Constructing subjects that matter: A case of conditional recognition for Pakistani Khawajasiras
本文分析巴基斯坦媒体如何通过话语机制，将性别多元群体Khawajasiras的工作污名化，并迫使其接受异性恋规范的工作和性别角色，从而使其承认变得有条件。
Abstract This paper examines how media discourses on gender and work play a part in regulating the lives of a community of Pakistani gender diverse people, called Khawajasiras. Developing a critical discourse analysis of media news, we show how this regulatory process results in discursive mechanisms positioning Khawajasiras' work as “dirty” and in need of “respectable” and exclusively “feminine” alternatives. This regulatory process revolves around delegitimizing Khawajasiras' non‐normative work and their gender fluidity in the job market. Khawajasiras' recognition is thus conditional upon their reproduction of a socially heteronormative notion of work and gender. We conclude that this regulatory process not only forecloses possibilities of resignification for this historically disenfranchised community but also risks producing new forms of abjection by enforcing notions of “fake” (with an implicitly assumed notion of “authentic”) Khawajasira. The findings of this paper ultimately problematize contemporary ideals of recognition of non‐normative gendered groups.