Narrowing the Field of Possibilities

Hi, my peeps,

So, I think I’ve narrowed it down to two possible dissertation topics. Anyone care to weigh in? (C’mon, NYUers, I know you’re reading…)

OPTION #1: “Rainbow Nation: Democracy and the Consolidation of LGBT Political Community in South Africa, 1986-2006.”

South Africa is a fascinating paradox for anyone interested in studying sexual rights: one the one hand, it has the most liberal egalitarian Constitution in existence, which enshrines both gender equality and protections for sexual minorities. On the other hand, a deeply entrenched culture of patriarchal and homophobic violence mocks these revolutionary principles, creating a climate of fear and intolerance that is deeply palpable. It seems that the story of sexual rights in South Africa has reached a tipping point, where either these new rights will take hold and begin to create substantive social change, or the active, de facto resistance to this new legal regime will render these rights virtually meaningless for many LGBT South Africans. The story of how this came to be engages South Africa’s processes of democratization and constitution-making, as well as its rapid (by comparative standards) mobilization of a large network of NGOs focusing on sexual rights. This dissertation project examines the relationship between South Africa’s democratization and the consolidation of a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender political community. I want to analyze the rapid NGO-ization of sexual rights here, and its accompanying schemas of authenticity and authority, as well as it’s racial politics- and how they affect and are affected by the surrounding culture of patriarchal gender relations and violent resistance to sexual rights. By doing this, I hope to gain insight into the classic sociological question of whether law can, in fact, create social change.

OPTION #2: “Beyond the Body: Toward a New Theory of Gender-Based Violence”

This idea is less formed in my head, but I’ve got a bunch of data collected which I plan to analyze once I’m home. Broadly, I want to level a critique of the concept of “gender-based violence” employed by international human rights activists and NGOs. Essentially, the argument goes like this: the typical idea of gender-based violence relies on two distinct principles: (1) an essentialized notion of harm, (2) to a female body. Thus, IHR activists concern themselves with violent things that happen to womens' bodies: marital rape, genital cutting, veiling, etc. My work in South Africa provides evidence that there are many types of harm elided by these formulations: there are forms of gender-based violence that are about gender stereotyping and/or sexuality (e.g. reparative rape of lesbian women because they are lesbians, the identification of lesbians for attack because of atypical gender performance). There are also ideological forms of gender violence, like patriarchy and its associated legal regimes, property laws, legal exclusions, etc. There are institutional forms of gender violence, like the failure of police to intervene in domestic violence cases, because that is the “private” sphere, or the lack of specific policing or tallying of hate-based criminal activity. It would seem that the limited formulation of gender violence by human rights activists allows them to avoid engaging with thorny issues of cultural practice and western interventionism, but at the same time, it exacts its own consequences in the form of limited public understandings of what gender actually means. The dissertation would examine the history of debates around gender violence in a selection of cultural contexts, American, African, and possibly a third, to make sense of what might be done to forge a more comprehensive model.

What do you think? I'm listening... (See under-used "Comments" option below...)