Jasbir K. Puar (born 1967) is a U.S.-based philosopher and queer theorist. She is a professor and graduate director of women's studies and gender studies at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, where she has been a faculty member since 2000. Her most recent book is ''The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability'' (2017). Puar is the author of award-winning ''Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times'' (2007), which has been translated into Spanish and French and re-issued in an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (December 2017). She has written widely on

South Asian South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, ...

diasporic cultural production in the United States, United Kingdom and Trinidad,

LGBT tourism LGBT tourism (or gay tourism) is a form of tourism marketed to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. People might be open about their sexual orientation and gender identity at times, but less so in areas known for violence agai ...

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

studies,

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...

studies, biopolitics and necropolitics, disability and debilitation, theories of

intersectionality Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...

, affect, and assemblage;

animal studies Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including geography, art history, ant ...

and

posthumanism Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st century thought. It encompasses a wide variety of bran ...

homonationalism Homonationalism is often seen as the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights,

, pinkwashing, and the

Palestinian territories The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...

Academic career

Raised in the

Basking Ridge Basking Ridge is an Local government in New Jersey#Unincorporated communities, unincorporated community located within Bernards Township, New Jersey, Bernards Township in the Somerset Hills region of Somerset County, New Jersey, Somerset Count ...

section of

Bernards Township, New Jersey Bernards Township () is a township in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. The township is a bedroom suburb of New York City in the much larger New York metropolitan area, located within the Raritan Valley region. As of the 2020 Uni ...

, Puar graduated in 1985 from

Ridge High School Ridge High School is a four-year comprehensive community public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from Bernards Township in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States, operating as the lone secondary school of the ...

. She has an M.A. in Women's Studies from the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

and completed her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

in 1999. In "Queer Times, Queer Assemblages", published in 2005, Puar analyzes the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...

as an assemblage of racism,

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

, patriotism, and

, suggesting that it is "already profoundly

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

". Her focus is on terrorist corporealities in opposition to "normative patriot bodies", and she argues that "discourses of

counterterrorism Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that Government, governments, law enforcement, business, and Intelligence agency, intellig ...

are intrinsically gendered, raced, sexualized, and nationalized"."Queer Times, Queer Assemblages", ''Social Text'' 84-85, Vol. 23. Nos. 3-4, Fall-Winter 2005 Puar draws from the "assemblage" approach developed by

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

and

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, ...

. This is a way of viewing social and political phenomena as a combination of biological and cultural factors. She critiques the deployment of

homonationalism Homonationalism is often seen as the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights,

in the United States as a justification to violently implement the doctrine of American exceptionalism embodied in the War on Terror. The United States flaunts its supposedly liberal openness to homosexuality to secure its identity in contradistinction to sexual oppression in Muslim countries. This oppression serves as an excuse for the United States to "liberate" oppressed women and sexual deviants in these countries, simultaneously papering over sexual inequality in the United States. United States exceptionalism and homonationalism are mutually constitutive, blending discourses of American Manifest Destiny, racist foreign policy, and an urge to document the unknown (embodied in the terrorist) and conquer it through queering its identity, hence rendering it manageable and knowable. Puar's ''Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times'', published in October 2007, describes connections between contemporary "

gay rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 3 ...

" discourse, the integration of gay people into

consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supp ...

, the ascendance of " whiteness", and Western imperialism and the

war on terrorism The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant I ...

. Puar argues that traditional

heteronormative Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most f ...

ideologies now find accompaniment from "homonormative" ideologies replicating the same hierarchical ideals concerning maintenance of dominance in terms related to race, class, gender, and nation-state, a set of ideologies she deems "homonationalism". Some reviewers have associated this argument with the "queer Marxism" of Kevin Floyd.Robert Nichols, Review of Terrorist Assemblages and The Reification of Desire. ''Law, Culture and the Humanities''. April 16, 2010

/ref>

Works

* ''Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times'' (2007), Durham:

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Du ...

, ; 10th Anniversary Edition'' (2017) Durham:

; translated into French as: ''Homonationalisme. Politiques queers après le 11 Septembre'' (2012), Judy Minx (translator,), Paris: Editions Amsterdam, Maxime Cervulle,
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability
, (2017), Duke University Press.

Academic career

Works

References

Further reading