On Sexuality and Persianate Modernity

ABSTRACT This article assesses sexuality as a crucial component of Persianate modernity in Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity. Drawing on the work of Joseph Massad, Afsaneh Najmabadi, and Michel Foucault, Jabbari argues that nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary historians erased premodern Persianate homoerotic desire to craft a “productive” vision of modernity. This erasure participated in a larger epistemic shift that located heteronormative coupling as useful for emerging nation-states. Alongside this erasure, the author points to other ruptures related to sexuality in Persianate modernity, such as the surfacing of a distinctly feminine voice that speaks of desire, the post-1980s adoption of LGBTQ+ identities by many in the modern Persianate world, and the loss of a premodern Islamic approach to romantic love understood as a disease within humoral medicine. Drawing from her own work, Kanner-Botan indicates how continuities in premodern Islamic approaches to love may serve as an additional counterpoint to the epistemic rupture caused by modern approaches to sexuality. Though the ruptures caused by modern approaches to sexuality in the Persianate world merit further research, Jabbari’s engagement with rupture counters the book’s overall focus on continuity by foregrounding the risks of nostalgia latent within the category of the Persianate itself.