event
GENDER SEMINAR SERIES
Thursday
22
April
Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA)

Hatred, Compassion, and Love: Productions of Political Communities and Bodies through the Affective Politics around ISIS Visuals of Queer Executions

Ceren Bulduk
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In this presentation, Ceren Bulduk explores the intertwined relationship between wartime violence, bodies, and political communities, utilising affect as a lens.

Focusing on the case of ISIS visuals of queer executions, she shows that different types of political communities and bodies are produced through affective politics. On the one hand, such affective politics involves the production of an ISIS heteronormative political community via the hatred induced by multiplied queer bodily surfaces. On the other hand, it consists of the distinctions between 1) the human rights-friendly Rojavan political community and modern/civilised international community and 2) the barbarian ISIS political community via the compassion and love induced by the multiplication of queer bodies.

Ceren Bulduk reveals that such constitutions of political communities and bodies are never fixed, but rather open to contestations. Building upon the interviews she collected with Syrians, she analyses these contestations through revealing the ISIS practices of (homo)sexuality.

 

About the speaker

Ceren Bulduk is a doctoral candidate in International Relations/Political Science at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. Ceren’s PhD project examines violence, embodiment, and political communities drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theories. Her research focuses on gendered and sexualised violence in the context of the Syrian war and brings to light Syrian queers’ and Syrian women’s experiences of wartime violence and their politics of affective resistance.

 

Part of the Gender Seminar Series

The purpose of this research seminar is to offer a platform of exchange for students, doctoral students in particular, and researchers whose work includes a gender perspective. During this monthly series, researchers have the opportunity to discuss their work, meet peers from different disciplines at the Graduate Institute, as well as interact with other students, guest speakers and faculty members.

See the programme of this semester's Gender Seminar Series here.


Banner image: © ponsulak / Shutterstock.com
Picture: Soldiers of The Queer International Liberation Army (TQILA). Excerpt of a photograph by International Revolutionary People's Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF) / Wikimedia Commons