Amar Wahab
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 642378 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Amar Wahab |
| NOMBRES | Amar |
| APELLIDO | Wahab |
| FIRMA | WAHAB A |
| AFILIACIONES | York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8317-684X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 19 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2007 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Introduction
Stories of reclamation, speculation and joy
Co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies , Amar Wahab, interviews Dutch-Surinamese visual artist, Nazrina Rodjan, about her recent exhibition, Kala Pani:1873–2023 , which creatively intervenes in discourses about race, gender, queerness and indentureship in the Netherlands. Rodjan’s work is a critical response to the gendered racism within the Dutch archives and artworld, including its silencing of indentureship and its legacies…
When the closet is the grave
The article investigates the social impossibilities and constructed killability of brown queers. It critically focuses on the Bruce McArthur case, which involved the serial killing of predominantly brown queer men between 2010 and 2017 in Toronto. The author analyzes mainstream (LGBT) media representations of the white serial killer as “ordinary, yet aberrant,” the queer victims of color as sexually and socially fuckable, and the murderous racism…
Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies
partnership with the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and Its Legacies (ameenagafoorinstitute.org).The journal is a unique and unprecedented academic space where the study of indentureship, as a distinct form of unfree labour, can be analysed in all its forms.No such journal currently exists anywhere in the world, despite the critical importance of the system of indenture to world history.Through publishing Open Access, impo…
Trans-oceanic erotics
Through creative speculation and intervention, this research project probes the ‘coolie homoerotic’ (Wahab 2019) as a critical reflection on the place of the homoerotic and queerness within the trans-oceanic lifeworld of coolie indentureship. The four artworks presented are informed by a series of questions that might help to build a platform for queering indentureship and trans-oceanic space beyond identity recovery and respectability politics. …
Thinking LGBT human rights in Guyana
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies , interviews British High Commissioner to Guyana, Jane Miller, OBE, about her perspectives on LGBT human rights in Guyana. They discuss issues related to the legacies of the colonial regulation of gender and sexuality, the inclusion of diverse identities, and collaboration with LGBT activist organizations in Guyana
The LGBT activism of Jason Jones
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies , interviews LGBTQ+ human rights defender Jason Jones about his advocacy spanning four decades in Trinidad and Tobago and the UK. Jones shares his experiences about the intersections of homophobia and racism to highlight the complexities around LGBTQ+ human rights. He discusses his successful landmark legal challenges against state-sponsored legal homophobia in both sp…
Queer Coolie-tudes
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies , interviews queer diasporic filmmaker and lecturer Dr. Michelle Mohabeer about her critical and creative documentary interventions – spanning over 30 years – which seek to queer indentureship and Indo-Caribbean diasporic identity and experience. The dialogue focuses especially on her creative essay documentary Queer Coolie-tudes (2019), which places the slurs – ‘queer…
Affective Mobilizations
This paper focuses on the affective economies which materialize around race, sexuality and queerness in the British context to enable the production and mobilization of an exceptionalist discourse of gay-friendly and post-homophobic Britain (i.e., pinkwashing). The author investigates the discursive workings of pinkwashing coupled with the racialization of homophobia, through a critical reading of the BBC Two documentary Out There (2013a), writte…
The darker the fruit”? Homonationalism, racialized homophobia, and neoliberal tourism in the St Lucian–US contact zone
This article analyzes the discursive representations of a “homophobic hate crime” case against gay US tourists in the small-island state of St Lucia, especially within the mainstream US media. Drawing on the interrelated concepts of homonationalism, pinkwashing, and racialized homophobia, the study opens up the complexities of race, sexuality, and neoliberal globalization, and aims to transcend a “perpetrator/victim” mode of analysis. I argue tha…
(Re)tracing queerness
