Sextarianism Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon

"Maya Mikdashi's gloriously written Sextarianism is the book we have been waiting for. Deeply personal in its tone, expansively political in its intent, this book draws on unusual archives and intimate knowledge of Lebanon to show the relation between gender, sexuality, and the state in all its ambivalent, messy complexity."-Laleh Khalili, University of London "Sextarianism is luminous. Maya Mikdashi brings panache and an exquisite eye for the quotidian to diverse objects of analysis, all while prying open new conversations about archival research as collective labor. A must-read for anyone studying state formation, the geopolitics of queer theory, and secularism, with implications far beyond Lebanon."-Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University "A tour de force by one of the most dynamic, iconoclastic, and original socio-political analysts of the Arab world of this generation. Maya Mikdashi's Sextarianism will transform the way Lebanon has been understood; more radically, it will force everyone to rethink how religious and sexual differences work at/as the nexus of states and citizenship."-Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University "Both theoretically sophisticated and deeply poignant, Sextarianism disrupts assumptions that secularism liberates people from religion, challenging idealized solutions to political-sectarianism. Readers are gifted with marvelously vivid and careful ethnography, through which Maya Mikdashi brings to life the often-painful effects of state sectarian practices on people's lives in Lebanon."-Lara Deeb, Scripps College "Using court records, Mikdashi... disentangles the ways in which the sectarian Lebanese state handles sexual difference through the application of personal status laws....Recommended."-M. L. Russell, CHOICE "Sextarianism is a unique scholarly work of such intellectual rigor that it ought to be mandatory reading for scholars and students of the Middle East, anthropology, law, political science, and sociology. The book gives a new perspective on sex, sect and, the state in Lebanon-but its findings can also be applied to understanding other sextarian states such as Iraq. Sextarianism opens up a fascinating new way of understanding the intersections of sect, sex, and sexuality in relation to freedom, abuses of power, citizenship, and the state."-Evin Ismail, Conflict and Society "One issue that is often encountered when studying Middle Eastern realities is the pervasive feeling of exceptionability that scholars, journalists, and agents of knowledge production, in general, tend to ascribe to this region.... Maya Mikdashi challenges this view and approaches Lebanon as a site of intensification rather than exceptionalism. To her, studying the Lebanese sectarian system is the key to learning more about secular power and how it is practiced through the intersection of religion, sect, and sex."-Sibilla Gosso, Journal of Church & State