Queer Palestinian Performance as Anti-Colonial Survival

• In Event: Homonationalism, Imperial “Harm-Reduction,” and Pinkwashing Zionism

Abstract

On November 3, 2023, the official Twitter account of the Israeli occupation posted two photos of IOF soldiers. One standing in front of a large tank holding an Israeli flag with rainbow borders and the other, presumably, standing against the backdrop of the ruble of Gaza city holding a rainbow, pride flag with “in the name of love” written on it in black ink. The caption of the post begins with “The first ever pride flag raised in Gaza.” On December 17, 2023, queer Palestinian-American DJ and producer Subeaux tweeted, “What do any of you know of my Palestine? Of the late night queer parties in Ramallah? Of raves held in biblically aged buildings? Of lesbians in hijabs, of gay men in hoop earrings, of trans Palestinians dancing with joyful abandon?” Taken together, the rhetoric of progress and pinkwashing, a longtime imperialist strategy of the occupation, juxtaposed with Subeaux’s poetics creates a material and aesthetic exigence. On the one hand, the occupation’s annihilation of Gaza and the rhetorical employment of colonial misremembering attempts to destroy the queer Palestine Subeaux conjures. On the other hand, the queer memory and performance Subeaux draws on produces a living archive of queer Palestine—one that helps us sustain an anti-colonial and anti-zionist queer politic.

Thus, in this essay, I take queer Palestinian performance seriously as an act of survival—of keeping alive and as passing on. I turn to queer Palestinian-American performance artist and poet Fargo Nissim Tbakhi and his work as an exercise in performing a material and aesthetic act of sustaining queer politics beyond homonationalism and pinkwashing. I analyze Tbakhi’s performance, My Father, My Martyr, and Me, to consider how he mobilizes queer Palestinian performance in the service of survival and More Life. In doing so, I trace how Tbakhi reproduces queer Palestinian life even after the occupation attempts to extinguish it. I think with other queer of color performance scholars and suggest life is reproduced through aesthetic gesture, rather than biological process.

Author

• Michael Tristano, Towson Univeristy