Queer is most often the case of a complex understanding of sex, sexuality and gender, subjectification, and categorization; ironically hegemonized by the Western paradigm of binaries as opposed to non-binaries; homosexuality vs heterosexuality; normative contrasted to non-normative. To locate sexualities within those binary and non-binary frameworks is not an absolute certainty over the glove, rather it is diversified, dynamic, and versatile, which is supposed to be a significant consideration in the Anthropology of Sexuality and Gender. Framing non-heteronormative sexualities as queer, discounting the significance of social emotions, rituals, norms, and cultural subtleties of localities, which pointedly manifest among the koti-hijra-dhurani in South Asia.
There are three substantial ways that queer moves in recent anthropological trends. First, queer as an encounter with categorical legibility; Second, it is an intellectual necro politic; and third, locating queer as a deconstruction of Western normative knowledge projects, which are also a part of the speculative influence of colonial hegemony. To discover how this global queer is unable to represent local sexualities, we intend to focus on non-normative, non-Cisgenders’ diversified sexualities and sexual practices in South Asia. Therefore, we breed a seed to consider hijra, kothi/koti, dhurani as a distinct study of thought which is far more than the debate of either thirdness, transgender or queer identity politics to explore the significance of the local context of sexualities, sexual orientation, body and gender practices.
The understanding of the localities of sexualities in anthropology also facilitates the analysis of sex, sexuality and gender in Anthropology. In this round table, we have invited scholars who have ethnographically grounded research or have been conducting research among koti/kothi, hijra, dhurani, aravani, kinnar, jogappa, khwaja-sira, or any other non-cisgender minorities or non-normative gender and sexualities in South Asia to sit together to cultivate a new discourse of anthropology of queer studies.
Keywords:
Hijra-Koti/Kothi-Dhurani Studies, Queer, Gender and Sexualities, South Asian Non-normativity, Body