Abstract: This talk examines what queer life reveals about everyday disruptions and violence in contexts where crises and disorder are the conditions of social and cultural life. Employing postcolonial feminist approaches and queer of color critique, Dr. Ghassan Moussawi challenge how sexuality has been used by Euro-American popular media to provide a transnational narrative about contemporary Beirut as a unique gay-friendly destination in the Arab World. He counters these neoliberal narratives of Beiruti exceptionalism, highlighting the prominence of everyday “disruptive situations” in shaping city life. Based on two years of ethnographic research (2013-14), interviews with LGBT Beirutis, and discourse analysis, he draws attention to how disruptions and violence become familiar and calls into question what constitutes “ordinary” and “mundane” aspects of queer lives and queer situations.
