"Queer Companions" by Omar Kasmani
@kasmani_o
conjoins queer theory and the anthropology of Islam. Read the introduction for free on our website now.
#AsianStudies
#LGBTQBooks
It’s incredibly frightening to wake up to your name being hatefully and wrongfully listed in Germany’s biggest newspaper, a right-wing Tabloid. I’m certain the witch-hunt will go on, but will people like myself survive the horror-show this country is fast becoming: not so sure!
Germany’s biggest newspaper has printed pictures of lecturers who signed an open letter against the brutal eviction of a student protest camp, calling them perpetrators
With immense pleasure, proofs in hand, I present to you my forthcoming darling
@DukePress
🥳 “Pakistan Desires” is a party of a book, a joint labor of love, a shared pursuit of kinder and queerer futures. Coming out
#fall2023
@sfb1171
Balochi tunes, oceanic moods, Berlin bodies - woven together in the magic of ustad Noor Bakhsh. I heard the sound of my worlds meeting when the crowd burst into “every breath drunk with qalandar”- the song and chant oriented to Lal, the saint of Sehwan
#queercompanions
Today, 47 years ago, she defied all norms, eloped & married for love at 23. She had me at 25, the middle one of her pack of 3. Woman of faith, deeply spiritual:
#ammi
has over the years embraced, better than many, my choices for unstraight lines/loves. We are
#queercompanions
💕
Meet my new darling
@DukePress
~ artwork by Fazal Rizvi, cover by Mattson Gallagher, 💕
@lizault
~ like the Urdu words for how land feels, desire in this party-of-a-book is willful affect that binds us in shared purpose, critical practice and queer companionship!
#desire
#mubarak
Why praise a book when you can argue with its author!? Unmoved by the sheer brilliance of her son’s writing, Mommy-Kasmani reads O Kasmani (smiling on demand). Her review: ‘who wants to read this much detail about anything anyway!?’ Don’t listen to her, get your copy
@DukePress
🥳 my edited-babe-of-a-volume is officially in production
@DukePress
“Pak*stan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere” is a mehfil as per
@anjaliarondekar
, a gathering of 16 incredible scholars that you just can’t afford to miss
#comingout
2023: a massive thank you
@lizault
&
@bkossak
Queer Companions
@DukePress
wins the 2023 Ruth Benedict Prize 💕 In her email, the chair of the prize committee noted, “the book took our breath away”
@QueerAnthro
@AmericanAnthro
@sfb1171
What an absolute honor this is; thank you for the love and recognition!
Not just any pretend-reader but the Dean of Anthropology
@UTAustin
himself was spotted with “Queer Companions”
@DukePress
- the loveliest of lovelies and companion extraordinaire: Kamran Asdar Ali!
See what
@anjaliarondekar
& Gregory Seigworth -both💕- say about Queer Companions. How can I not be over the moon!? A massive 🙏 to the fabulous
@lizault
@DukePress
for bringing this so beautifully out into the world (cover: Mattson Gallagher). Coming June ‘22
@sfb1171
@FU_Berlin
This is spiralling out of control, now conservative politicians are demanding that academics defending the right of students to protest (without even supporting their demands) are placed under observation by domestic intelligence. Do they realise how Sisi-esque this is? Insane.
“All Other Passports” is UK’s service for us to meet our postcolonial cousins from the Global South (Commonwealth was it!?) in a still-segregated, one-track orange zone, the wealthy colonizers comfortably out of view (in many blue lanes). The map is also a msg: we move, you wait!
What a stunning long-read on cross-border brides (
#india
#Pakistan
) and the ambiguities of belonging to divided families and nations PARTITIONED IDENTITIES bravo
@inky_fantasies
So glad, I will finally get to share QC in
#Karachi
- It was at IVS where I trained as an architect years ago and it is here I return an anthropologist, my book in hand. This is homecoming for
#queercompanions
@DukePress
Look, what’s inside Pakistan Desires
@DukePress
😍Now, isn’t this a stellar mehfil!? As the book’s dedication reads, ‘May our desires - to dream with Billy-Ray Belcourt - unfinish us!’
