The Najmabadi Readings in Discussion with Foucault’s History of Sexuality

 Rakel Tanibajeva

WGSS 206 

The Najmabadi Readings in Discussion with Foucault’s History of Sexuality 

Gender roles have been defined on the basis of man and woman, the masculine and feminine. In the modern era, attempts to delineate the notion of man/woman distinctions, the binary nature of gender roles, has taken on a more sexual stint. In other words, the gender binary has become a framework for categorization of modern sexuality.

This week's Najmabadi readings examine several genealogies of sexuality and call into question some of the theoretical emphases and epistemic assumptions impacting modern histories of sexuality. Concerned with the dynamic interaction of cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality, the anthology confronts Middle Eastern Studies with problems raised by modern sexuality studies. By reflecting productively on the conundrum of engaging archivally and historiographically with the subject of sexuality in Iran, The anthology questions Foucauldian paradigms, which frequently translate a dichotomy between "scientia sexualis" (subjects endowed with distinct scientifically classifiable sexualities, attributed to Western civilisation by Foucault) and "are erotica" (an unbridled desire and practice of pleasure passed from master to student through secrets, attributed to Eastern civilizations by Foucault). Najmabadi's work addresses the need for materially localized analyses of historical sexualities reflected in Islamicate literature by asking how desire may be identified outside of its contemporary (or premodern) European valences but also communicated in a manner that is not already restrictive.

There seems to be a two part mechanism within Foucault's History of Sexuality, between the history of the manufacturing of the modern subject of the sexuality discourse, and a history of pleasure, permissions, and practices. The genealogy of sexuality, to use Foucault's own Nietzschean phrase, would have distinguished the former's goal far more clearly from the latter, more conventional one that emerges as a “history of something” (class notes). But do we define that “something?”

Since Foucault, the more recent shift from “homosexuality” to “same-sex behaviors and wants” attempts to remove the societal weight of homosexuality; but by adopting the concept of “same-sex,” we may also have confined our thinking to a set of human interactions limited by the boundaries of those relationships' “same-sex-ness.” To elaborate, we have not only made "sex" the basis/core of these interactions; by adding "same," we participate upholding the binary of male and female bio-genital difference as the distinguishing mark of that basis/core. What effect does our use of the phrase "same-sex" have on our ability to understand the complexities of cultural and social webs of meaning? How might we question the concept of same-sex partnerships without dismissing the sex of these connections, without reducing women to asexual creatures and males to transcendental Muslims?

Is sexuality the ideal lens for examining erotic sociabilities and sexual sensitivities before and after the Foucauldian frame of sexuality?  I don't intend to imply that sexuality as a topic of historical studies is an illegitimate endeavor; rather, I'd like to consider what making sexuality the primary focus of historiographical studies means in terms of routes we haven't taken/questions we haven't addressed.How can we pose questions regarding sexual and gender hierarchies in order to make sense of the nodal complexity that have culminated in the meaning of gender and sexual differences? How can we comprehend the junction of multiple meanings that have delegated the systems of pleasures and prohibitions? How can we bring out as many possible meanings in order to show the complicated nodes at which concepts of gender and sexuality exist, without looking for a single, universal underlying logic?

We should challenge the Foucauldian frame of sexuality, the usefulness of the concept of sexuality itself for interpreting “erotic sociabilities” and “sexual sensibilities” prior to and beyond the hegemonicHave scholars inadvertently made sexuality the 'truth' of their historiographies, well beyond the historical and geographical boundaries of Foucault's “do acts define types?” This mode of logic constructs sex as a truth to be uncovered. Najmabadi's essay,  “Types, Acts, or What? Regulation of Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Iran,” seems to go beyond the limitations of types or acts in order to interpret “the disciplinary and regulatory effects of classificatory regimes” (276). Although Najmabadi examines culture through the lens of sexuality, she recognizes the value of examining practices rather than typological thinking.