Event overview
Goldsmiths Anthropology Seminar Series
Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan.
In the book Queer Companions, Omar Kasmani theorises saintly intimacy and the construction of queer social relations at Pakistan’s most important site of Sufi pilgrimage. Conjoining queer theory and the anthropology of Islam, Kasmani outlines the felt and enfleshed ways in which saintly affections bind individuals, society, and the state in Pakistan through a public architecture of intimacy. Islamic saints become lovers and queer companions just as a religious universe is made valuable to critical and queer forms of thinking.
Focusing on the lives of ascetics known as fakirs in Pakistan, Kasmani shows how the affective bonds with the place’s patron saint, a thirteenth-century antinomian mystic, foster unstraight modes of living in the present. In a national context where religious shrines are entangled in the state’s infrastructures of governance, coming close to saints further entails a drawing near to more-than-official histories and public forms of affect. Through various fakir life stories, Kasmani contends that this intimacy offers a form of queer world making with saints.
This seminar is part of the Goldsmiths Anthropology Seminar Series. Seminars are free and open to all.
This seminar is online (live only/not recorded). To join, register through the 'Book now' tab below.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Dec 2022 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
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