Waiting for U-Bahn. Stranger walks up. “You Omar?” I nod. “thank you for writing that book, it’s such great company. I know it’s random but I’m Ahmed” My train approaches, he hugs me, promises to email me the song he thinks pairs well with Queer Companions 🌈 My day is made 😍
#newpublication
Across verses of a gay Urdu poet & devotional songs at shrines, I sense histories outside public capture; I pursue the historical in the full knowledge that it might refuse my reach and desires; I insist against the tyranny of Pakistan’s further straight narration
Did you know that Queer Companions
@DukePress
is already a phenomenon in Berlin!? Cuties all over the city are pretending to read it. Why wait? Get your copy now and be a companion: 30% off with the coupon code E22KASMN
A desire comes to world, a dream made real. So incredibly proud, over the moon really. To all those who came on board, believed in the vision, made it happen, especially the incredible
@lizault
- I say pyar, shukriya + desire mubarak 💕 “Pakistan Desires”
@DukePress
out now 🥳🥳
Philosophy professor Nancy Fraser, who is Jewish, has been uninvited from a guest professorship in Germany for signing a public letter in support of Palestine
#today
at 16:30 - So thrilled to be part of this conversation on queer thinking via Glissant - curated by Prof. Beate Binder +
@ImadGebrayel
& hosted by the GenderQueer Lab at the Institute for European Ethnology
@HumboldtUni
(oh and sharing poster space with Gayatri 🔥🔥🔥)
Colonial hypocrisy meets hysterical obedience
@maxplanckpress
+ the lack of public outrage in the academy here is so revealing, the silence, so loud and clear. This is a sad day for German anthropology!
The good news is that while many pro-Palestinians symbols have been banned lately, raising a watermelon is not a crime in Germany (yet). Notes from a solidarity demo and my personal favorite moment: a group chanting in Urdu: “tera baap bhi dega: azadi!”
A full house. QC love, Lahore style. The joy + satisfaction of sharing this work on Pakistan … in Pakistan … simply unparalleled. Pyar 💕to the companions!
Very pleased and honored to see Queer Companions
@DukePress
on this shortlist - and what luminous company it finds itself in - thank you judges
@BloomsburyPak
for the love and recognition and heartfelt congrats to my fellow companions!
#snobalert
From the surprisingly blasé discourse on love by bell hooks to the unnecessarily obtuse Barthes; between dry Illouz, sharp Povinelli & the truly inspiring Badiou & Belcourt: readings on love zwischen den Jahren continue into January. More recommendations appreciated!
It meant the world to me that my Berlin besties, lovelies & companions came together last night to celebrate the Ruth Benedict Prize at Leuchstoff, the space where most of Queer Companions took shape. So grateful for the love and joy - much needed, all the more precious now 💕
A joy to be included in “this little-major thing” concocted by the incredible
@ImadGebrayel
- “yass” is the best answer to anything Imad comes up with (evidence: this awesome poster)
@HumboldtUni
In a twitter exchange earlier this year and in my eager attempt to make queer kin, I somehow convinced
@NoreenMasud
that I was to be her khala (maternal aunt). Today at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, brilliant niece with her spare, self-appointed but proud khala 💕
Just landed in Lahore for a book talk and already being showered with love and affection - not least a beautiful edition of tilism hosh ruba compiled by none other than
@microMAF
Saida Waheed Gender Initiative (SWGI) is very excited to announce the Calendar of Events for Spring 2023.
Detailed posts will be shared prior to each event. We look forward to your participation.
