going beyond the visible
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In “The Turban is not a Hat”, Puar engages in a phenomenological approach. Puar notes how the turbaned Sikh is perceived in a multitude of conflicting ways as hypermasculine, effeminate, or potentially emasculated. These conflicting perceptions of the turbaned body disrupt conventional understandings of gender and sexuality, thereby potentially aligning it with queerness. At the same time however, the turbaned body, both hypermasculine and potentially emasculated, is seen as both "too perverse to rehabilitate" and "too perverse to be read as queer" (perhaps something to discuss further in class because I am not sure I have understood completely what is implied here). These are the limits of "Respectable Queerness" discussed by Puar and which queer of color people must contend with simply because they aren’t white, these are the challenges of claiming a queer identity that does not conform to (mainly white settler queer) dominant norms. The conflation of the turbaned man with the terrorist and the "fag” furthermore reveals the deeply ingrained association of difference with deviance and danger. The turbaned man, by virtue of his visible racial and religious/cultural difference, is assimilated into this assemblage, becoming a target of violence and discrimination.
Exploring the role of pre-perceptive affective responses/visceral sensibilities (Massumi and Saldanha) in relation to racism, Puar builds on the ideas of contagion and stickiness. The turban is the “sticky” signifier which readily attracts fear and prejudice, being visually distinctive, amalgamated with Islam in the Western imagination, and associated with broader anxieties surrounding terrorism and immigration. She uses the idea of contagion to describe how fear and prejudice, particularly in the context of the "war on terror", spread and attach themselves to certain bodies and populations. Contagion operates beyond the realm of visual representation and rational understanding, working instead through the affective realm of feelings, sensations, and visceral responses. Building on the work of Sara Ahmed among others, Puar argues that fear itself is the primary agent of contagion. Fear, rather than residing in a specific body, circulates between bodies, attaching itself to certain individuals and groups based on perceived resemblances and associations. The fear of the turbaned body, for instance, is not necessarily rooted in any inherent characteristic of the turban itself but rather in the anxieties it evokes/triggers in the observer. This fear then spreads to other bodies deemed similar, creating a pool of suspect figures. While acknowledging the role of visual representation in racial profiling, Puar emphasizes the importance of affect and tactility in understanding how contagion operates. The visceral responses triggered by the sight of a turban, such as fear, disgust, or anxiety, contribute to the perception of the turbaned body as a threat. This goes beyond simply mistaking a Sikh for a Muslim; it's about the affective response the turban elicits. The act of "de-turbaning" highlights this: it's not just about visually verifying identity, it's about asserting control over the body and its perceived threat. Puar also critiques the limitations of relying solely on signification and knowledge-based approaches in addressing the problem of racial profiling. Even if people were educated on the differences between Sikhs and Muslims, the underlying “affective economies” of fear and prejudice persist, and the hypothesis of mistaken identity is based on false and even dangerous premises: “that the viewer (assumed to be white despite the proliferation of these attacks by people of color) is open to and willing to discern the visual differences between Sikh turbans and Muslim turbans; that the ideals of multiculturalism as promulgated by liberal education acknowledge that differences within difference matter; that violent backlash toward Sikhs is a displacement of hostility from the rightful object, the ‘‘real’’ Muslims” (167).