The erotic lifeworld of Indian indentureship remains buried. This visual essay probes the ‘coolie homoerotic’ as a creative reflection on the place of the homoerotic and queerness within the trans-oceanic lifeworld of coolie indentureship. It uses the methodology of visual assemblage to creatively and critically engage with a rare archival record of alleged sodomy on a coolie ship, the Mersey, bound for British Guiana from Calcutta in 1898. The a…
Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalise same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The chapters provide first-hand insights from leading activists in former colonial states, as well as highlighting the need to reorient and decolonise queer studies and…
Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus, by David A. B. Murray
Book Review: Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee ApparatusBy David A. B. Murray London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 183 pp
Calling ‘Homophobia’ into Place (Jamaica)
This essay critically investigates the Stop Murder Music (SMM) campaign in Canada, which aims to censor explicitly homophobic Jamaican dancehall music and artists. It draws on concepts such as homonationalism, gay imperialism and homotransnationalism to problematize and resituate the campaign as a mainstream Canadian LGBTQ liberationist discourse. A discourse analysis of related newspaper articles, weblog discussions and campaign paraphernalia hi…
Homosexuality/Homophobia Is Un-African
This article un-maps the recent impasse between pro- and antigay mobilization around Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA, 2009-2014). Drawing on scholarly and social media sources, it summarizes the increasing influence of (U.S.) transnational evangelism that has precipitated a state-religious complex of "anticipatory political homophobia" in Uganda. If transnational evangelism against same-sex sexuality in Uganda has generated a strong reaction…
Homophobia as the State of Reason
The stigmatization of Caribbean postcolonial nation-states in the Western imagination as exemplifying some of the most homophobic nationalisms masks a more-nuanced reading of the complexities of Caribbean modernity. As such, the hardening of homophobic nationalisms in settings such as Trinidad and Tobago forces us to question how and why compulsory homophobia is deployed as a form of moral discipline that is made to seem compatible with postcolon…
In the Name of Reason
One year after the first importation of coolie labourers from India to Trinidad in 1845 there were numerous reports of physical, occupational, and psychic abuse perpetrated by planters and estate managers against indentured labourers. This paper presents a genealogical footprint of the tormented existence of these labourers under a system of quasi-slavery paradoxically at a moment when British colonial governance aimed to reinvent itself via the …
Diasporic Ruptures
Mapping West Indian Orientalism
Mapping West Indian OrientalismRace, Gender and Representations of Indentured Coolies in the Nineteenth-Century British West Indies amar wahab (bio) The european invention of Empire in the Atlantic World cannot be divested from its connections with the historical construction of the "orient as the object of a particular form of colonial power and knowledge."1 Edward Said's profound argument about Orientalism as a discourse highlights Western cons…
Homosexuality/Homophobia Is Un-African
This article un-maps the recent impasse between pro- and antigay mobilization around Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA, 2009-2014). Drawing on scholarly and social media sources, it summarizes the increasing influence of (U.S.) transnational evangelism that has precipitated a state-religious complex of "anticipatory political homophobia" in Uganda. If transnational evangelism against same-sex sexuality in Uganda has generated a strong reaction…
Homophobia as the State of Reason
The stigmatization of Caribbean postcolonial nation-states in the Western imagination as exemplifying some of the most homophobic nationalisms masks a more-nuanced reading of the complexities of Caribbean modernity. As such, the hardening of homophobic nationalisms in settings such as Trinidad and Tobago forces us to question how and why compulsory homophobia is deployed as a form of moral discipline that is made to seem compatible with postcolon…
Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies
partnership with the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and Its Legacies (ameenagafoorinstitute.org).The journal is a unique and unprecedented academic space where the study of indentureship, as a distinct form of unfree labour, can be analysed in all its forms.No such journal currently exists anywhere in the world, despite the critical importance of the system of indenture to world history.Through publishing Open Access, impo…
Affective Mobilizations