Nothing could have prepared me for this 💕 Thank you for celebrating “Queer Companions” with such pomp n party: 100+ attendees! A joy to share this labor of love, a decade-full of lives in text, worlds made, unmade in the company of lovers, beloveds, lovelies
@DukePress
@sfb1171
Such lack of excitement for my book would have been sobering if it were not a ruse for self-promotion. The insecurity of German scholars, I tell you 🤦🏽♂️
My Martin, dear Martin. What a blow to the soul, what a loss. I hope you knew what you meant to me especially in those early Berlin years when so much of my life didn’t make sense. Rest in power, my queer counsel, companion, “mere humdam, mere dost” 🖤
May-Day walk with
@hystericalblkns
in Berlin and as always, I read in awe: ‘How can one presume, still, that there is an “us” and a “we” that are in something together? […] The architectures of violence fracture we, affect does not reach us in the same ways’ (Sharpe 2023, 33)
#love
is …. a Kasmani-curated-Berlin-fan-club-of-Gayatri-Gopinath, also known as … a sofa-full of queers allegedly recovering from food coma. My ‘heart is garden garden’ 💕
#aboutlastnight
#scenesofdailyloves
#home
#queercompanions
Karachi’s patron-saint, an 8th-c
#sufi
from Medina. Once a remote hilltop tomb by the Indian Ocean, now an urban shrine lit neon-green. No matter dwarfed by high-rises,
#abdullahshahghazi
is the city’s mighty companion, keeping the sea’s demons & disasters at bay
Should you have nothing better to do tomorrow: I’m presenting parts of my book project on migrant loves and queer be/longing at the Institute of Islamic Studies at FU Berlin, 4-6 pm. Expect light entertainment + some heartbreak.
And home it sure came - in the affectionate company of old fellows, new cuties, forever friends and family. Thank you IVS for holding space for QC, for the warm reception and the love!
#queercompanions
#homecoming
See what
@kareempuff
&
@vazirastani
two incredible thinkers have to say about
#PakistanDesires
@DukePress
- ever so grateful for their generous endorsements; all the more restless to share this party of a book with the world. Out this autumn!
“This is a movie about people who find their inner lives and sense of themselves don’t match up to what is expected of them. Their feeling of wrongness is part of what they have to suppress, from day to day.”
“Germans increasingly appear to try to absolve their shame over the Holocaust by policing dissenting voices that challenge the prevailing pro-Israeli German state narrative. The price is often grotesque disregard for the very descendants of the victims of our forefathers' crimes”
“These non-straight orientations unfolding around a Sufi shrine provincialize the secularity of sex and the propriety of Islam” - (the) Lucinda Ramberg reviews Queer Companions
@DukePress
along with two incredible books 💕 See 🔗 to full text:
An incredible invitation to learn through bewilderment, getting lost. Literacy, the human, collectivity, politics: Nathan 💕Snaza
@DukePress
looks at “these things over and over from different directions and distances so that they lose solidity, become uncertain, start trembling”
Morning coffee with your own book =
#highlyrecommended
A big thank you
@DukePress
especially
@lizault
for believing in an idea, nurturing it, and bringing it out in the world. The book’s most ardent companion has been
@h_dilger
- thank you for being a truly exceptional guide!
A dear friend unwraps her copy of Queer Companions
@DukePress
right by the Bosphorus in Tarabya (Istanbul) earlier this year. Thank you for all the QC love in 2022; here’s to queerer companionships in the
#NewYear
From this day forward, following the great German example, I shall only work with those white German academics who have publicly denounced or distanced themselves from Habermas. Punkt.
Coming soon
#b_books
🥳 our edited volume on the manifold and messy dimensions of public feeling and emotion: “Nothing Personal!? Essays on Affect, Gender & Queerness” is a fab collaboration with Matthias Lüthjohann, Sophie Nikoleit, Jean-Baptiste Pettier
@sfb1171
@FU_Berlin
“The affective work of migrant be/longing happens sub-rosa: beneath, beyond, behind scenes, .. it best takes place beside, inbetween, or alongside public forms.” My lil essay in Art and Architecture of Migration & Discrimination, eds. Esra Akcan & Iftikhar Dadi (Routledge, 2023)
Not sure what’s broken can be sutured, or if we can knit ourselves out of German horrors, but I do know that “Thin Attachments” my Berlin book project on migrant loves & be/longing now qualifies as anthropology of/with a broken heart (riffing off Behar). Bani Abidi pins it down!
