Fragmented Wholeness: The Turban and Racialized Bodies in Post-9/11 Imaginaries
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In Jasbir Puar's analysis, the turban becomes a site of intersection between the organic body and external racial, cultural, and political discourses, which profoundly challenges the concept of the body as a unified, self-contained entity. Through the turban, Puar illustrates how racist imaginings and cultural anxieties about difference work to fragment and destabilize the perception of Sikh bodies, rendering them not just "other" but also disjointed and incomplete in the eyes of a racist and xenophobic public.
Puar describes the turban as more than "just a turban"—it is an extension of the body, both materially and symbolically. For Sikh men, the turban is a deeply significant marker of identity, tied to religious observance, cultural heritage, and personal dignity. However, in the post-9/11 cultural landscape, the turban has been imbued with meanings that are both racialized and sexualized. It becomes a "sticky" object in Puar’s terms, one that attracts a variety of violent and contradictory associations, from hypermasculinity and militarism to effeminacy and deviance. This "stickiness" complicates the perception of the Sikh body as whole and sovereign.
One way this plays out is through acts of deturbaning, where Sikh men are forced—either through physical violence or institutional mandates—to remove their turbans. This act is not merely about disrobing but about a symbolic and visceral attack on the person’s bodily and cultural integrity. Deturbaning reduces the Sikh body to an assemblage, forcibly separating the turban from the body while simultaneously erasing its spiritual and cultural significance. The turban becomes an appendage that is violently detached, unmaking the coherence of the Sikh identity. For example, Puar points to the widespread assaults on Sikh men following 9/11, where the turban itself was targeted—unwrapped, clawed at, and humiliated as an extension of the body. Such acts of violence are deeply intimate and emasculating, reflecting both a profound misunderstanding and a purposeful dehumanization of Sikh identity.
Moreover, Puar ties the racialization of the turbaned body to broader mechanisms of surveillance and control. She explains how the turban, now associated with terrorism, becomes a "sticky" signifier of fear, circulating in affective economies of suspicion. It draws racist attention not as an incidental marker of identity but as a fetishized object, one that symbolizes an amalgam of monstrosity, terror, and cultural backwardness. This circulation of fear produces boundaries and categories of inclusion and exclusion that disrupt the organic wholeness of the Sikh body. The turban becomes a site where the body is no longer just flesh and blood but also data, information, and surveillance—a body fragmented by the gaze of the state and society.
Puar also notes the historical context of this fragmentation. She argues that the turbaned Sikh man, once celebrated as a hypermasculine "warrior" figure in colonial British military narratives, has now shifted to a symbol of "failed masculinity" within Western nationalist discourses. He is rendered both excessively patriarchal and effeminately queer in ways that defy normative gender expectations, further fracturing his representation in the cultural imaginary.
Thus, in Puar's framework, the racist imaginings of the turban do not merely mistake or misinterpret it; they actively reconstruct the turban and its wearer as fractured and monstrous entities. The turbaned body is no longer seen as whole or coherent but as a contested and politicized site, where organic and inorganic elements intersect to challenge its subjectivity and sovereignty. This fragmentation serves the dual purpose of racializing and sexualizing Sikh men, disqualifying them from normative humanity and citizenship while subjecting them to violent scrutiny and control.