This paper focuses on the affective economies which materialize around race, sexuality and queerness in the British context to enable the production and mobilization of an exceptionalist discourse of gay-friendly and post-homophobic Britain (i.e., pinkwashing). The author investigates the discursive workings of pinkwashing coupled with the racialization of homophobia, through a critical reading of the BBC Two documentary Out There (2013a), writte…
In the Name of Reason
One year after the first importation of coolie labourers from India to Trinidad in 1845 there were numerous reports of physical, occupational, and psychic abuse perpetrated by planters and estate managers against indentured labourers. This paper presents a genealogical footprint of the tormented existence of these labourers under a system of quasi-slavery paradoxically at a moment when British colonial governance aimed to reinvent itself via the …
Mapping West Indian Orientalism
Mapping West Indian OrientalismRace, Gender and Representations of Indentured Coolies in the Nineteenth-Century British West Indies amar wahab (bio) The european invention of Empire in the Atlantic World cannot be divested from its connections with the historical construction of the "orient as the object of a particular form of colonial power and knowledge."1 Edward Said's profound argument about Orientalism as a discourse highlights Western cons…
The darker the fruit”? Homonationalism, racialized homophobia, and neoliberal tourism in the St Lucian–US contact zone
This article analyzes the discursive representations of a “homophobic hate crime” case against gay US tourists in the small-island state of St Lucia, especially within the mainstream US media. Drawing on the interrelated concepts of homonationalism, pinkwashing, and racialized homophobia, the study opens up the complexities of race, sexuality, and neoliberal globalization, and aims to transcend a “perpetrator/victim” mode of analysis. I argue tha…
Diasporic Ruptures
Mapping West Indian Orientalism
Mapping West Indian OrientalismRace, Gender and Representations of Indentured Coolies in the Nineteenth-Century British West Indies amar wahab (bio) The european invention of Empire in the Atlantic World cannot be divested from its connections with the historical construction of the "orient as the object of a particular form of colonial power and knowledge."1 Edward Said's profound argument about Orientalism as a discourse highlights Western cons…
In the Name of Reason
One year after the first importation of coolie labourers from India to Trinidad in 1845 there were numerous reports of physical, occupational, and psychic abuse perpetrated by planters and estate managers against indentured labourers. This paper presents a genealogical footprint of the tormented existence of these labourers under a system of quasi-slavery paradoxically at a moment when British colonial governance aimed to reinvent itself via the …
Homophobia as the State of Reason
The stigmatization of Caribbean postcolonial nation-states in the Western imagination as exemplifying some of the most homophobic nationalisms masks a more-nuanced reading of the complexities of Caribbean modernity. As such, the hardening of homophobic nationalisms in settings such as Trinidad and Tobago forces us to question how and why compulsory homophobia is deployed as a form of moral discipline that is made to seem compatible with postcolon…
Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee Apparatus, by David A. B. Murray
Book Review: Real Queer? Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Refugees in the Canadian Refugee ApparatusBy David A. B. Murray London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 183 pp
Calling ‘Homophobia’ into Place (Jamaica)
This essay critically investigates the Stop Murder Music (SMM) campaign in Canada, which aims to censor explicitly homophobic Jamaican dancehall music and artists. It draws on concepts such as homonationalism, gay imperialism and homotransnationalism to problematize and resituate the campaign as a mainstream Canadian LGBTQ liberationist discourse. A discourse analysis of related newspaper articles, weblog discussions and campaign paraphernalia hi…
Homosexuality/Homophobia Is Un-African
This article un-maps the recent impasse between pro- and antigay mobilization around Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA, 2009-2014). Drawing on scholarly and social media sources, it summarizes the increasing influence of (U.S.) transnational evangelism that has precipitated a state-religious complex of "anticipatory political homophobia" in Uganda. If transnational evangelism against same-sex sexuality in Uganda has generated a strong reaction…
Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalise same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The chapters provide first-hand insights from leading activists in former colonial states, as well as highlighting the need to reorient and decolonise queer studies and…
(Re)tracing queerness
