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Gender Lecture 2023: Everyday Murat Politics in Afghanistan and its Diasporas

While queer theories in the field of International Relations are heavily focused on the Global North, queer lives, queer worldmakings and queer politics in the Global South still remain in the margins. The over two decades of United States’ invasion of Afghanistan and the continued war have challenged security and everyday life for Afghans, particularly for those who identify as murat. Despite the challenges and rise of imperial homophobia, emergence of murat movement situates sexuality in historical Afghanistan and within the context of local cultures, practices, and politics. From dancing in underground spaces to sexing with politicians in private, forming horny kinships, pilgriming for Hajj, and inventing a clandestine queer language, murats in Afghanistan and its diasporas refuse western notions of queerness while queering the landscapes of war and exiles. How do Afghan murats in Afghanistan and its diasporas engage in everyday politics despite remaining in the peripheries? How does murat as a notion and practice refuse queer as universal? This lecture will address these questions while theorizing murat through a de/colonial ethnographic study with Afghan murats in Afghanistan and its diasporas. Theorization of murat invites scholars of international relations, feminist studies and migration studies to a radical and de/colonial queer turn in their research, teachings, and engagements with the Global South as a geography and people.

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Dr. Ahmad Qais Munhazim

Ahmad Qais Munhazim (they/them), a murat Afghan, Muslim and perpetually displaced, is an assistant professor of global studies at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. As an interdisciplinary scholar, de/colonial ethnographer and artist, Munhazim’s work troubles borders of academia, art and activism while exploring everyday experiences of war and displacement in the lives of murat (queer and trans) Afghans. Currently, Munhazim is preparing their book manuscript based on a de/colonial ethnography of murat (queer and trans) Afghans in Afghanistan and Afghan diaspora in the United States and Ireland. Munhazim holds a PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.