The Coloniality of Gender, in Real Time: Jasbir Puar & Dima Srouji
What does the coloniality of gender mean during a genocide?
The carnage in Gaza is replete with gendered forms of violence. Scenes of bodily humiliation and mutilation have been screaming from our screens for more than a year now. Working through and against the grain of this obvious, ubiquitous archive, Puar and Srouji excavate the longue durée of the imposition of gender binarism in Gaza and conversely, also foreground the praxis of “re-member-ment” that exceed such mandates and highlight Palestinian determination to become differently whole.
Jasbir K. Puar is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of the award-winning books The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017), which has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), available in French and Spanish, re-issued as an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (2017), and forthcoming in Portuguese. Her articles have been published in journals such as Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, mainstream venues such as Al-Jazeera and The Guardian, and translated into more than 15 languages.
Dr. Puar is also co-author of exhibitions for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2019) and the Sharjah Art Biennial (2023). In 2019 she received the Kessler Award from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, which recognizes lifetime achievement in and impact on queer research and organizing.
Dima Srouji is a Palestinian architect and visual artist exploring the ground as a deep space of rich cultural weight and a space for potential collective repair. Srouji looks for ruptures in the ground where imaginary liberation is possible. She works with glass, text, archives, maps, plaster casts, and film, understanding each as an evocative object and emotional companion that help her question what cultural heritage and public space mean in the context of the Middle East, especially in Palestine. Her projects are developed closely with archaeologists, anthropologists, sound designers, and glassblowers.
She was the Jameel Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2022-2023 and is currently leading studio Underground Palestine in MA City Design at the Royal College of Art in London.
Her work is part of the permanent collections at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Victoria & Albert Museum, Institut du Monde Arabe, Corning Museum of Glass, MIT Libraries, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Con ...
