Description
My paper will focus on the significance of queer events in Bangladesh and West Bengal in terms of their ability to transfer knowledge through these organizing. In the process of organising events, community members come together, navigate different spaces, advocate, and network with allies, local and international resource holders.
Many of these organising started as a drop-in centre for HIV/AIDS prevention programme or in a Hijra Dera where Kothi and Hijra community members could come together and perform. Later some of them are now structured as ‘Community based NGO’ with a human rights focus and others are working as CBO or NGO. While organising the events, these community members explore relationships and emotional labour that exist as a form of care and conflict, grounded broadly in themes of traditional and contemporary practice, and politics transferring knowledge from one to another. Through many of these activities they try to fit in to the existing social structure of power where heterosexuality gets a privileged status.
To examine, a qualitative inquiry will be used to study different LGBTQ organizations and their events in Bangladesh and West Bengal. When heteronormative practices are dominant in the context, LGBTQ organizations challenge that and simultaneously get dependent on donors, and other allies. This is often problematic as Lisa Duggan said the problem is ultimately that welfare programs over resources especially to poor women, who are thus enabled to make undesirable choices (Duggan L, 2002, p. 189).
In this paper, I would like to map different practices of arts and performance events by the queer groups and how that these queer events are is shaping the movement building in Bangladesh. By revisiting the political precursors of the queer movement my observations will cover organizations that are not only located in the metropolitan cities but also in the district level and how they assure their access to the resources for these events.
Reference:
Castronovo, R, & Nelson, DD (eds) 2002, Materializing Democracy : Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, Duke University Press, Durham. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [8 May 2023].
