look closely into the tools/systems established by the heterosexual matrix which ensure that the hijra community is rendered unintelligible and unliveable. In particular, hegemonising institutions and traditions such as kinship, marriage, sexuality, and language will be studied from the perspective of the hijra community. It will examine the alternative lifestyles developed by the hijra community and how it challenges and threatens the presumed prediscursive status enjoyed by the heterosexual matrix.
