Assimilation and Transgression: Doing Trans* Activism in Indonesia and Iran

ABSTRACT

This commentary engages with Jón Ingvar Kjaran and Zara Saeidzadeh’s research article, “Trans* Activism in Indonesia and Iran: Working Against Misrecognition and Enhancing the Intelligibility of Trans* Subjectivities.” The authors examine the conditions and form trans* activism takes in “doing” gender in Muslim-dominated societies of Indonesia and Iran. It is argued that trans* experience interacts with Islamic norms to persist in gaining intelligibility and recognition, challenging the existing medico-religious discourse in Islamic societies, as well as liberal humanist intellectual traditions of the West. Trans* activism in Indonesia and Iran, therefore, reveals a complex inquiry in locating hospitality at the borders where trans identity and Islam meet.

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Shifa Haq

Shifa Haq, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and assistant professor of psychology in the School of Human Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi. She writes about psychoanalysis, violence, and mourning. Her book, In Search of Return—Mourning the Disappearance in Kashmir was published in 2021. She is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association Subcommittee—Migration and Refugees, and serves as an associate editor for the journals Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and Psychoanalytic Dialogues.