Belonging

by Roshanak Kheshti

How do we know when and where we belong? For some, belonging is ascribed at birth, never contested and never doubted. But globalization is causing this experience to slowly wither into an antiquated form of relationality enjoyed by few. Most people learn early on that they do not belong and so begins the life-long, often endless journey in search of that sense of belonging. I emphasize sense here to point out that belonging is a feeling that is upheld by various technologies of power and culture: surnames, inheritance, passports, religious practice, body type, etc., etc. Such technologies determine things like nationality, ethnicity, gender, family, sexuality, dis/ability, criminality and piety. Take the example of nationality: what determines if one is Iranian? The simple answer is that one is born in Iran but what if one is born in diaspora to Iranian parents in a diasporic Iranian community? Or what if one is born in Iran to Azeri or Baluchi parents who live and practice culture in Azeri or Baluchi communities? Or what if someone seeks asylum from Iran because of ethnic, gendered or sexual persecution? Are they still Iranian? These questions only scratch the surface of countless questions always hanging in the balance, which determine whether we are inside or outside of communities of belonging.

            Queer people, like other others, learn these distinctions quite early. Appropriate sexual and gendered belonging is carefully policed, but it is policed differently in different cultures. In mainstream US society, sexuality and gender are closely monitored and carefully manipulated by peers, popular culture and parents in addition to myriad others forces. But is this the case in mainstream Iranian society? Iranian society is considered homosocial—children and adults learn to live and socialize most intimately with their same-sex peers, cousins, family and friends. Comparatively speaking, normative sexual and gendered belonging in the US context is very different than the Iranian context, so how then do Iranian queers know they do not sexually belong in normative Iranian society? Just as there is a sense of belonging there is a sense of unbelonging. What is that sense of unbelonging in a homosocial society?

            One answer to this question considers the strategic nature of belonging. With globalization comes the spread of cultures, communities, people, languages, and ideas with the simultaneous sense that connections are easier to make as information is exchanged more rapidly and cheaply. The question of belonging is no longer only posed in relation to one’s immediate surroundings but also in relation to formations that happen thousands of miles away. So while the question of national belonging is one that many of us have been asked or have asked ourselves, cross-cultural and transnational forms of belonging are revealing the strategic nature of the art of survival. Membership in the “queer nation” grants access to certain kinds of benefits and resources just as membership in ethnic, gendered and nation-states grant others. If we understand that the search for the sense of belonging represents the poetic aspect to belonging as a strategic act of survival, we can better understand why we long for being in relation to others. Just as we prefer seasoned and carefully prepared foods over the ingestion of pure calories, we long for that sense of belonging over just simply being alongside one another.

-Roshanak Kheshti is current UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Please direct all comments and questions to rkheshti@hotmail.com.