"Comparative Queer Southeast Asian Studies"
- Date: Jun 18, 2019
- Time: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Ward Keeler (University of Texas)
- Ward Keeler is an American anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in Java in Indonesia during the New Order area. He worked in predominately Surakarta cultural areas, and studied wayang as a means of understanding specific manifestation of Javanese ways of thinking. His book Javanese, a cultural approach was a Javanese language text for English speakers that provided learners with language expressions for learning, rather than elaborate on the complexities of hierarchy within the language and culture. (Source: Wikipedia)
- Location: MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 12, Göttingen
- Room: Conference Room
For more details please contact vdvoffice(at)mmg.mpg.de.
This lecture reports about how queer people have fared in lowland Southeast Asian societies reflect hierarchical assumptions that characterize approaches to all social relations in the region. Difference, in such understandings, provides the basis upon which all relationships are built. Gender binarism makes same-sex couples admissible provided each partner takes on a distinctive gender presentation. In the absence of gender difference, other differences can be substituted to maintain the principle that difference always makes a difference. LGBTQ campaigns are predicated on the contrasting claim that difference makes no difference, at last with respect to rights and dignity. Particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, this provokes an increasingly harsh reaction from both religious and in some cases governmental quarters.