Paper short abstract:

In this paper, following my ethnography, I reconceptualise 'sexual subaltern' as a common ground for feminist-queer solidarity that considers conditions of marginality caused by the 'deviance' from sexual norms instead of the fixed identities based on sexual orientation/practice.

Paper long abstract:

My ethnography examining the perils and pleasures of female sexual subjectivity expressed through a genre of folk songs, Bhawaiya, produced in the margins of Bangladeshi society. Influenced by Spivak's (2008) definition of the subaltern, I used the term subaltern interchangeably with marginalisation while focusing on the sexual desire and anger against marital inequality of women expressed through those songs. While focusing on female sexual subjectivity to oppose sexism is a feminist agenda, I found that heterosexual women are not often considered as a sexual subaltern. 'Sexual subaltern' a concept coined by Ratna Kapur (2000) defined as the opposite of heterosexual, married, monogamous, reproductive and non-commercial sexual orientation leaves no room for my research to see the women of Bhawaiya as a sexual subaltern. Hence, considering the prospect of the concept to enable solidarity within the people of marginalised sexual identities, I propose to redefine it focusing on marginality instead of the binary of identities based on sexual orientation/practices. While intersectionality in identity politics can serve as an important tool to form solidarity despite the difference in identity politics, it also has been problematised for gatekeeping the identity boundaries, especially since the queer subject is against identity (Puar 2018). For feminist-queer solidarity, I, therefore, focus on the process of marginalisation and on the 'subaltern' as the element that consists of the identity, not the identities themselves. It allows us to turn the table of identification to target the gendered power relations and norms as the common enemies and to enable solidarity between all the 'deviances' from these.