The erotic lifeworld of Indian indentureship remains buried. This visual essay probes the ‘coolie homoerotic’ as a creative reflection on the place of the homoerotic and queerness within the trans-oceanic lifeworld of coolie indentureship. It uses the methodology of visual assemblage to creatively and critically engage with a rare archival record of alleged sodomy on a coolie ship, the Mersey, bound for British Guiana from Calcutta in 1898. The a…
The darker the fruit”? Homonationalism, racialized homophobia, and neoliberal tourism in the St Lucian–US contact zone
This article analyzes the discursive representations of a “homophobic hate crime” case against gay US tourists in the small-island state of St Lucia, especially within the mainstream US media. Drawing on the interrelated concepts of homonationalism, pinkwashing, and racialized homophobia, the study opens up the complexities of race, sexuality, and neoliberal globalization, and aims to transcend a “perpetrator/victim” mode of analysis. I argue tha…
Affective Mobilizations
This paper focuses on the affective economies which materialize around race, sexuality and queerness in the British context to enable the production and mobilization of an exceptionalist discourse of gay-friendly and post-homophobic Britain (i.e., pinkwashing). The author investigates the discursive workings of pinkwashing coupled with the racialization of homophobia, through a critical reading of the BBC Two documentary Out There (2013a), writte…
When the closet is the grave
The article investigates the social impossibilities and constructed killability of brown queers. It critically focuses on the Bruce McArthur case, which involved the serial killing of predominantly brown queer men between 2010 and 2017 in Toronto. The author analyzes mainstream (LGBT) media representations of the white serial killer as “ordinary, yet aberrant,” the queer victims of color as sexually and socially fuckable, and the murderous racism…
Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies
partnership with the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and Its Legacies (ameenagafoorinstitute.org).The journal is a unique and unprecedented academic space where the study of indentureship, as a distinct form of unfree labour, can be analysed in all its forms.No such journal currently exists anywhere in the world, despite the critical importance of the system of indenture to world history.Through publishing Open Access, impo…
Trans-oceanic erotics
Through creative speculation and intervention, this research project probes the ‘coolie homoerotic’ (Wahab 2019) as a critical reflection on the place of the homoerotic and queerness within the trans-oceanic lifeworld of coolie indentureship. The four artworks presented are informed by a series of questions that might help to build a platform for queering indentureship and trans-oceanic space beyond identity recovery and respectability politics. …
Thinking LGBT human rights in Guyana
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies , interviews British High Commissioner to Guyana, Jane Miller, OBE, about her perspectives on LGBT human rights in Guyana. They discuss issues related to the legacies of the colonial regulation of gender and sexuality, the inclusion of diverse identities, and collaboration with LGBT activist organizations in Guyana
The LGBT activism of Jason Jones
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies , interviews LGBTQ+ human rights defender Jason Jones about his advocacy spanning four decades in Trinidad and Tobago and the UK. Jones shares his experiences about the intersections of homophobia and racism to highlight the complexities around LGBTQ+ human rights. He discusses his successful landmark legal challenges against state-sponsored legal homophobia in both sp…
Queer Coolie-tudes
Scholar Amar Wahab, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies , interviews queer diasporic filmmaker and lecturer Dr. Michelle Mohabeer about her critical and creative documentary interventions – spanning over 30 years – which seek to queer indentureship and Indo-Caribbean diasporic identity and experience. The dialogue focuses especially on her creative essay documentary Queer Coolie-tudes (2019), which places the slurs – ‘queer…
Stories of reclamation, speculation and joy
Co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies , Amar Wahab, interviews Dutch-Surinamese visual artist, Nazrina Rodjan, about her recent exhibition, Kala Pani:1873–2023 , which creatively intervenes in discourses about race, gender, queerness and indentureship in the Netherlands. Rodjan’s work is a critical response to the gendered racism within the Dutch archives and artworld, including its silencing of indentureship and its legacies…
Introduction
Sociology (15 obras) · Gender Studies (14 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (10 obras) · Gender Studies (9 obras) · Queer (9 obras) · History (7 obras) · Law (7 obras) · Politics (7 obras)