Pakistan Desires by Omar Kasmani

Pakistan Desires gathers essays on the complex landscape of queer desire in Pakistan, but also on how Pakistan itself desires and is formed by desire. It is by extension a critical discussion of how desire is tied to ideation of place and nation. Utilizing both queer history and queer theory, the volume demonstrates that thinking about is always also a thinking from, and by thinking from Pakistan, it moves past the (often implicit) Western European and North American center of queer and affect studies. Rather than saying simply that Pakistan, too, is queer, the contributors expand our understanding of Pakistan as a place by delving into its affective geopolitics, unfolding the pluralities of desire that form its history, and finding queerness in its everyday intricacies.

Omar Kasmani is Guest Lecturer in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and author of Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan, also published by Duke University Press.

2023

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