Regathering ways in which a religiously-inspired dream (istikhara) from 2006 has acted as a queer vision in my life, an “unstraight persuasion” To believe in something is to trust that thing to act upon us, take us somewhere other than here. Dreams move dreamers, à la Mittermaier
One more invitation received to conduct a workshop in Berlin with ZERO honorarium. Previously, I’ve been approached to teach a course for FREE at a top German university. And when paid, it’s 1050 euros for the semester (taxable). In what world is this acceptable, normal!? Why!?
Save 30% on
#NewBook
"Pakistan Desires," edited by Omar Kasmani
@kasmani_o
, which draws on history, anthropology, literature, law, & art to invite reflection on what meanings adhere to queerness in Pakistan.
#LGBTQBooks
#AnthroTwitter
I will soon issue my own statement.
I would have lived with the first part re incompatibility. But finishing with ‘there is no place for racism’ implying that i am a racist, I cannot accept.
Statement of the Max Planck Society about Prof. Ghassan Hage
Outside his office
@FU_Berlin
pretty much where I first met him 12 years ago,
@h_dilger
keenly poses with Queer Companions
@DukePress
@sfb1171
The QC pretend-readers series is proud to feature a guide extraordinaire, companion beyond compare, someone who’s shaped me as a scholar!
The book we truly needed in this moment is thankfully open access:
@transcriptweb
@HananBadr
This Arab-adjacent-Berliner, or “little unintegrated pasha” (an accusation I shall henceforth embrace as title) found posing with “Arab Berlin” in Arab Berlin!
A Monday on a different continent as Queer Companions
@DukePress
goes to
@UCRiverside
- my brilliance shining through bouts of jet lag … is the plan. Come!
#home
is where mum rocks. Jhoola or the swing: that quintessential piece of furniture in a Gujarati household that I miss the most in Berlin. Mommy-Kasmani’s favorite returns to her swing after 2 years. Let the pampering commence.
#hello
#karachi
Busy feeling flattered, but might I tease-tweet this incredibly generous reading of “Migration: An Intimacy”- I’ve been toying with thinness + migrant be/longing for some years now and so happy that some of it has found its way into the
#affectheory
Reader 2 🎉
#comingsoon
Author found posing with book (yet again) - from the very first one in Austin to the most recent in Riverside, May marks one full year of book talks for Queer Companions
@DukePress
Thank you for all the QC love 💗 keep reading!
I have lovingly called him ‘murshid’, the perfected one, a guide who never stops giving. So much of my understanding of Sehwan is indebted to him; so much of this book has proceeded in light of his knowledge. Michel Boivin meets (poses with)
#queercompanions
@DukePress
in Karachi
It is my pleasure to invite you to our mehfil of desires. On Friday, we come together to introduce and celebrate the newly out edited volume, Pakistan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere
@DukePress
Book Launch Party zu "Queer Companions. Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan" von
@kasmani_o
am 01.07. im Savvy Contemporary
⚡ Lesung& Party
So grateful, so chuffed about the conversation on Queer Companions
@DukePress
this evening 🙏
@AndreaMuehleba1
@BremenIfek
Amira Mittermaier & Naisargi Dave for making this a reality. As someone noted “I couldn’t believe how good looking the speakers were” - well, true story!
“Omar ke naam” - I ordered a kurta from Lahore. The vendor (whom I’ve never met) sends it with the loveliest of notes 😍
#speechless
Thank you for the
#love
Aangan Bazaar!
Thrilled to be keynoting tomorrow at “Religion & Futurity: Elsewhere, Elsewhen and Beyond”
@clt_rs
@unccharlotte
| Based on Queer Companions
@DukePress
I propose doing ‘queer religiously’ and moving against the quintessentially secular sites of queer/affect theory
@sfb1171